One of the most talked about changes in the One D&D playtest is the decision to make all natural 1’s auto-failures and all natural 20’s auto-successes.

My first gut reaction to this was: That’s a terrible idea!

Upon further reflection, however, I’ve realized that this reaction is primarily built on my experience with pre-5^th Edition versions of D&D, and that under the design principles of 5^th Edition it’s probably irrelevant. (We’ll come back to that.)

But here’s what I don’t get:

You’re making all natural 1’s and natural 20’s work the same for simplicity and clarity? Sure. That makes sense.

But, simultaneously, you’re adding a whole bunch of weird, nit-picky rules about which specific types of attacks and which specific types of character can get critical hits in combat?

That doesn’t make sense to me.

In any case, I was going to move on to explaining why the new auto-fail/auto-success rules for ability and skill checks isn’t as big a deal as you might think, but it quickly morphed into a wide-ranging discussion of why the 5^th Edition skill system is broken garbage built on top of questionable design principles.

So… buckle in.

It’s been awhile since I did a good ol’ fashioned D&D rant.

WHY BOUNDED ACCURACY?

Let’s start by talking about bounded accuracy. Endless ink has been spilt on this topic, but I think one of the clearest way to understand bounded accuracy — what it is, why it works the way it does, how it’s supposed to be used — is to look at the design lineage which created it.

To do that, we need to go back about twenty years to the development of the Epic Level Handbook for 3^rd Edition. The concept was to extend play past 20^th level, allowing players to continue leveling up their characters forever.

The big problem the designers faced was that different classes gained bonuses to core abilities — attacks, saving throws, etc. — at different rates, which meant that their values diverged over time. By 20^th level, the highest and lowest bonuses had already diverged so much that the difference exceeded the range of the d20 roll. This meant that any AC or DC you set would either be an automatic success for some PCs or impossible for others.

The designers of the Epic Level Handbook tried jumping through a whole bunch of hoops to solve or ameliorate this problem, but largely failed. As a result, the Epic Level Handbook was a pretty flawed experience at a fundamental level (and its failure may have actually played a major role in Wizards of the Coast abandoning the OGL and the doom of 4^th Edition, but that’s a tale for another time).

On that note, fast forward to 4^th Edition: The designers knew this was a problem. (Several of the designers had actually worked on the Epic Level Handbook.) They wanted to avoid this problem with the new edition.

Their solution was to level up everyone’s bonuses across the board: Classes would be strong at some things and weak at others, but the values wouldn’t diverge. This methodology was, furthermore, wedded to 4^th Edition’s design ethos of “level up the whole world with the PCs” and more or less fundamental to its My Precious Encounter school of encounter design.

Fast forward again, this time to 5^th Edition: The 4^th Edition of the game had burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp, and 5^th Edition’s mission was to win back the D&D players they had lost. The whole “level up the world” ethos was widely identified as one of the things people who hated 4^th Edition hated about 4^th Edition, so it had go.

Bounded accuracy was the solution. Importantly, bounded accuracy was about two things:

1. Controlling AC & DC so that the target numbers never become impossible for some of the PCs.
2. Controlling bonuses so that the results don’t become automatic successes for some of the PCs.

In other words, all of the results exist within that boundary. Hence, “bounded accuracy.”

If you go back to the original problem experienced in 3^rd Edition (and which metastasized in the Epic Level Handbook), you can see how this solves the problem. It also avoids the 4^th Edition problem where your numbers get bigger, but your results never actually improve because the numbers increase in lockstep: As long as the DCs remain consistently in bounds, the moderate increases to the PCs’ bonuses will see them succeed more often as they increase in level, resulting in high-level characters who feel (and are!) more effective than 1^st level characters.

BOUNDED ACCURACY & AUTO-RESULTS

This is also why my initial gut reaction to the new auto-fail/auto-success rules was wrong.

You don’t want a nat-1/nat-20 = auto-fail/auto-success rule in 3^rd Edition or 4^th Edition because the range of results shifts over levels and between characters: There are DC 35 tasks that you just can’t do unless you have a +15 bonus and that’s by design.

For years, in fact, I and many other people have preached the gospel here: Skill checks should not auto-fail on 1 or auto-succeeds on 20!

But bounded accuracy in 5^th Edition means that you should basically never be setting a DC that is impossible for one of the PCs to achieve. So having a natural 20 automatically succeed is irrelevant because it should already always be succeeding.

And if, in your opinion, a character should be succeeding on a roll of 1, then you shouldn’t be rolling those dice in the first place. You don’t make a Strength (Athletics) check to see if someone can walk across an empty street. Default to yes.

BUT BOUNDED ACCURACY IS BROKEN

What complicates this, however, is that bounded accuracy for ability checks/skill checks in 5E is broken.

The first problem is one of implementation: The instructions for setting check DCs are incorrect, which results in DMs setting DCs that break bounded accuracy.

The short version is that, for legacy reasons very similar to why I had my gut reaction to the playtest mechanics, the DC range in 5^th Edition is treated as if it were the same as low-level 3^rd Edition, including by the designers and the advice in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. But this isn’t the case. A skilled 3^rd-level character in 3^rd Edition likely has a +8 or +9 in the skill; the same character in 5^th Edition has +4 or +5.

Note: The elimination of the Take 10 mechanic in 5^th Edition for all practical purposes except passive Perception also has an effect here, but we won’t dive down that rabbit hole today.

This includes several key pieces of advice, which are given in various places throughout the 5^th Edition product line and reflected in the design of official scenarios and the like. (From here, this advice also percolates into designer diaries and third-party books, videos, tweets, blogs, etc.)

• DC 10 is the baseline “easy” check, relevant to unskilled characters.
• You should rarely or never call for PCs to roll for DCs under 10.
• You should step up your DCs by 5 points (going from DC 10 to DC 15 to DC 20).

The specific expression of this advice varies, but is fairly consistent. In the DMG, for example: “If the only DCs you ever use are 10, 15, and 20, your game will run just fine.”

But if you run the math, what you actually want is:

• DC 8 is the baseline “easy” check, relevant to unskilled characters.
• DC 12 should probably be your default difficulty.
• Thinking in steps of two is probably more useful: DC 8, DC 10, DC 12, DC 14, etc.

As I said, though, this is primarily a problem of praxis. In isolation, it could be trivially solved with better advice.

The more fundamental problem is mechanical: There are a handful of class abilities which trivially — but hilariously! — break bounded accuracy.

The rogue, of course, makes an easy example here. Expertise doubles proficiency bonuses, changing a range of +2 to +6 into a range of +4 to +12. Combined with ability score modifiers, this almost immediately turns most reasonable DCs within the system’s bounded accuracy into an automatic success for the rogue, and it gets worse from there.

Reliable Talent then comes in for mop-up, making the rogue’s minimum die roll 10. The rogue is now auto-succeeding on every proficient check, and in their chosen Expertise any DC that could challenge them is probably impossible for every other PC.

Of course, those are exactly the DCs these hilariously broken abilities pressure the DM to assign. Partly because they want to challenge the PCs. Partly because it just makes sense that these PCs should be able to achieve things the PCs without the hilariously broken abilities can’t do.

The end result, of course, is exactly the problem bounded accuracy was introduced to eliminate.

The new auto-fail/auto-success rules technically patch this up a bit:

• You’ve set a DC too high in order to challenge the hilarious broken character? At least the other PCs won’t auto-fail.
• You’ve set the DC “correctly” for bounded accuracy? The hilariously broken character can at least theoretically still fail.

But only in the crudest sense.

OPINION: THE TONE OF BOUNDED ACCURACY

So all of that is basically just math.

Now I’m going to digress into a purely personal opinion about why bounded accuracy makes the 5^th Edition skill system suck.

Let’s start by talking about why bounded accuracy works in combat: Hit points.

Although the typical Armor Class of a monster shifts upwards slightly as they increase in challenge rating, virtually every monster in the Monster Manual can be hit by a 1^st level character. This works, of course, because the amount of damage the monsters deal and the number of hit points they have do increase: The 1^st level character can’t readily defeat an adult red dragon because (a) the red dragon will smush them with a single attack and (b) the 1^st level character would have to hit them a bajillion time to whittle away their hit points.

The real advantage of this system is that it allows lower CR monsters to remain relevant: An encounter with twenty CR 1 dire wolves probably won’t threaten a 15^th-level party, but if you add them into an encounter with CR 13 storm giants, they won’t be completely irrelevant (since they can still hit the PCs and the PCs won’t necessarily auto-hit them).

But, of course, the skill system doesn’t have hit points or damage rolls. The “dire wolves” of the skill system never get easier to kill and you never become able to take on the “red dragons.”

As Rodney Thompson wrote in the article which introduced bounded accuracy to the world: “An iron-banded door is just as tough to break down at 20^th level as it was at 1^st.”

This creates a really weird dynamic where at 1^st level your characters struggle with dire wolves, casting dancing lights, and picking the lock on the back door of the tavern. And at 20^th level they’re soloing Smaug, summoning meteor swarms from the heavens, and… still having trouble picking that lock or kicking down that door.

And I don’t like it.

I recognize that there are other valid opinions here, but I would vastly prefer a skill system that unlocked abilities on par with all the other systems in the game (spells, combat, etc.). Having this weird, stagnant cul-de-sac creates some really bizarre effects in the fiction.

So what you’re left with here is a dichotomy. If you like the design principle on which bounded accuracy is built, you’re nevertheless left with the fact that 5^th Edition’s implementation of it in the skill system is hilariously broken.

And if, like me, you DON’T like the tonal implications of bounded accuracy in the skill system, then it’s just fundamentally undesirable AND broken.

THE SKILL LIST

Generally speaking, if you have a skill system in an RPG, then you want that skill system to be comprehensive. In other words, there should be skills covering the full gamut of tasks that PCs are likely to attempt. Or, to flip it around, you never want the GM to reach for a skill check and discover that the skill doesn’t exist.

Comprehensiveness should not be mistaken for minutia or complexity: You can achieve a comprehensive system by having forty different skills covering every sub-field of science, but you can also achieve it by just having a single Science skill. D&D 5^th Edition could hypothetically achieve it by having no skill system at all and just having characters be directly proficient in ability scores.

The 5^th Edition skill system, of course, broadly fails this basic criteria. I am constantly reaching for skill checks and then struggling to identify a skill which covers the task.

You can patch up some of these shortcomings by embracing the Skills With Different Abilities variant rule, in which skills can be paired to different ability scores depending on how they’re being used. For example, let’s say that you wanted to canvass a neighborhood for information. Non-variant 5^th Edition lacks any skill clearly covering that, but if you use the variant rule you can create a Charisma (Investigation) check and get what you need.

When you do this, however, you end up exacerbating another problem that I, personally, have with the system: Overlapping skills.

I vastly prefer a skill system in which I, as the GM, can call for a clear, definitive skill check. You may still end up with situations where players would like a different skill to apply (and you’ll need to make a ruling on that), but it’s a rare thing instead of affecting every single mechanical interaction in the game.

If you have a very large list of skills, the advantages of that expansiveness can, to some extent, justify the cost to precision if the skills end up with overlap. But despite having an incredibly short (and incomplete) list of skills, 5^th Edition still ends up with overlapped skills (e.g., Athletics and Acrobatics).

But okay, let’s lay my personal preferences completely aside: 5^th Edition has a short, concise skill list because it wants to keep the options streamlined. And it’s willing to accept the clunkiness of incompleteness to keep that relatively streamlined list.

Unfortunately, that’s when 5^th Edition slides up next to you and says, “Hey. Did I tell you about my OTHER skill system?”

Because, of course, it has one: Tool proficiencies. Massively overlapped (both with itself and with the skill list), not remotely streamlined, and more often confusing than not.

And also nonsensically crippled, because if you play according to the rules as written you can only make tool proficiency checks if you’re using the tool. So, for example, you can be a skilled carpenter, but that in no way translates to an ability to notice shabby construction, identify building materials, etc.

I’ll fully admit that, as far as I can tell, literally no one actually plays the game this way (including the designers), opting to allow this kind of knowledge-based tool proficiency check. But “a rule that nobody uses as written” is a pretty reliable indication of a rule that’s completely busted.

SKILL LOCK-IN

Finally, it’s fairly difficult to pick up additional skills in 5^th Edition. In fact, it borders on the impossible unless the DM is using other optional rules like feats. (I suspect the move in 1D&D to make feats non-optional and add more of them will help with this somewhat.)

This makes it quite difficult to adjust your character in response to the evolving circumstances of the campaign, something which skill systems are usually ideal for (since you can, in most such systems, make a multitude of adjustments during character advancement).

In the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly minor complaint. But if I’m going to write up a grand rant on all of my problems with the 5^th Edition skill system, I should at least try to be complete about it.

HOW WOULD YOU FIX IT?

For 1D&D? I wouldn’t. Backwards compatibility, in my opinion, is more important than tweaking the skill system.

Look, I told you this was a rant right at the beginning.

But if I had a time machine, could go back to 2014, and get a designer to listen to me:

• Make flexible ability score pairing the standard rule, not a variant.
• Eliminate the redundant skills.
• Add additional skills to provide a comprehensive skill list.
• Get rid of tool proficiencies.

And I’d make a strong case that bounded accuracy is the wrong call for the skill system and allow skill use to level up just like spell selection, combat efficacy, etc.

FURTHER READING

Untested 5E: Streamlined Skills
D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations

These creatures exist somewhere between parasitism and symbiosis. A writhing mass of thick tentacles, capable of great, undulating speed when independent, but vastly preferring to attach itself to the back of another creature.

Writhing Partners. Once attached to another creature, the tentacular demands compliance through the simple expedience of strangling its host if attempts to remove or threaten the tentacular in any way. The tentacular draws it sustenance from the blood of its host (and is otherwise incapable of feeding), but will also aid its host by defending it and helping it to gather food (usually through butchery and murder on a grand scale). Elves speak in hushed whispers of deer with blood-stained maws and squirming black masses on their backs.

Corpse Riders. If the host of a tentacular dies, some of its tentacles will vanish into the corpse and puppeteer. This state of affairs can last for several days until the rotten meat can no longer by forced into a facsimile of life. Such horrific creatures are often mistaken for undead.

Spawning Tentaculum. A tentacular reproduces by abruptly sprouting a multitude of small tentacles in a process known to scholars as “budding.” After tripling or quadrupling its number of tentacles, the tentacular will abruptly fission, “shedding” individual tentacles until it has split apart entirely. The individual tentacles seek new hosts, at which point the tentacles will sprout additional tentacles as it grows into an adult tentacular.

TENTACULAR
Small aberration, neutral evil

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Armor Class 15

Hit Points 75 (20d6)

Speed 30 ft.

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STR 12 (+1), DEX 15 (+2), CON 11 (+0), INT 3 (-4), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 5 (-3)

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Skills Stealth +5

Senses passive Perception 10

Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +3

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Parasite. If not attached to a host, the tentacular must succeed at a DC 10 Constitution saving throw once per day or suffer one level of exhaustion, which cannot be removed until it attaches to a host. When the tentacular is attached to a host, the host must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw once per day or suffer one level of exhaustion, which cannot be removed as long the tentacular remains attached.

---

ACTIONS.

Multiattack. The tentacular makes four tentacle attacks.

Tentacles. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (2d6+1) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 15). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the tentacular can’t use its tentacles on another target.

Strangle. The tentacular forces a creature it is grappling to make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or begin choking. Once a creature is choking, it can survive a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can’t regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again. The creature can attempt the save again each round on its turn, with a success indicating that it has managed to get some air (and is no longer choking).

Attach. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one grappled target. Hit: 8 (2d6+1) necrotic damage and the tentacular attaches to the target. While attached, the tentacular can’t make Attach attacks. The tentacular can detach itself by spending 5 feet of its movement. As an action, a creature within reach of the tentacular can try to detach it, doing so with a successful DC 17 Strength check. (The attached victim has disadvantage on this check.)

---

 

Go to Table of Contents

In Phase 2 of Storm King’s Thunder, the PCs travel to one of three cities: Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, or Triboar. Each of these cities will be attacked by giants shortly after the PCs arrive, and in each of these cities there are six “Special NPCs” that the DM is supposed to give to the players to play during the attack:

In this chapter, each player runs not only a player character but also an NPC who has ties to the settlement that the characters are defending. Once you’ve determined where the adventure begins, make photocopies of the six NPCs corresponding to the location you’ve chosen.

(…)

Each NPC comes with a brief description, personality traits (a bond, an ideal, and a flaw), and a stat block. When the giant attack begins, give one NPC to each player and tell the player where the NPC is at the start of the encounter, as noted in the encounter description.

The structural concept here is that each Special NPC who survives the giant attack will deliver a Special Quest. The DM is supposed to spell this out to the players, by reading the following boxed text aloud:

In addition to your character, each of you has received a special nonplayer character with ties to the location where the adventure begins. Take a moment to review your NPC’s personality traits and statistics. One of your goals in this part of the adventure is to keep your special NPC alive. For each of these NPCs that survives, your party will receive a special quest that yields a reward upon its successful completion. The details of these special quests won’t be revealed until the end of this part of the adventure.

These Special Quests are the scenario hooks that propel the PCs from Phase 2 into Phase 3 of the campaign. The point, obviously, is for the PCs to exit Phase 2 of the campaign with a fistful of scenario hooks pointing in a whole bunch of different directions. In Bryn Shander, for example, you can get hooks pointing to:

• Ironmaster
• Waterdeep (x2)
• Hundelstone
• Neverwinter
• deeper into Icewind Dale

Looking at this section of the campaign, I really like the Special NPC dossiers and the gimmick of taking on these additional roles during the giant attack can be quite effective in lending an epic scope to these events.

What I DON’T like is that “explicitly explain the structural conceit” thing. It pierces the veil in a way that makes the game world feel less like a real place by popping a yellow exclamation mark over the NPCs’ heads. It’s also a little awkward to hand the players brand new characters to play just as a major combat is breaking out, because the pace of events will get bogged down in the procedural aspects of passing out the dossiers, explaining what they’re doing, figuring out the stat blocks, etc.

RUNNING THE PROXIES

Instead of waiting for the giant attack, give the Special NPCs to the players as they’re approaching the city limits. For example:

You see Bryn Shander on a hill rising from the wind-swept tundra. The sun is lowering in the sky and the chill of the wind is taking on a vicious edge. Ahead you can see two 30-foot-tall cylindrical towers flanking the gate.

CUT TO: Six people living in Bryn Shander.

At this point, distribute the NPC dossiers to the players and give them a minute to look things over. Put a copy of the Bryn Shander map on the table for the players to reference. Then prompt each player to frame a simple scene:

• What is something Augrek does every day?
• Where is Sirac right now?
• Markham is in Rendaril’s Emporium. What is he looking for?
• Duvessa Shane is having an argument. Who is she arguing with?
• Beldora is following someone. Who?
• Sir Baric, give me a Perception check to see if you catch the pickpocket taking your purse.

Briefly play through these scenes. Then cut back to the PCs entering the town.

Your goal here is to very quickly make the town come to life and get the players invested in it. When the giants attack later, the players now have a reason to really care about the community AND they’re already oriented to the Special NPCs and their lives, so they can jump straight in.

BEFORE THE GIANT ATTACK

The PCs will now go about their business. (Shopping, finding lodging, following up on whatever scenario hooks brought them to this city in the first place.) As they’re doing this, reincorporate the NPCs whenever you can:

• The PCs meet Sirac when they look for someone to give them directions.
• Markham is, conveniently, who they’re looking for.
• Duvessa comes in while they’re talking to Markham. She wants to talk to him about the argument she just had.
• As they head to the general store for supplies, they run into Sir Baric who is just finishing that pickpocketing scene.
• At the store, they meet Beldora.

And so forth. Whatever feels right for your group, based on how those first scenes played out.

The PCs don’t need to coincidentally meet every Special NPC. (No reason to force it.) But if that happens naturally… great!

Then, suddenly, in the middle of one of these scenes: GIANTS ATTACK!

AFTER THE GIANT ATTACK

In addition to the NPC dossiers, you’ll also want to have prepped a short handout for each scenario hook they can offer to the PCs. After the giant attack is complete, hand these to the appropriate players and let them frame up the scenes where they give the hooks to the PCs.

(You can give these out over time instead of all at once if that feels more appropriate. The pacing here is more art than science.)

The text from Storm King’s Thunder can serve as a good base for these briefing sheets, but you may want to tweak them a bit. For example, Beldora’s reads:

Beldora urges the characters to head southwest and take Ten Trail through the mountains to the mining settlement of Hundelstone. She suggests they make contact with a gnome named Thwip Ironbottom, who lives there year-round. If one or more of the party members are Harpers, she tells them that Thwip serves as the organization’s eyes and ears in Hundelstone. Beldora uses her sending stone to inform Thwip that the characters are coming.

This is very scripted and will likely feel awkward to the player. Shift the phrasing to give the player more leeway in playing the scene:

Beldora is impressed by the actions of the party and would like to recruit them as Harpers. If they’re interested, she’ll direct them to make contact with Thwip Ironbottom in the mining settlement of Hundelstone (which lies to the southwest and can be reached by following the Ten Trail through the mountains).

It’s a small shift, but hopefully the effect is fairly clear.

EXTENDING THE GIMMICK

In the Storm King’s Remix, you’ll repeat this same structure three times. This is good: Each time you do it, the players will feel more comfortable with what they’re expected to do, and the results will grow stronger as a result. You might worry that it will become repetitive, but in practice this won’t happen because the NPCs are unique and the circumstances distinct. The result will play out very differently each time.

Having done so, you might think about how this gimmick could be extended. (Particularly if it seems to be well-received by the players.) There are several ways to do this:

• When the PCs return to one of the three cities, take the time to once again frame up day-in-the-life scenes with the Special NPCs.
• Even if the PCs don’t return to one of the cities, perhaps one or more of the Special NPCs could be encountered elsewhere. (Beldora, for example, might be reassigned by the Harpers.)
• If the players seem really attached to their Special NPCs, you might use some light bluebooking to allow them to stay connected to the characters and follow up on what’s happening with them. (You could also use this as a vector for establishing the scope of the crisis affecting Faerûn; you might even have these NPCs maintain some form of correspondence with the PCs, allowing them to be conduits for additional information or scenario hooks as the campaign continues.)

You might also consider keeping an eye out for opportunities to use a similar technique in other locations during the campaign. (You would, of course, have to write up the appropriate NPC dossiers.) For example, what if the players took on the roles of various giants in Maelstrom when visiting the storm giant court for the first time?

Go to Storm King’s Remix

In its most basic form, of course, the hexcrawl is a collection of hexes. Each hex contains some form of keyed content, and the PCs move from one hex to the next, encountering whatever each hex happens to contain.

Insofar as it goes, this basic functionality is just fine. Essential, really. It’s what makes the hexcrawl a fundamentally robust structure in which the players can never truly become stuck, because they can always just choose another hex to explore.

But if this basic functionality is the only thing a hexcrawl has to offer, then the hexcrawl becomes like a game of Memory with no matching tiles: You just select a tile at random, flip it up, and collect it. In order for a game of Memory to become interesting, there has to be a connection between the tiles (i.e., the pairs you’re trying to match). By learning these connections, the choice of tile in Memory becomes meaningful.

Similarly, for a hexcrawl to truly come to life at the gaming table, the players need to be able to learn meaningful information about the hexes and use that information to guide their exploration of the hexmap.

• “Those bandits told us their main camp was located in a cave three miles west of the waterfall. Let’s head there and shut them down for good.”
• “Do you want to go back and check out that weird tower with the bleeding walls we saw sticking out of the Sepulchral Holt?”
• “I don’t know where this map leads, but there must have been a reason that demon was carrying it.”

As the PCs gain information like this, they transcend random wandering and are able to set goals. Aimless curiosity is transformed into purposeful searching and true exploration is achieved.

There are a number of ways that the PCs can get this information. Rumors, for example, can either be freely distributed or gleaned from urban locations. Tracks can turn almost any random encounter into an information source. (“We can follow these goblin raiders back to their village.”)

But one of the most powerful technique is to connect your hexes: By exploring one hex, the PCs gain information that leads them to another hex. In this way, the random hexes of aimless curiosity are transmuted into purpose, and that purpose becomes self-perpetuating as each additional hex the PCs explore teaches them more and more about the area they’re exploring.

CLUES & LEADS

At a basic level, you’re including leads in your hex key that point to other hexes.

• The goblins are working for the necromancer, so if you raid their village you might maps or correspondence with the necromancer; or you might interrogate them or follow their tracks to the necromancer’s tower in the Sepulchral Holt.
• Conversely, if you go to the Sepulchral Holt you’ll find goblins from the village serving there (offering any number of opportunities for planting leads). Also, the necromancer is trying to help the goblins wipe out the bandits in the area (to eliminate the competition), so there’s a map indicating the location of the cave where they make their lair.

And so forth.

Since we’re talking about clues and leads, your thoughts might naturally lead you towards the Three Clue Rule:

For any conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

When it comes to hex connections, however, this is not strictly necessary. Remember that the hexcrawl structure itself provides a default method for discovering keyed content, so it’s okay if the clues for a location “fail.” So it’s fine if you only have two or one or even zero clues pointing to a location. (For the same reason that you don’t need three clues pointing to every room in a dungeon.)

Nevertheless, in keying your hexmap, you might want to keep a revelation list of your hexes to track how the various locations are being connected to each other. This may be particularly useful if you haven’t designed a hexcrawl before and want to make establishing hex connections a point of emphasis.

As a rule of thumb for your first hex key, for example, you might just make sure that every keyed location has at least one clue pointing to another location. That will likely result in some locations have lots of clues pointing to them and other locations not having any clues pointing to them, but it does make sure that the PCs are likely to quickly find specific information they can pursue if they’re currently without a specific goal.

TREASURE MAPS & RANDOM GENERATION

An interesting feature of the original 1974 edition of D&D is that its random treasure tables featured treasure maps. Lots of treasure maps. (25% of all “magic item” results, for example, would actually result in a map.)

This is a very interesting mechanic, because it systematizes the injection of hex connections (or to similar effect in a megadungeon). Rolling to generate a monster’s treasure would periodically prompt the DM to provide a clear-cut (and very tantalizing!) lead to another location.

(A similar system was that monster treasure was, by default, only found in the monster’s lair. So if you encountered a monster as a random encounter, you would need to track them back to their lair — which would likely have other encounters in it — in order to get your pay day.)

These systems were removed from the game, most likely because being randomly prompted to provide a full-blown treasure map to your players was daunting for many DMs, but I take a couple of lessons from this.

First, literal treasure maps are awesome. Include them in myriad forms. (Tattered parchment. Scrawled in charcoal on a ruined wall. A small blue orb that vibrates when you head in a particular direction.)

Second, some degree of randomization can be an excellent prompt to challenge ourselves and seek creative solutions that might otherwise have never occurred to us.

You can play around with this in all kinds of ways. For example, a fun exercise might be:

• Roll 1d6-2 for each keyed location to determine how many leads should be there pointing to other locations.
• For each lead, randomize the hex that the clue points to.

Trying to figure out how/why these connections exist will likely enrich your game world in fascinating ways.

(And if not, just ignore it. It’s a fun prompt, not the dice gestapo.)

VISIBLE LANDMARKS

As a final note, I’ll point out a form of hex connection that might not occur to you even though it’s in plain sight. Literally.

Landmarks which can be seen from a great distance — i.e., in another hex — are technically connected to all of those hexes from which they can be seen. (In a very literal, but nonetheless significant, way.)

Conversely, a high vantage point that allows you to spot is also a form of hex connection, allowing PCs to learn information that they can use to guide their navigation and exploration of the wilderness.

Back to 5E Hexcrawls

JRL writes:

Are lulls in the game — people pulling up phones, dozing off — acceptable in sessions? Or should it be avoided at all costs?

In diagnosing this, I think you have to distinguish between two groups:

• People are in the current scene.
• People who are NOT in the current scene.

One of the best things you can have is a group that’s an enthusiastic audience: Even if they’re not the current focus of attention, these players will be completely engaged because they’re entertained and interested in what’s happening within the totality of the campaign. But even in these groups, there’ll be times when people not in the current scene will be tuning out. And that’s probably fine, as long as their activities aren’t distracting or detracting from the current spotlight.

(It’s one thing if they’re checking their e-mail. It’s another if they’re playing videos or pulling other players into chit-chat about a TV series they’ve been watching.)

If the players with characters in the current scene are completely disconnecting from the session, though, that’s a flashing red light that something is wrong.

(Before we go any further, though: Make sure that “check your phone” is actually tuning out. I’m frequently “on my phone” during our Grendleroot campaign, but it’s because I’m looking up my artificer’s spells.)

If spotlight players are tuning out, there are a few things to consider.

Take a break. In a four-hour session you should be taking at least one break. I recommend two or three. Breaks give everyone a chance to recharge and refocus.

Double check. Is the current scene actually interesting? Or are you grinding through empty time that you should be framing past?

Mechanically prompt the group. Calling for a group Perception check or Insight check or whatever your local gaming system’s equivalent is can be a good way to low-key refocus people.

Prompt the tuned-out player. If it’s a social scene, have the NPC turn to their PC and say something like, “What do you think, Tameric?” You can also just specifically ask the player, “What’s Tameric doing?”

If this tune-out is happening during combat, the root cause is probably that it’s taking too long for the combat round to loop back to the player. Solutions for this include:

Off-turn interactions. Some game systems will be designed to give the PCs the ability to take reactions when it’s not their turn. On the one hand this can increase how long it takes a combat round to resolve, but on the other hand it tends to keep players more engaged with what’s happening because they’ll be looking for opportunities to use their off-turn abilities.

Even in the absence of such mechanics, however, you can often proactively engage a player off-turn. Just targeting them with an attack is often enough to get their attention, but something that requires them to actually roll dice (e.g., a saving throw in D&D) or make a decision is even better.

Speeding up combat. Literally just resolving a combat round faster will also help, getting players back to their turns sooner so they have left time to tune out. There are a variety of techniques you can use here, including pre-rolling dice, rolling fistfuls of dice, and putting players on deck. (Putting players on deck is also great because it pre-engages the player with their turn before you actually get all the way back to their turn.)

Most these techniques, as noted, are about making sure that players in the current scene aren’t checking out. But when the party splits up, you don’t necessarily want to leave players unengaged for too long. There are a couple techniques that can help with this, too:

Cut mid-scene. Don’t wait for Group 1 to wrap up everything they’re doing before switching to Group 2. Instead, cut back and forth between the groups in the middle of scenes. This is described in more detail as one of the advanced techniques in The Art of Pacing, and it’s highly effective.

Cast an NPC. Consider the NPCs or monsters in the scene the player isn’t participating in. Then give one of them to the player to play. In combat you can generally just hand them the bad guy’s stat block. In a social scene, you’ll generally want to stick with simpler support roles (that don’t require a lengthy briefing), but more complex roles are possible if you’ve prepped them using something like the universal NPC roleplaying template. (Either way, I would generally suggest avoiding any NPC whose correct portrayal would rely on the player getting access to spoilers.)

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU

With all of that being said, remaining engaged with the session is a two-way street. If you have a player for whom this is a habitual problem — it’s this one specific player who is constantly tuning out — then you need to talk with them about it outside of the game session.

If their tune-out isn’t disrupting the game, then you can just touch base and see how they’re doing. Are they actually disinterested in the campaign? Is there something different you could be doing to make the game better for them? In doing so, you may discover that there’s not actually a problem at all. Some players, particularly those with ADHD, will use structured “distractions” to remain mentally engaged with an activity.

If, however, the player is being disruptive — and having no idea what’s going on because they weren’t paying attention counts as disruptive! — then you need to have a frank discussion with them and figure out a solution. That might even include agreeing that this just isn’t the right game for them (although obviously that would not be the first go-to).

Either way, getting on the same page with your players will make things better for everyone in the long run.

On that note, I will say that you may tempted to implement a table rule like “no using cellphones.” That may work, but in my experience you’re far more likely to be treating the symptom than the disease.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #9