In “The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces,” an adventure by Michael Polkinhorn in Candlekeep Mysteries, the PCs discover a portal to an extradimensional space, go through it, and become trapped on the other side.

This is a classic trope, and for good reason. Perhaps the most memorable and well-known version are the arches of mysterious mists and the green devil faces of The Tomb of Horrors, but I’ve run some variation of this gag countless times.

Often, of course, PCs will also encounter mystic portals and strange gateways of coruscating energy that aren’t one-way affairs. But they won’t necessarily know that. And even if they don’t suspect a trap, the unknown threshold beyond which they cannot see is quite likely to inspire endless amounts of paranoia.

So, either way, the day will likely come when you hear some variation of: “Okay, let’s send Kittisoth through first to check things out.” Or: “I stick my ten-foot-pole into the portal and pull it back out.”

First: Know your metaphysic.

What does happen when you stick something halfway into a magical portal and then pull it out?

A few variations:

• No problem. It’s just like a doorway in space, even if the field of energy blocks your line of sight. (Perhaps you might even be able to still hear what’s on the other side.)
• You can’t pull it out. Once an object has gone partially through the portal, the only movement allowed is forward through the portal. If you pull back, it will feel as if the object is “stuck.”
• That’s incredibly dangerous. You can pull back, but you’ll only pull back the portion that’s still on THIS side of the portal. (Make sure you walk through these portals with confidence.)
• That’s not possible because as soon as any discrete object or creature touches the surface of the portal, it instantly vanishes and reappears on the other side. It’s more of a “touch here to activate” effect than it is a literal gateway. (This one can get tricky: If I prod it with a pole, do I vanish? Can I tie a rope to something hundreds of feet away, toss one end of the rope in, and have the whole thing go through the portal? What if the object is bolted to the floor? Or is a huge tree and the room on the other side is only 10’ x 10’? But, conversely, if I touch it with my hand do I disappear while leaving my clothes behind? One way to simplify this is to create a “threshold” before the portal – a misty arch, a field of energy, a penumbral aura, the entire room that the portal is in – and only objects within that threshold vanish when the portal is touched. Your choice whether to have something straddling that threshold get severed at the threshold or if the whole object remains even when touching the portal. But I digress.)

You want to have a clear understanding of this, because the players will want to experiment with the portal to figure out how it works / whether or not it’s safe. They’re going to come up with all kinds of crazy testing schemes, and you’re going to want a clear conceptual framework for consistently ruling what the outcomes of those tests will be.

I’m of the opinion that this metaphysic should feel consistent with the portal’s behavior on the other side: If it’s a one-way portal, for example, then you shouldn’t be able to stick things through the portal and then pull them back. (In other words, you want to play fair and reward players who take the effort to engage deeply with the scenario.)

Second: Use a portal countdown.

When the PCs send a scout through the portal, don’t immediately describe what the scout sees. Instead, stay with the PCs that remained behind: Describe the scout going through the portal, disappearing, and then… what do you do?

Keep track of the number of rounds it takes for each of the other characters to go through. Then, once they’ve all done so, you can flip to the other side of the portal and accurately play out events on the other side.

So, for example, Kittisoth walks into the portal. The other PCs wait a couple of rounds and then Edana sticks her ten-foot-pole through. Unable to pull it out, she sighs and steps through on the next round. Everyone else then nervously follows on the fifth round.

Now cut to the other side of the portal: Kittisoth emerges into a goblin ambush! Roll initiative! On the third round of combat, Edana’s pole sticks out of the portal. On the fourth round, Edana walks out. On the fifth round, the other PCs join the fray!

Even if there are no immediately “interesting” consequences from using the portal countdown (e.g., the portal emerges into an empty room and Kittisoth just patiently waits for everyone to join her), the experience is still immersive and tantalizing in its paranoia: What is happening on the other side of the portal?

When there IS something interesting happening on the other side of the portal, the experience of seeing the other side of the timeline (e.g., Edana’s pole sticking out of the portal) is a ton of fun.

What if all the PCs don’t come through? That’s fine. Run a couple rounds of the portal countdown in “combat time,” but when it becomes clear that some or all of the remaining PCs aren’t going to follow Kittisoth blindly through the portal (“She was supposed to come back!”) simply ask them how long they’d wait, note that on the countdown, and then cut to the other side of the portal.

Should I have players leave the room? If you’d like. I’ve not generally found it to be necessary and, as I mentioned, I’ve found the audience stance of seeing the other side of the timeline to be fun. But I’ve also been given to understand that the experience of going into another room and waiting while your fellow players join you one by one can also be mysterious and fun. Play it by ear and get a feel for what works.

(If you’re splitting the players up anyway, you may also want to just go back and forth between the two rooms each round instead of using a portal countdown.)

What if it’s not a one-way portal? This technique works best with one-way portals because the events on one side of the portal are generally firewalled from the other side of the portal, but since the players don’t always know if the portal is one-way or not, it can also be effective to use the technique regardless. (If nothing else, it means you’re not tipping your hand when they do encounter a one-way portal.)

But what if, for example, Kittisoth simply walks back through the portal?

If that outcome is quite likely, of course, then you don’t want to use the portal countdown technique in the first place. Or use it in a modified form. For example, if Kittisoth’s intention is to walk through the portal and then immediately turn around and walk back and there’s nothing on the other side that would prevent that from happening, you can just run it normally. Or you might take Kittisoth into another room, describe what she sees, and get a sense of her intentions: If it looks like she’s going to explore a bit – or get cut off from the portal by the goblin ambush – then you can go back and run the portal countdown.

But if you are using a portal countdown and Kittisoth comes back “early” (i.e., before all of the declared actions on the countdown have played out), that’s just fine. You can simply retcon the rest of the countdown; those actions belong to an alternative version of reality, I guess.

(The portal countdown is basically an extended form of declaring an intention. It’s similar to combat systems in which everyone declares their actions at the beginning of the round before resolving them in initiative order: If someone declares that they’re going to run down an open passageway, but then the passageway gets blocked with a wall of stone before they can take their turn, they’re not going to just mindlessly grind their face into the wall like a computer game NPC with bad pathing. They just won’t take the action.)

What about other continuity issues? Keep in mind that premature portal returns aren’t the only contradiction of continuity you can run into. For example, those on the far side of the portal might use a telepathic ability to contact their comrades. Or Kittisoth might grab the end of Edana’s pole and yank her through the portal.

Again, that’s fine. Just end the countdown and begin resolving actions normally from that point. (Which might even include starting a new portal countdown depending on what’s happening.)

Similarly, you generally pause the countdown and begin resolving actions on the far side of the portal when everyone has either gone through or definitively decided NOT to go through. But actions on the near side of the portal can also trigger this decision earlier: For example, if it’s Edana who chooses to use a telepathic ability to contact Kittisoth (assuming that she can do so), you’ll need to pause the countdown and resolve Kittisoth’s side of the portal.

Check out this long-awaited interview I did with the Wouldbuild With Us crew. We talk about stuff like the modules that inspired me the most and Scarface-inspired werewolves.

Episode #81: An Interview With Justin Alexander

What are the three types of scenario hook? How can you twist them? Why should you have more than one? What’s a bait hook?

We have a new Advanced Gamemastery video today. I’d mentioned last week that I was hoping to test pilot some fancy new features in this video. The result? Onscreen titles! My hope is that they’ll increase the clarity of the presentation.

Good gaming! And I’ll see you at the table!

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Think back over all the roleplaying games you’ve played and run.

Why do NPCs always fight to the death?

If you take a moment to really think about it, this is odd behavior. Even in actual warfare, the outcome of a conflict is rarely for one side to fanatically fight to the last man. Animals don’t do this, either. When the tide of battle has clearly turned, armies rout and people run away or surrender rather than being slaughtered.

Yet in most RPGs, every fight ends only when every last person on one side has been laid in the grave.

First, there used to be morale rules. But GMs (and the industry in general) moved away from morale rules because of the “roll vs. role” mentality which, in part, maintained that mechanics shouldn’t govern character interactions. Thus, the NPCs’ decision of whether to run away or stay and fight became solely the GM’s purview.

(The other reason GMs abandoned morale rules is because they mechanically prompt all of the following stuff.)

Second, most GMs start by running dungeons. Dungeons are an appealing scenario structure, particularly for new GMs, because each room is firewalled from other rooms, making them easy to prep and easy to run. You don’t have to worry about the whole scenario, just the current room.

NPCs who run away break the firewall.

Where are they running to? What are they going to do there? If they’re looking for help or trying to summon reinforcements, where are the other enemies located? If they reach those enemies, what do those enemies do?

To handle willy-nilly monsters cascading through your dungeon like free radicals, you need advanced techniques like adversary rosters, and most GMs don’t have those techniques.

(Conversely, if you’re using the My Perfect Encounter™ school of adventure design where every encounter is hard-coded to a specific location and fine-tuned to a razor’s edge of challenge, the whole adventure actually falls apart if monsters from one encounter start running around the place. This becomes even more true in a game like 4^th Edition D&D, where this is hard-coded into the system.)

Third, taking monsters prisoner ALSO breaks the firewall, because the PCs are going to want to question them about the dungeon. This, again, requires the GM to break out of the current room and think about the entire dungeon as a whole. (Which, again, is more difficult for a new GM.)

Prisoners also create a logistical challenge which is perhaps interesting once or twice, but then quickly becomes boring.

Fourth, the desire to avoid boring logistics will prompt players to solve the problem by murdering their prisoners. This is morally repugnant and, therefore, often undesirable. Similar calculations will also motivate the PCs to shoot anyone running away in the back (which may also be aesthetically/ethically undesirable).

For a non-RPG example of the difficulty in taking prisoners, check out The Raid (2011). The main characters try to take prisoners, but the logistics overwhelm them and a lot of people get killed.

Once you move away from raid-type scenarios (which a typical dungeoncrawl is closely related to), bad guys running away are usually easier to handle. (If nothing else, they can just run off into the night and exit the scenario.) And the prisoner logistics, along with the tough choices accompanying them, usually become more interesting to explore.

But by that point, most GMs have already developed “fight to the death” as a habitual practice, so it tends to just kind of stick around.

Fifth, there’s also the influence of video games. The designers of video games face similar challenges in implementing bad guys who run away and so they also don’t do that, creating a cultural perception of what game-ified violence looks like which GMs carry into their tabletop games.

TO THE DEATH!

On the flip-side, very few systems provide a viable system by which PCs can reliably flee combat. (Ironically, the original 1974 edition of D&D is one of the rare exceptions.)

Mechanically, this strongly incentivizes the PCs to also fight to the bitter end, because the alternative systemically boils down to begging the GM not to kill you: Players like to feel as if they’re in control of their own destiny, and staying within the clear structure of the combat system lets them do that.

(An effective mechanical structure for retreat must (a) be known to the players; (b) have a concrete resolution method which clearly sets stakes and provides an unambiguous and definitive outcome; (c) allow players to make meaningful choices which have a substantive impact on the success or failure of their retreat (and are, ideally, shaped by the specific of their current situation and/or resources); and (d) resolve success or failure for the group as a whole (players don’t want to risk leaving one of their own behind, and such systems generally suffer from a rolling to failure problems in any case). But I digress.)

This whole meme-sphere – in which both PCs and NPCs fight to the death – then feed back into game design and scenario design, which, for example, balances combat encounters around the assumption that the bad guys are going to fight to the bitter end.

GMs who try to break away from that assumption will find that the result is systemically unsatisfying: The PCs don’t really feel challenged when the bad guys logically run for it, which leads to everything feeling like a cake-walk in which the last few rounds are just mopping up bad guys who aren’t even fighting back.

No challenge? No satisfying conclusion?

That’s a bad encounter.

Which, of course, encourages the GM to abandon the whole “running away” thing, leaving the bad guys engaged until the bitter (yet mechanically satisfying) end.

SO WHAT?

If having the PCs and NPCs fight to the bitter end is so much easier, what’s the problem? Why not just keep doing that?

Well, as you’ve probably already noticed in our discussion so far, it takes a lot of interesting situations off the table. The Matrix probably wouldn’t be improved with Neo needing to figure out how to manage a captured Agent, for example, but Pitch Black demonstrates the unique challenges and amazing roleplaying that can emerge from shepherding even a single prisoner.

Another prominent example are the Principles of RPG Villainy: Running away to fight another day isn’t just something bad guys logically do, it’s the process by which truly memorable, campaign-defining villains are created.

I’ve already mentioned adversary rosters as a tool for running strategically active environments, but if every encounter mindlessly defaults to the NPCs fighting to the death, this tends to stunt the development of these more complex styles of play.

And, of course, none of this is to say that NPCs should never fight to the death. But variety is the spice of life. (Or, I guess, the spice of death, in this case.)

So what’s the alternative?

Well, obviously, you can just start making different choices.

But, as we’ve noted, there are systemic factors that affect these choices. We’ve already talked about how you might implement a mechanical structure for retreating, but there are other options to explore.

First, revisit how you design and think about encounters. My opinion is that the My Perfect Encounter™ method of adventure design is a hyper-developed dead end. It takes the training wheels that are useful for first time GMs and quadruples down on them, trying to make them the best goddamned training wheels you’ve ever seen. But you don’t get better at riding a bike by strapping on a fourth set of training wheels; you get better at riding a bike by taking the training wheels off.

Second, consider implementing a morale system. A good morale system won’t just mechanically prompt you to break your existing habits, it can also provide a structure for players to pursue combat tactics other than “stab them to death.” In other words, finding ways to rout your opponents is a viable way of achieving your tactical goals.

Third, speaking of tactical goals other than crushing your enemies (for example, you might also drive them before you and hear the lamentations of their women), another option is to define 0 hit points to mean something other than death. And I don’t just mean unconsciousness. I mentioned how “balanced encounters” in an RPG are designed around enemies fighting to the death. But it would be more accurate to say that they’re designed around enemies fighting until they run out of hit points. If we define that as death, then they fight to the death.

But if we broaden that definition so that your foe(s) being reduced to zero hit points simply means “the fight is over,” then we open up the possibility for fights to end in other ways. Depending on genre and circumstance, for example, this could be explicitly framed as anything from “they run away” to “they agree to join you in your quest” to “they surrender the golden phoenix of Shar-Halad.”

I’m running a few days late with this week’s installment of Advanced Gamemastery.

I’m actually planning to modify my recording rig, but before doing that I wanted to get some raw footage in the bag, so I actually ended up filming the next three videos this week. It took a little longer than I’d hoped to finalize the scripts, but this way if the new rig doesn’t work for some reason, I’ll have some time to figure it out while still being able to roll out the other videos.

The next two videos have also been designed to test some “fancy” new features (like onscreen bullet points), but in a way that allows me to abandon those features and still have a good video in case it all goes horribly wrong. (If next week’s video doesn’t have any new stuff, you’ll know that something did, in fact, go horribly wrong.)

The videos so far, and in the upcoming slate, are mostly bouncing around the topics of mysteries and sandboxes in RPG scenario design. If you’re familiar with the site, I’m guessing that won’t come as a huge surprise to you! Advanced Gamemastery — and the channel as a whole — will continue branching out, but the Three Clue Rule and active play are fairly foundational concepts to a lot of the work that I do, so as new viewers discover the channel I want to make sure we’re all working from the same base.

Good gaming! And I’ll see you at the table!

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