I’ve talked in the past about how D&D 5th Edition doesn’t teach DMs how to run dungeons. In fact, it doesn’t even teach them how to key a dungeon map (or provide an example of a keyed dungeon map).

(To understand how weird this is, consider that the 5th Edition Starter Set includes a detailed explanation of exactly how a DM should use boxed text, but still doesn’t tell the DM how to run the dungeon that’s included in the sample adventure. Like, there was a perceived need to very specifically explain how you read text out loud, but not a perceived need to explain how you’re supposed to run a dungeon… the thing that’s actually unique to being a GM. But I digress.)

By contrast, the original edition of D&D in 1974 contains very specific instructions for both things: How to prep a dungeon and how to run the dungeon.

This is not some newfangled failure on the part of 5th Edition. It’s the end of a very long trend line (briefly interrupted, but only partially reversed by 3rd Edition) in which the D&D rulebooks have slowly stopped teaching DMs how to run the game at arguably its most fundamental level. 4th Edition, for example, still included instructions for keying a dungeon, but, like 5th Edition, failed to include any instruction for how a DM is supposed to run the dungeon.

Virtually the entire RPG hobby is built on three core structures:

1. Dungeoncrawl (often genericized to location-crawl)

2. Combat

3. Railroad

And virtually every published RPG has assumed that GMs already know to run a dungeon (because they learned it from D&D, right?).

So what happens when D&D stops teaching new DMs how to a run a dungeon?

Well, at that point all you have left is a railroad leading you from one combat encounter to the next.

PAYING THE PIPER

Although I’ve been talking about this problem for several years, it’s always been mostly theoretical and anecdotal: I would run into new GMs who were struggling because they’d never been taught a proper scenario structure; or I’d get e-mails from similar GMs who were thanking me for my essays on game structures or node-based scenario design or the like.

This is partly because, despite D&D no longer teaching these things, there was still a legacy of knowledge in the hobby: First, published scenarios were being designed by people who had learned how to prep and run dungeons decades ago, and new DMs could frequently intuit a lot from the published example. Second, many GMs were first players who learned to play from GMs who had, similarly, learned these things when they were younger.

Of course, these are basically oral traditions. And, like all oral traditions (particularly those which aren’t being deliberately passed on), they’ll degrade over time. Unsurprisingly, the first stuff to get lost are the procedures that were happening only behind the GM’s screen; players learning only from their actual play experiences only saw what those procedures created, not the procedures themselves, and therefore could not learn them.

Nonetheless, this legacy knowledge persisted.

Recently, though, I’ve been digging through stuff on the DM’s Guild and it’s become clear that the problem is no longer theoretical: It’s very real.

EXAMPLE 1: I’m reading through a module. The entire concept is that the PCs are exploring a ruined castle. But there’s no map of the castle. There are room-by-room descriptions of the castle, but no map to show how these areas relate to each other.

It should be noted that there ARE two other maps in the book: Encounter maps depicting specific rooms. So it’s not a budgetary issue. Cartography could have existed.

So I’m just confused, until I remember that… Oh, right. D&D doesn’t teach this any more.

EXAMPLE 2: This time it’s a whole collection of one-page scenarios. The creators have popped over to Dyson Logos’ website and grabbed his Creative Commons maps, and so every single scenario has a map.

None of the dungeon maps are keyed.

In some cases, this is because the locations aren’t designed for exploration (fair enough), but often the adventure features huge paragraphs of text trying to describe the contents of the dungeon room by room in a kind of narrative ramble.

The final kicker? These are 5-star rated products on the DM’s Guild. It’s not just that these particular creators didn’t know any better; the audience doesn’t know any better, either.

CONCLUSION

“How to prep and a run a room-by-room exploration of a place” is solved tech from literally Day 1 of RPGs.

But D&D hasn’t been teaching it in the rulebooks since 2008, and that legacy is really starting to have an impact.

Over the next decade, unless something reverses the trend, this is going to get much, much worse. The transmission decay across generations of oral tradition is getting rather long in the tooth at this point. You’ve got multiple generations of new players learning from rulebooks that don’t teach it at all. The next step is a whole generation of industry designers who don’t know this stuff, so people won’t even be able to learn this stuff intuitively from published scenarios.

UPDATE: This article was written primarily for the existing audience of the Alexandrian and it kind of assumes a shared framework of knowledge; it’s a “here’s an additional thought that builds on those other thoughts I’ve previously discussed” kind of thing. Based on the comments below, it appears that the article has somehow broken out into a MUCH wider audience. Although I did link to its immediate antecedent in the opening paragraph (Game Structures – Addendum: System Matters), that is clearly not getting the job done in terms of orienting new readers. If you’re feeling confused or angry or think I’m hating on 5th Edition here, I do encourage you to check out not only that addendum, but the entire Game Structures essay which discusses scenario structures in detail.

A few specific notes:

(1) A location-crawl structure (which is what the dungeoncrawl structure D&D used to teach is a specific example of) is not limited to old school dungeons. It’s not even limited to dungeons.

(2) Location-crawls are not the only scenario structure, but the argument that D&D has somehow grown beyond them doesn’t make a lot of sense: Every published D&D module from WotC features a dungeon. The fact they aren’t teaching new DMs how to effectively run the scenarios they’re publishing is clearly a problem. Beyond that, the basic skills of a location-crawl are also applied to other scenarios structures like raids and heists.

(3) Even if D&D had grown beyond location-crawls, the D&D core rulebooks don’t include instructions for designing or running any other scenario structures, either.

Go to Table of Contents

In working on the Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus, I ended up doing a lot of research into the history of Elturel. It’s rather a tangled mess, and I thought there might be some benefit in briefly summarizing what I found.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN SETTING – 1st EDITION

Elturel’s first appearance in print receives five paragraphs. The year is 1358 DR:

• It is divided between the Dock District and the High District (located on a bluff overlooking the River Chionthar).
• It’s a “huge city,” similar in size and capability to Scornubel and Iriaebor.
• Ruled by the High Rider, currently a cavalier named Lord Dhelt (a former leader of the Hellriders).
• It is a member of the Lords’ Alliance.
• It has a way-base for the Dragoneye Dealing Costers (a merchant company).

The HELLRIDERS are:

• Well-equipped, mounted troops who patrol and provide caravan escorts from Waterdeep to Iriaebor.
• Take their name from the story that a company of Riders had ridden into Avernus. (Note that this is specifically characterized as a story that took place in the apparently legendary past from a current date of 1358 DR.)
• A mixture of warriors and clerics.
• Led by a Marshal.
• They ride in plate armor of crimson and white, marked with an upturned crescent.

FORGOTTEN REALMS ADVENTURES

The city is greatly expanded with a two page entry. Notable new details include:

• Population of 29,000 in winter and about 33,000 in the summer. Warehouses and cellars beneath the city allow it to briefly hold up to 400,000 during times of siege. Note that this means it has actually shrunk. It was previously the same size as Iriaebor (now 81,000 to 119,000) and Scornubel (50,000).
• Lord Dhelt has leveled up and is now a 16^th level paladin of Helm.
• Helm’s Shieldhall is the most powerful church in the city and ruled by a High Watcher.
• The Dragoneye way-base has become the huge Dragoneye Docks.
• The people are “Elturians” (not “Elturelian”).

The city is given its first MAP.

The HELLRIDERS are:

• 2,000 strong.
• Ride in patrols of 30, with guardhouses and regular patrols throughout the Fields of the Dead. There are also warning beacons set across the farmlands north, east, and west of the city.
• Lord Dhelt is no longer described as a former Hellrider and now leads major expeditions himself.
• Berelduin Shondar (“Bereld the Just”), the patriarch of Helm’s Shieldhall, leads as many Hellrider patrols as Lord Dhelt.
• There are additional shrines to Ilmater, Tempus, Tymora, and Waukeen.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN SETTING – 2nd EDITION

The date is now 1367 DR. The short city entry from the first boxed set is expanded with material from Forgotten Realms Adventures and updated with a smattering of new details:

• The Chionthar is narrow and shallow here; it can be crossed with poling barges.
• It is now a “major center” for the Dragoneye Dealing Coster (following in line with the Dragoneye Docks).
• The shrine to Waukeen has become a shrine to Lliira.

The HELLRIDERS:

• Are named “from the story that a company of Riders had in the past ridden into Avernus, first of the layers of the Nine Hells, to rescue a companion.” (emphasis added to the new lore)
• Ride in patrols of 30 warriors accompanied by at least one priest of Helm and led by a Marshal. (Note that the Marshal now leads the patrol, not the whole organization. Also note that they have still not been referred to as knights up to this point.)
• Lord Dhelt is back to being a former leader of the Hellriders, but still leads major expeditions.
• One-tenth of their earnings go directly into Elturel’s coffers.
• The total Hellrider force numbers around 2,000 women and men.

VOLO’S GUIDE TO THE SWORD COAST

The Elturel entry here mostly rewrites material from Forgotten Realms Adventures and then describes two taverns (the Bent Helm and Pair of Black Antlers) and two inns (Gallowgar’s Inn and Phontyr’s Unicorn) at greater length.

There are a few interesting tidbits:

• Lord Dhelt is back to being the current leader of the Hellriders.
• The text diegetically creates a third district: The “more prosperous and orderly homes and shops west of the heights are still part of the Dock District, but are increasingly referred to as Westerly.” (Westerly is never mentioned again in subsequent sources.)
• Raulavin Oregh, who was the Harvestmaster of High Harvest Home in the Forgotten Realms Adventures, has become Baulavin Oregh.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN SETTING – 3rd EDITION

The date is now 1372 DR. Elturel’s entry has been shrunk down to a single paragraph:

• The population has fallen to 22,600.
• Lord Dhelt has leveled up again. He is now a 17^th level paladin.

The HELLRIDERS:

• Are now only 200 strong (instead of 2,000).

If we were to interpret these changes diegetically, clearly some horrific tragedy has struck the city: Thousands are dead and the Hellriders have been reduced to one-tenth their former strength. That does not, however, appear to be the case. These changes are retcons, not updates.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN GUIDE – 4th EDITION

We have now leaped forward in time to 1479 DR.

It’s probably useful to note that everything from this point forward is based on a mistake: When writing the 4^th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Rich Baker confused Elversult (which had an artificial sun) with Elturel (which now gained one).

Let’s talk about the city:

• It is now the capital of an imperial theocracy. Elturgard, also known as the Land With Two Suns, has conquered Iriaebor, Scornubel, Triel, and Berdusk.
• There is now a state religion dedicated to Torm.
• The ruler is now the High Observer of Torm.
• Elturel’s population has shrunk again, this time to 17,000. (This might be intentionally diegetic given the Spellplague. But, oddly, the text repeatedly refers to people fleeing to Elturel and the population swelling as a result of its imperial expansion.)
• The Dungeon of the Inquisitor is a vast, subterranean maze that lies deep beneath the streets of Elturel. (Parts of this complex consist of natural caverns, the full extent of which have not been determined. Some of the prisoners work in mines down there. The strong implication is that there’s a connection to the Underdark.)

The HELLRIDERS: Don’t seem to exist. They are not mentioned in the text and appear to have been completely replaced by the PALADINS OF ELTURGARD (who are a knighthood led by the High Observer).

• Despite Elturgard having a state religion, many of the paladins “do not serve the same god.”
• All of the Paladins of Elturgard wear the “blazing insignia of the Companion.”

THE COMPANION: “The heatless second sun is called the Companion or Amaunator’s Gift, though no one but the High Observer knows if the object was truly bestowed by the sun god.”

• Undead cannot “abide its sight.” (Exactly what that means is unclear, but even people suffering from mummy’s curses seem to find respite here.)

Note: Even beyond the Elversult/Elturel mix-up, there’s a lot going on here that I can’t really wrap my head around. Somehow the city has abandoned Helm and become an intolerant theocracy of Torm worshipers while SIMULTANEOUSLY receiving a second sun that reputedly comes from Amaunator. Also the religiously intolerant Torm worshipers wear Amaunator’s holy symbol on their chests and are tolerant of paladins from any old god serving in the Paladins of Elturgard?

SWORD COAST ADVENTURER’S GUIDE

The year is now 1489 DR (or possibly 1490 DR).

• City is still ruled by the High Observer, but he’s no longer referred to as the High Observer of Torm (just “High Observer”). The current High Observer is a cleric of Torm (Thavius Kreeg).
• Elturgard is now known as the Kingdom of the Two Suns (instead of the Land of the Two Suns).
• It is no longer a member of the Lords’ Alliance. (The textual history here is complicated: As far as I can tell, no explicit list of Lords’ Alliance cities was given in 3^rd Edition; Elturel did not appear on the explicitly incomplete lists which did appear. The Lords’ Alliance isn’t mentioned at all in 4^th Edition, with the rather strong implication, in my opinion, that it no longer exists. In the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, however, the Lords’ Alliance is affirmed to have existed continuously since its founding, but Elturgard and several other cities have been explicitly given the boot.)

COMPANIONS OF ELTURGARD: These appear to be the same thing as the Paladins of Elturgard referred to in 4^th Edition.

• Made up of paladins of gods such as Tyr, Torm, Helm, and Amaunator.
• They wear the “symbol of Elturgard.”
• Their heraldry (which may or may not be the same as the symbol of Elturgard, but probably is) is now a pair of suns: The larger sun and a smaller sun with blazing light around it.
• Led by the High Observer.
• They’re also referred to as the “Order of the Companion.”
• Creed Resolute: Created by the first High Observer. A series of oaths and maxims that, among others things, prohibits the Companions from ascribing the Companion to any one god.

HELLRIDERS: They’re back!

• The Hellriders “aspire to join the Companions.” But they are also a separate organization. They are also referred to as “knights” for the first time.
• They wear the same heraldry as the Companions of Elturgard.
• At some point they also began swearing the Creed Resolute.
• They are named Hellriders because “long ago warriors of Elturel literally rode through a gate into the Nine Hells to pursue and destroy devils that had been plaguing their people.” (emphasis added to the lore change).

THE COMPANION:

• A golden orb that gives a warm, golden light. It can be seen as far away as Boareskyr Bridge and Berdusk.
• Vampires “burn away to dust” in its light, while “other undead quailed in its illumination.”
• Still referred to as “Amaunator’s Gift,” but no one knows where it actually came from and it’s “ascribed to one deity or another.”
• Called the Companion because it’s a companion to both the sun and the city.

RISE OF ELTURGARD:

• 1439 DR: Elturel had conquered territory belonging to several neighbors and put them under “Elturel’s Guard.” The High Rider was then revealed to be a vampire.
• Undead swarmed the city.
• The Companion showed up in the middle of the night. High Rider and his vampire spawn were outside at the time and instantly destroyed.
• The first High Observer created the Creed Resolute.
• Modern Elturgard refers to the lands that lie under “Elturel’s Shield” (meaning anywhere the light of the Companion touches; although that includes neighboring kingdoms that aren’t amused by the claim).

RISE OF THAVIUS KREEG:

• The heir apparent to the post of High Observer, a paladin named Tamal Thent, went missing with her entire retinue near Fort Tamal near the Boareskyr Bridge. This cleared the way for Thavius Kreeg to become High Observer.
• 1449 DR: Thavius Kreeg becomes High Observer.
• It’s possible that, after becoming High Observer, Kreeg was assigning paladins who might be a threat to him to Fort Tamal at the Boareskyr Bridge (far from Elturel itself).

Note: The changes between 4^th Edition and 5^th Edition, in my opinion, do not appear to be diegetic. The theocratic elements of Elturel appear to have been deliberately toned down using retcons, particularly the central importance of Torm. To at least some extent, this also appears to be an effort to straighten out the confusing contradictions from 4^th Edition.

DESCENT INTO AVERNUS

There’s a lot of lore pertaining to Elturel to be found in Descent Into Avernus, although it is not as clearly presented as the previous sources we’ve looked at (and I may easily overlook something in this summary). Upon reflection, it is interesting to note that Elturel is probably more thoroughly and usefully described in the two pages of Forgotten Realms Adventures than in all of the blather in Descent Into Avernus.

The current year is 1494 DR. Regarding Elturel:

• It is a holy city.
• The vampire lord now conquered Elturel in 1444 DR instead of 1439 DR. (This is because the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide described it as happening 50 years ago… and apparently it ALWAYS happens 50 years ago, no matter what the current year actually is.)
• The appearance of the Companion did NOT destroy the vampire lord. (It instead “sent the vampire lord scrambling for the shadows and laid waste to his undead army.”)
• The city is now led by the High Overseer instead of the High Observer. (This is not a diegetic change: In contradiction of previous sources, the ruler has been the High Overseer since the Companion first appeared.)
• The list of gods venerated in the city is now Lathander, Torm, Helm, and Tyr. (The Lathander/Amaunator stuff is a wormhole to go down at another time.)

The MAP of fallen Elturel is the first map of the city since Forgotten Realms Adventures. It’s clearly based on the previous map (right down to the outlines of individual buildings, suggesting — somewhat implausibly — that the city has seen essentially no new construction in the past 136 years). Most of the changes appear apocalyptic in nature, but there are a couple of significant exceptions:

• The Grand Cemetery has been added to the west side of the city.
• A ravine has been added to the east side of the bluff. (You may, at first glance, assume this to be an apocalyptic scar, but the text confirms that the bridges of Torm’s Blade and Torm’s Reach crossed a ravine here before Elturel went to Hell. A direct comparison also reveals that the streets around the bridges have been redrawn to accommodate them. If you wanted to explain this diegetically, we could perhaps theorize that the ravine was the result of damage inflicted during the Spellplague.)

THE ORDER OF THE COMPANION: Is not mentioned.

HELLRIDERS: The Hellriders are described in various places as now being followers of Torm. (This may be a diegetic shift, but it appears more likely that the authors have simply retconned the Hellriders and Order of the Companion into a single, muddled organization.)

• In the mid-14^th century, Zariel came to Elturel and trained the original Riders.
• In 1354 DR, Yeenoghu (a demon lord from the Abyss) attacked the village of Idyllglen. The Riders of Elturel stopped the attack and Zariel herself threw Yeenoghu through a portal that sent him back to the Abyss, but not before several villagers had been killed.
• Swearing vengeance against Yeenoghu (again: a demon lord from the Abyss), Zariel and the Riders of Elturel opened a portal to Avernus and rode through to wage a holy war in the… Nine Hells?
• Or, according to a different section of the book, Zariel tracked the demons (still from the Abyss) back to the portal they’d originally came through… a portal which then took the Riders to the Nine Hells!
• Many of the Riders became panicked when they reached the Nine Hells and fled back through the gate, sealing it behind them and trapping Zariel and the other Riders. Those who fled in shame became the famous Hellriders; the others were slaughtered upon the fields of Avernus and Zariel was corrupted into the Archduchess.

Note: None of this, of course, makes any goddamn sense.

THE COMPANION:

• Is actually a Solar Insidiator, created by Zariel (see DIA, p. 153-4 for more details).
• Contains an imprisoned planetar.

RISE OF THAVIUS KREEG:

• Thavius Kreeg was a priest of Torm who appealed to any power to save the holy city. Zariel answered and provided the Companion. Thavius Kreeg took credit for the Companion and became the first High Overseer (presumably in 1444 DR), not an heir to the position.
• Or, according to a different section of the book, Thavius Kreeg was already High Overseer when he struck the bargain with Zariel.

Go to the Avernus Remix

OnRPGs 80: Contastic

In this episode of OnRPGs, I join Donald Dennis and Chris Bell to talk about designing scenarios for cons.

She took a step further in — then two or three steps — always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.

‘This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!’ thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her…

Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. ‘Why, it’s just like the branches of trees!’ exclaimed Lucy.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the four Pevensey children are sent away from London during the Blitz to shelter at a remarkably large house owned by the Professor. In one of the many, many rooms within this mansion there is a magical wardrobe: If you walk into this wardrobe it will act as a magical portal, transporting you to the land of Narnia.

This is Lewis’ scenario hook: In order for the adventures of Narnia to begin, one of the kids needs to walk into the wardrobe.

(We’re going to be talking about the novel in the context of a roleplaying game, so let’s remember that the Principle of Using Linear Mediums as RPG Examples applies.)

Lewis gets away with this, of course, because he’s writing a book. He controls the characters and so it is quite easy for him to (a) make the kids decide to explore the house room by room and then (b) make Lucy climb into the wardrobe and go looking for the back of it.

To be clear: This is not bad writing. Everything the kids do is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do and completely justified.

But if we imagine C.S. Lewis as a GM running this as a scenario for four PCs, there are several possible ways this could play out:

• The PCs could all find the wardrobe portal together.
• Some of the PCs could find the portal, return, and lead the others into Narnia.
• One of the PCs could find the portal without the others, come back, and then find that the portal has “vanished” due to its strange metaphysics. (But investigation will reveal that it returns.)
• The PCs could all enter the portal separately (or in different groups) and end up making independent alliances with different hostile factions within Narnia.

But, of course, the overwhelmingly likely outcome is that the PCs never find the wardrobe and never go to Narnia, right? Even if they were LARPing this scenario in real-time, they might never go into that room. And, if they did, they could easily never think, “I’m going to try climbing into that wardrobe and seeing if I can touch the back of it.” And it seems to me that while sitting at a table it becomes even less likely for the players to spontaneously conclude that this one particular course of action is what they should be doing. (Or, if they do say something like, “I’m just going to wander around until something interesting happens,” the experience is quite likely to not be particularly satisfying. Turning it into a location-crawl has similar results because the density of interesting material is too low.)

My point is that premises which work just fine in linear narratives from other mediums don’t necessarily work at all when used in an RPG. So if you use those linear narratives as your model for how to prep an RPG scenario, you can end up very frustrated.

SOLUTIONS

One way to handle this would be aggressive scene-framing:

GM: Okay, so you wake up the next morning and it’s raining out. You all decide to play hide-and-seek. Lucy, you go into a room that’s quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass door. There’s nothing else in there at all except a dead bluebottle on the window-sill. That’s when the door handle starts to turn! You’ve got nowhere else to go, so you pop into the wardrobe! It’s filled with fur coats and there’s a thick smell of mothballs. You head towards the back where it’ll be harder to spot you… only you can’t find the back. This wardrobe is huge! And then…

This works, and it’s based on accurately identifying where the active premise is — the point where the players know what they’re supposed to be doing (or, in a sandbox campaign, where they are made aware that a particular course of action or type of action is available to them). In this case, the active premise is NOT “the Pevenseys have arrived at the Professor’s mansion” (because it is not clear what action they are supposed to be taking there), but rather “Lucy has discovered a magical portal” (because it is immediately apparent that “go through the portal” is a clear action that they can take).

There are drawbacks to such aggressive scene-framing, however: Players will generally feel less immersed and have less ownership of the hook. If it’s handled poorly, players can easily become upset that they’re being forced to do things they don’t want to do. There are some mechanical structures that can address this (like the compel mechanics in Fate), but they generally can’t solve all of the potential problems.

So if we’re currently standing at “the Pevenseys have arrived at the Professor’s mansion,” what other options do we have for getting the PCs an active premise that will take them to Narnia (i.e., hook them into the scenario)?

The first thing I generally try to do when designing a scenario, unless I have a good reason not to, is to make the hook proactive. It’s just a lot easier to use a proactive hook (i.e., one that comes looking for the PCs) than it is to use a reactive one that requires the players to do something to discover it (e.g., search the house to find the wardrobe). For example, we could have stuff coming OUT of Narnia through the wardrobe:

• A strange creature (perhaps a boggart?) that goes rampaging around the house. It keeps damaging stuff and Mrs. MacReady blames the kids for it.
• Refugees from the tyranny of the White Witch.
• Wolves of the secret police pursuing aforesaid refugees.
• Agents of the White Witch who try to kidnap one of the kids and take them back through the wardrobe.

When the PCs question these NPCs or backtrack them, they’ll be led to the wardrobe.

Alternatively, you can look to reframe the active premise. There’s no clean way to say “you need to search the house in order to find the magic wardrobe” if you don’t know the magic wardrobe exists (and discovering that is the whole point to begin with). But what you can do is give the PCs a different reason for searching the house (during which search they will be able to encounter the wardrobe). For example:

• The Professor has died and they need to find his will.
• You provide a game structure by which the kids earn XP by playing childhood games. “Hide ‘n seek” is on the list.
• A stray raccoon gets into the house and Mrs. MacReady tells the kids they need to track it down before the next tour group arrives.

(I talk about this technique at more length in Surprising Scenario Hooks.)

Another option, or perhaps a supplemental one, is to use multiple hooks. This is often just an instantiation of the Three Clue Rule: You include multiple hooks so that, even if the PCs miss some of the hooks, they’re still likely to get at least one of them. (One of the corollaries of the Three Clue Rule is permissive clue-finding, and you can often achieve a similar effect through organic scenario hooks — i.e., hooks that emerge from the actions of the PCs rather than being pre-planned.)

For example, rather than it being specifically the wardrobe that’s magical, we could say that the entire estate is magical and/or that there’s some powerful fey magic trying to draw the children to Narnia. No matter what they do, we can improvise a hook that offers them a path to Narnia. They go to play Poohsticks in the stream? They find their sticks disappearing through a magical shimmer under the bridge. They help the cook make dinner? They discover a secret passage behind the wine rack in the cellar when they’re sent down for supplies. They read books in the library? They open a magical book! They play hide ‘n seek? Wardrobe!

Design Note: Isn’t the wardrobe a magical portal because it’s made from wood taken from Narnia? How do you square that with there being magical portals all over the damn place?

First, keep in mind that we’re just using the book here as an example. In practice this would be a scenario you’re designing yourself, and you can do whatever you want.

Second, this is actually an interesting example: Lewis didn’t know that the wardrobe was made of wood from Narnia when he wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The wardrobe was just a cool thing he thought up and then he BUILT on that continuity later on. We could imagine the same thing in our hypothetical campaign: The PCs go to play Poohsticks and you improvise a magical bridge; later it occurs to you that the bridge could have been built out of wood from Narnia. Or the magical book in the library turns out to have been the diary the Professor kept during his own adventures in Narnia. After discovering stuff during play you’re free to continue building on it and making new discoveries about your world.

Third, if it is important that the portal be in the wardrobe made from Narnian wood — whether to the scenario, your metaphysics, or just your personal taste — then use one of the other options.

On that note, what if you really do need a reactive premise? For example, you want them to simply stumble across the wardrobe accidentally? In that case, you need to have other active premises in the house to engage the players until the reactive premise can be presented. Basically, you have other adventures (or, at least, interesting things that the PCs are aware they can interact with) happening in the mansion. And then, at some point during those adventures, the wardrobe can appear. (Or maybe it appears several times as part of the background scenery, until the revelation finally happens.)

You can also take a laidback approach to his by asking each player to describe what a typical day at the house looks like for their character. This frames the action declaration at a sufficiently abstract level that the players aren’t trying to fill the minute-to-minute activities of their lives, but it also makes it clear that the active premise is defining routine (specifically, in this case, what the “new normal” looks like for the kids). You can ask questions like:

• After you’ve said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs to your rooms on the first night, what plans do you make for the next day?
• What if it’s a rainy day and you can’t go outside? What do you do?
• It’s been a week and you’re getting bored. What do you do to mix things up?

What you’re looking for as the GM, of course, is the opportunity to say, “While you’re doing that, you happen to see this wardrobe and that’s when the adventures begin…”

As a campaign develops over time, the group will often develop a collective sense of what a “normal day” looks like in any case. This knowledge makes it easier to aggressively frame scenario hooks without the players feeling as if their toes are getting stepped on… which brings us full circle.

Note: In a storytelling game you can use a variant of this technique to simply cut to the chase by giving the players narrative control. You could turn to Peter’s player, for example, and say, “Somewhere in this house there is a portal to the magical land of Narnia. What is it?” And after Peter’s player has said that it’s a wardrobe, you could turn to Lucy’s player and say, “And how do you find this portal?” Similar approaches using the specific mechanics of the storytelling game are also quite common.

REJECTING THE CALL

Sometimes your players will encounter the hook and reject it. There’s often nothing wrong with this! Rejecting the call to adventure is an official part of the Campbellian Hero’s Journey™! (And if you’re running a sandbox campaign, there should be so many scenario hooks hanging around that it would be surprising if the PCs didn’t reject a few of them.)

This rejection can also happen unintentionally. For example, you might design the metaphysics of the wardrobe so that the portal only works intermittently, with the expectation that the players will investigate the wardrobe and figure out the timing. Instead, Lucy finds the portal and comes back, but when she tells the others about it and the portal doesn’t work, the other characters assume she’s just telling funny stories.

So things reset and, later, Lucy goes back into the wardrobe and this time Edmund sees her and follows her. And you think, “I’m so glad he’s got in too! The others will have to believe in Narnia now that both of them have been there. What fun this will be!” But then Edmund’s player tests his Liar personality trait, fails, and says, “Oh, yes, Lucy and I have been playing – pretending that all her story about a country in the wardrobe is true. Just for fun, of course. There’s nothing there really.”

And this prompts some simply amazing roleplaying between the PCs, but the hook of the wardrobe has once again been rejected and it’s all so horrid that now Lucy won’t go near the wardrobe for fear of being teased and none of the others even want to talk about it.

If you were running a sandbox, it might be fine to just let the wardrobe go at this point (as noted above, there would be lots of other hooks for the PCs pursue). And even if you’re running a specific scenario (we’re supposed to be playing in Narnia, not stuck in the mansion!) it can easily be the case that the stuff spinning out from a rejected call to adventure is more than interesting enough to entertain everybody for the entire session. (The stuff with Edmund lying, for example, is really interesting and likely to have a long-term impact on the campaign that’s truly fascinating. Don’t choke it off!)

But in either case, you’ll usually want to offer the hook again – either because this is the scenario you’re supposed to be playing tonight or because the scenario is part of the environment and it will naturally keep crossing paths with the PCs. (If you design the scenario with multiple hooks in the first place, this will often happen organically without any especial effort on your part.)

There can be a natural impulse to make the returning hook more aggressive – they missed it the first time, so it clearly needs to be even more obvious and in-their-face the second time!  But this is often (although not always) the wrong choice. The players will have often chosen to reject the hook. That’s a meaningful choice and directly overriding it simply for the sake of overriding it is railroading.

(This is more or less what Lewis does in the book: The kids are relentlessly pursued  by Mrs. MacReady’s tour group until they have absolutely no choice but to all leap into the wardrobe together. But, of course, it’s a book.)

Even if the players have just flat out missed the first hook, it’s still usually not necessary to use an aggressive hook. If they literally missed it, then the second hook will effectively be their first hook and there’s no need to make it special. If they misinterpreted the hook or didn’t realize that it was a hook, the second hook will usually serve to reinforce the first one and, thus, be stronger collectively regardless. (“Oh! That’s what the crazy rune-writing meant!”)

The exception tends to be when the rejection of the first hook carries obvious consequences that are going to be aggressive. For example, if the PCs choose to just ignore Old Joe’s gang threatening to burn down their ranch… well, Old Joe’s gang burning down their ranch is probably going to be pretty aggressive.

PROACTIVE PLAYERS

Proactive players are the ones who will pursue courses of action even when they haven’t been presented with an active premise for that action.

For example, in my OD&D open table one of the PCs spontaneously decided to buy up all the garlic in the local community and then use their monopoly to jack up the prices. (They knew that the local adventurers had discovered vampires and had concluded that the demand was about to spike.) The result was the creation of the Halfling Mafia, who grew to become a pervasive presence in the campaign.

That’s an example of proactive play: There was no “buy up all the garlic and form a mafia” hook that I had put into play.

By contrast, in my current Blackmoor open table I use a set of Special Interest XP rules that specifically encourages PCs to, for example, set up philanthropic societies. So when one of the PCs decided to set up the Vampire Awareness and Relief Foundation, that was really awesome, but it wasn’t proactive play. (The mechanical structure had offered the active premise of setting up philanthropic societies.)

Some players are naturally proactive. Others will never be so. (And that’s okay!) But often proactive players are created in the sandbox: When they are inundated with scenario hooks and it becomes clear that THEY are empowered to choose what they will do next, often the leap will be made that they do not need to choose but can instead create.

When you say, “You’ve arrived at the Professor’s house. What do you want to do?” a reactive group, in the absence of an active premise, will stare at your blankly. But if you have proactive players, don’t feel like you need to immediately start hurling scenario hooks at them. Let the Pevenseys tell you what they’re going to do and follow their lead, giving them the incredible reward of knowing that the action THEY created is the one which sets everything into motion. It is the proactive player who will say, without prompting, “I’m going to explore the house!”

Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures and there they found a suit of armor; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out onto a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books — most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe…

FURTHER READING
Design Notes: Scenario Hooks for Over the Edge
Juggling Scenario Hooks in the Sandbox
Surprising Scenario Hooks
Players Who Won’t Bite
Bringing the PCs Together

Go to Table of Contents

THE CANDLEKEEP REVELATIONS

In order for Descent Into Avernus to continue beyond this point, the PCs need to go to Candlekeep and have Sylvira Salkiras open the infernal puzzlebox. (Theoretically they could also figure out an alternative way of opening the puzzlebox and also an alternative method of getting to Hellturel after they do so. More power to them.)

There are two things that are required for this to happen.

FIRST: The PCs must have possession of the infernal puzzlebox. In Part 3C: The Vanthampur Revelations we added multiple clues pointing to the existence (and importance) of the puzzlebox specifically so that the PCs would know to look for it when they went to Vanthampur Manor. (If they brief Zodge or Marshal Portyr on this information, they will also encourage the PCs to seize the puzzlebox due to its obvious importance to the cultists.)

SECOND: The PCs must know to take it to Candlekeep in order to open it. There are three ways for the PCs to learn this:

• Falaster Fisk can recognize the puzzlebox and tell them that Sylvira Salkiras has opened similar boxes in the past.
• If the PCs research the puzzlebox (with an Intelligence (Arcana or Religion) check), they can learn the basic properties of the puzzlebox and also be pointed in the direction of Candlekeep as a place where they could learn even more. (This wouldn’t necessarily identify Sylvira, but could. If it doesn’t, they’ll be pointed in her direction once they start making inquiries at Candlekeep.)
• Marshal Portyr will order them to take the puzzlebox to Candlekeep to find out what it is (or strongly support that action if they’ve already proposed it). (As also discussed in Part 3C and Part 3J, she will be interested in getting the PCs out of Baldur’s Gate until the political heat from the assassination of the Vanthampurs dies down. This is as good a reason as any and the puzzlebox is an enigma she’d like solved in any case.)

It would also be useful for the PCs to learn that they need to donate a unique book as an entrance gift in order to gain entry to Candlekeep before they leave Baldur’s Gate (because this will give them an opportunity to obtain one). Any of the leads above (Fisk, research pointing them to Candlekeep, Portyr) can and should inform them of this.

DOWN THE COAST WAY

The thing that I immediately notice about the “Journey to Candlekeep” (DIA, p. 43-44) is the obvious missed opportunity: The refugees from Elturel.

If refugees are pouring down the Chionthar River and then being turned away from Baldur’s Gate, then they’re going to start heading north and south along the Coast Way. As we discussed in Part 1, the plight of the refugees is the emotional connection that the PCs (and players) have to Elturel. At this point we’re heading straight towards the campaign-changing revelation that ELTUREL WAS NOT DESTROYED, so this is the perfect time to refresh the thematic work we laid down at the beginning of the campaign.

As written in Descent Into Avernus there are three encounters along the road. None of them currently feature the refugees, but with a few simple tweaks all of them COULD.

WYRM’S CROSSING

Wyrm’s Crossing is a cutpurse’s paradise, and every traveler here runs the risk of being pickpocketed. As the characters make their way from one end of Wyrm’s Crossing to the other, have each player roll a d20. (Don’t roll for NPCs traveling with the party.) The character or character with the lowest roll are targeted by a pickpocket.

(Tangentially: If you want to randomly pick one of the PCs, just roll a die on your side of the screen. Asking the whole table to roll d20s, then collecting and comparing that data is a terrible technique. You’re wasting your players’ time with busy work.)

As written, the pickpocket is a generic encounter that’s resolved, one way or another, without interaction from the PC who’s targeted:

Use a character’s passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine whether a theft made against that character is successful. If the character’s score is 11 or higher, the theft is detected and thwarted. Otherwise, the thief makes off with one item weighing 1 pound or less (such as a coin pouch or potion).

REFUGEE TWIST: The pick pocket is a refugee. A kid named Frens Nölruth (bandit, MM p. 343). If at all possible, he’s not grabbing money, but snatching rations.

If the PCs catch Frens, they’ll have to decide what to do with a refugee who’s simply hungry and desperate. If they don’t then when they discover the theft they’ll reflect on the fact that someone in the pressing throngs of refugees could have taken their coin purse, but instead took their bread.

KNIGHTS OF THE SHIELD

In this road encounter, the PCs are ambushed by a devil disguised as a local farmer.

Coming up the road toward you is a human farmer riding on the front of a hay-filled wagon pulled by two draft horses. The farmer gives you a friendly wave as the wagon draws near.

REFUGEE TWIST: The bad guys aren’t disguised as local farmers. They’re disguised as refugees; one of the many families or small groups that the PCs have been passing on the road all day.

(These small clots of refugees are an additional encounter in their own right: Describe them. Give the PCs a chance to respond to them — providing succor where they can, riding past while studiously ignoring them, whatever — and then after that describe the devil leaping out of a group they pass further down the road.)

Design Note: As scripted, these are Knights of the Shield ambushing the PCs in an effort to grab the Shield of the Hidden Lord. There’s a bunch of ways that this might not make sense (the PCs might not have the Shield or they may not have encountered any Knights who could report that they had the Shield), but it’s not terribly hard to justify: Marshal Portyr might have a leak in her organization, for example.

On the other hand, the essential beat here is “trouble is following you from Baldur’s Gate.” It’s a minor beat, but it provides a nice sense of pressure on the group. You can achieve this same effect by having some other faction that the PCs have pissed off attempt to ambush them (remnants of either Cult of Zariel are an obvious choice).

Avoid the Quantum Ogre, however: If the PCs specifically take efforts to sneak out of Baldur’s Gate undetected, use some kind of appropriate counter-intelligence resolution to see if they’re successful. (And, of course, if they are, they can’t be ambushed.)

TALE OF THE HELLRIDERS

The final encounter has Reya Mantlemorn share the history of the Hellriders with the PCs while they’re gathered around the campfire.

REFUGEE TWIST: If you’ve eliminated Reya Mantlemorn as a GMPC (see Part 2) this is actually a great time to leverage the character. She’s been riding up and down the road helping refugees in need; seeing their campfire she approaches, thinking at first they might be refugees, but then welcoming a chance to rest for a little while.

Alternatively, if Reya IS journeying with the PCs, their camp can be similarly approached by another Hellrider (Bran Nestoon). Reya is excited to share news with a fellow Hellrider. Later, or prompted by something in that shared news, Reya and Bran share the history of the Hellriders with the PCs.

REVISED TALE: One important revision to how lore is being handled in the Remix is that it is NOT widely known that Zariel, the Archduchess of Avernus, was once the same angel who led the Charge of the Hellriders.

We’ll be delving into the full history of the Charge of the Hellriders (as I call it) in Part 6D of the Remix, where we’ll also be straightening out the continuity glitches around it. The key thing for right now is that Zariel is nameless, so that her role in the Charge can come as a revelation (see Part 4C).

ARRIVING AT CANDLEKEEP

If you really want the PCs’ brief sojourn at Candlekeep to pop, I recommend checking out Elminster’s Candlekeep Companion on the Dungeon Masters Guild. It features a ton of play-oriented material that not only highlights the stuff that’s cool about the Castle of Tomes, but also gives you the tools to inject those cool things directly into your game.

Start with the PCs arriving at Candlekeep: The book gives you plentiful detail on the procedures around the presentation of the entrance gift. (And when the PCs are looking for potential entrance gifts back in Baldur’s Gate, the Candlekeep Companion also includes a random table of books that you can use.)

Once they’ve gained admittance, build their journey through the tangled halls of Candlekeep. The Companion features a number of random tables for determining the rooms, towers, and passages they go through while traveling from one place to another.

(The Candlekeep Companion also features a beautiful poster map of Candlekeep by Marco Bernardini that’s well worth using.)

Note: If the PCs weren’t guided to Candlekeep by Falaster Fisk, they won’t be looking for Sylvira when they arrive. This isn’t really a problem: The minute they start making inquiries about infernal affairs or the infernal puzzlebox, they’ll be pointed in her direction.

RESEARCH AT CANDLEKEEP: The Companion also includes guidelines for conducting research at Candlekeep. If you want to make sure the PCs have the full Candlekeep experience, I recommend tweaking Sylvira’s ritual for opening the infernal puzzlebox so that it takes most or all of a tenday (we can imagine the puzzlebox suspended in the energy fields of some strange, technomantic device as its fractal layers are slowly unraveled one by one).

SYLVIRA & TRAXIGOR

As designed, this section of Descent Into Avernus is:

• The PCs are told to travel to a loremaster who lives in a castle.
• They do so.
• The PCs are told to travel to a loremaster who lives in a tower.
• They do so.

It’s kind of repetitive and also feels fairly pointless. The adventure even goes so far as to say:

Although Sylvira can prepare the plane shift spell, there’s no point, as magical wards placed on Candlekeep prevent creatures from using such means to go to or from the library.

Which is just silly because… walk out the front gates and cast the spell.

I’d recommend either conflating these two characters into one (in which case I’d pick Traxigor as I find the magical otter to be an infinitely more interesting character) or simply put them both in the same lab at Candlekeep as partners.

The rough sequence probably looks like this:

• PCs meet Sylvira and Traxigor.
• The PCs show them the infernal artifact(s) they have.
• Sylvira and Traxigor begin sharing their lore on those (see Part 4B).
• At some point during this, Lulu comes flying into the room. She’s here sharing her memories of Hell with Sylvira and Traxigor, aiding them in their research. She might even have something to add on the infernal puzzlebox or Gargauth’s history. (This, of course, assumes that Lulu isn’t being played as a PC, see Part 2.)
• Sylvira opens the infernal puzzlebox.
• They establish why the PCs need to go to Avernus (see Part 4B).
• The PCs help Traxigor look for his lost tuning fork.
• Traxigor leads the PCs out of Candlekeep (when they’re ready) and plane shifts them to Hellturel.

LAB RUMMAGING:

Characters can help Traxigor search for his missing tuning fork, which is keyed to the Nine Hells. Whoever rolls the highest Wisdom (Perception) check finds the tuning fork. Whoever rolls the lowest finds a random trinket, determined by rolling on the Trinkets table in chapter 5 of the Player’s Handbook. Traxigor doesn’t care if the characters keep the trinket or not, and doesn’t remember how or when he acquired it.

I really like this mechanical interaction: It’s a nice, subtle touch to reward the low roll in addition to the high roll, coupled to imagery that reinforces the environment. If you want to add a little more sizzle, consider using 101 Curious Items or the random oddities tables from Arcana of the Ancients. (If you want to add A LOT of sizzle, use the random cypher tables from Arcana of the Ancients.)

Go to Part 4B: The Road to Avernus