With Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk arriving on bookshelves as we enter the twilight months of 5^th Edition in anticipation of the release of D&D 2024 / OneD&D / whatever we end up calling it, I thought it would be interesting to go all the way back to the beginning and take a peek at the D&D Starter Set first published in 2014.

But let’s start by going even further back and discussing the history of D&D introductory sets. (This is something I discuss in even more detail in Every Edition of D&D if you want to go on a real deep dive.)

D&D was originally published as a boxed set in 1974. In 1977, however, the product line bifurcated: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would be published as a set of three hardcover books, while Dungeons & Dragons would be published in the boxed Basic Set. (This is why that version of the game is often called Basic D&D.)

In 1981, the Basic Set was revamped and an Expert Set was added as a supplement. In 1983, the Basic and Expert sets were revamped again, and the Companion, Master, and Immortals boxed sets were also added.

Now, here’s the key thing: Dungeons & Dragons was NOT the same game as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The Basic Set (and its supplements) were a complete, stand-alone game that even had its own campaign worlds and adventures.

Starting in 1991, this changed. The Basic D&D game remained distinct from AD&D for a while longer, but its rules were compiled into the Rules Cyclopedia. Later, after Wizards of the Coast bought D&D, they would end Basic D&D and drop the “Advanced” moniker from the 3^rd Edition of AD&D (now referred to simply as D&D). A multitude of Basic Sets, Introductions, First Quests, Starter Sets, Adventure Games, and Basic Games would continue to be published as boxed sets, but there was an important difference:

They weren’t complete games.

They were pay-to-preview ads for the Player’s Handbook, and they were usually designed accordingly: You bought them. You played them once. Then you threw them in the trash, bought the core rulebooks, and never touched them again.

I’ve talked in the past about the fact that I think this killed D&D’s gateway product and did an incredible amount of harm to the entire RPG industry. Personally, in my ideal world, D&D would be a game sold in a box, and when new players asked, “What do I need to play D&D?” you’d say, “You need the big box with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS on the cover.” Simple.

Obviously, we don’t live in that world. But this should give you a barometer for what my ideal Starter Set would look like: It would be a meaty, full-featured version of D&D. It would introduce complete neophytes to roleplaying games and teach them not only how to play, but also how to be a Dungeon Master. It would give a complete gaming experience, even if you never picked up the Player’s Handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide.

And if you bought it, you would absolutely not feel like you paid money to have someone tell you that you should buy something else.

OPENING THE BOX

So let’s crack this thing open.

What’s actually in the D&D Starter Set box is pretty barebones:

• The 32-page Starter Set Rulebook, which gives you all the rules for the game.
• The 64-page Lost Mine of Phandelver, which serves as an adventure book, monster manual, magic item vault, and index.
• Five pregen characters sheets.
• A set of dice.

Honestly, I think this barebones approach is okay. You don’t need a fancy gizmos and gadgets to play a roleplaying game. Would a poster map of the Phandalin region (where Lost Mines of Phandelver is set) have been a nice bit of highly practical bling that might have been wonderfully intriguing to a new player? Almost certainly.

But barebones here gives you an MSRP of $20, which is an absolutely fabulous price point. That puts the Starter Set in the territory of an impulse buy, and that was often even more true in actual practice. (I got my copy for $10.)

Nevertheless, there are a couple of things I will ding here: First, the included dice set only includes one d20 and one d6, which I think is inadequate for a game that includes advantage/disadvantage and the fireball spell.

Second, the two booklets would really benefit from cardstock covers. Instead, they’re just stapled paper and very flimsy.

THE RULEBOOK

The Starter Set Rulebook is very good.

The introduction it provides to RPGs — what they are, how they’re played, etc. — is workmanlike, but solid in its execution. More importantly this is a complete and fully functional rulebook. It’s not painfully incomplete. It doesn’t constantly tease with how the real rules are in another book. It’s a rock solid volume, and you could run a complete Tier 1 campaign with this rulebook with zero difficulty.

In fact, except for one thing that we’ll get to in just a moment, you could run multiple Tier 1 campaigns.

Combined with the magic items and monsters found in the companion volume, a DM has enough material that they could comfortably create their own campaign. I could even imagine someone skipping the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, grabbing a Monster Manual to give them more options for foes, and continuing to game happily for months or years or forever.

This is, in case I’m not being clear, a really fantastic achievement.

Unfortunately, as I hinted above, there are a couple gaping holes here that, in my opinion, stop this from being a total triumph.

First, there are no rules for character creation. Instead, players will need to pick one of the five pregen characters included in the boxed set. This is the truly crippling blow, and the only thing that truly limits the Starter Set.

Second, the books do a pretty good job of orienting first-time Dungeon Masters. There’s a lot of practical advice for how they can referee the session, make rulings, set up adventure hooks, narrate the action, play the monsters, and so forth. But the major oversight is that they never actually tell the DM how to run the dungeons included in the adventure book.

D&D actually has a long history of failing to do this (the 5^th Edition core rulebooks are actually worse!), but it’s ultimately kind of amusing when you realize that the Starter Set includes multiple, detailed explanations of exactly how boxed text is supposed to be used, but nothing on how dungeons are supposed to be used.

For example, at the beginning of the adventure they tell you:

• This is boxed text. You should read it.
• Here is a list of specific things you should do; including getting a marching order so that you know where the PCs are positioned when the goblins ambush them.
• When the goblins ambush them, this is the step-by-step guide for how combat should start and what you should be doing while running the combat.
• Here are several specific ways that the PCs can track the goblins back to their lair, and here’s a walk-thru of how you can resolve each one.

This is all great. Concrete, specific advice presented in a clear and highly usable format.

But then the PCs get to the goblins’ lair and… nothing.

To be clear, they do a fantastic job of presenting the dungeon:

• General Features
• What the Goblins Know (always love this)
• Keyed map
• And, of course, the keyed entries describing each room.

Again, these are all great.

But the step-by-step instructions for how you’re actually supposed to use this material? It just… stops. The designers obviously just assume that reading text out loud requires a detailed explanation, but how you run a dungeon is just a skill that everyone is born with.

Which is, of course, really silly.

But I digress. As I mentioned, this problem is a much larger and more systemic than the D&D Starter Set. It’s just particularly sad to see the ball getting dropped in an introductory product.

QUIBBLES & NITPICKS

Two more quick nitpicks before we do a proper dive into the adventure book.

First, Wizards of the Coast is allergic to referencing page numbers and I don’t get it. The “logic,” which they’ve explained from time to time, is that they don’t want to include, for example, a specific page number in the Monster Manual because it’s possible that they’ll revise the Monster Manual and the page numbers will change.

But in the 20+ years they’ve been eschewing page numbers, and I cannot emphasize this enough, they have never done this. The first time it might happen is next year.

It’s, frankly, dumb in general because it makes their books much, much harder to use than they need to be. And in the specific case of the D&D Starter Set it’s even dumber because this is a self-contained product. If you were to some day revise the Starter Set, you could just update the page references.

But because Wizards of the Coast is allergic to page numbers, brand new DMs will be cursed with needlessly flipping back and forth through the books, trying to figure out where specific sections are after the authors wave vaguely in their direction.

(I will give them partial credit for an Index that isn’t complete garbage.)

Second, the random encounter procedures for dungeons given in the Starter Set are kinda garbage. They give random encounter tables, but then instruct brand new DMs, “Make an encounter check whenever you feel like it. Or don’t. But you definitely should. But don’t make too many of them, because you’ll ruin your game. How many is too many? Eh. I dunno. You’ll figure it out. Maybe.”

I suspect this text may have originally been more closely tied to detailed dungeon procedures which were present in pre-5^th Edition D&D Next playtest material but removed from the game entirely at the eleventh hour. But this is, nonetheless, bad praxis, and even moreso in material you’re presenting to first-time DMs.

LOST MINE OF PHANDELVER

Which finally brings us to Lost Mine of Phandelver, the adventure book.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here: This is good.

It’s really, really good.

I’m pretty comfortable describing Lost Mine as the single best introductory adventure D&D has ever had, and I don’t think the competition is even close.

First, it’s not just an adventure. It’s an entire campaign. In just 50 pages, Lost Mine of Phandelver presents seven — seven! — different scenarios plus the lushly detailed village of Phandalin. (The other 14 pages in the booklet are devoted to the monster manual, magic item vault, and rules index.) I am completely blown away by this.

And it’s not just the amount of material presented here. This is a really good campaign, and it’s particularly excellent as an exemplar for new DMs figuring out how to make their own campaigns.

We can start by looking at the structure of the campaign:

• Lost Mine of Phandelver starts with the PCs on their way to the village of Phandalin.
• A simple ambush-based scenario hook pulls the PCs into a goblin lair called the Cragmaw Hideout. The initial encounter is a perfect kickoff for first-time players and DMs, starting with an intriguing enigma (dead horses lying in the road) before smoothly transitioning to a combat encounter featuring a simple, but meaningful tactical dilemma for the players.
• The Cragmaw dungeon itself is absolutely fantastic: It’s non-linear. It takes advantage of the third-dimension. The key is clear, clever, and features several really cool ideas (like the dams that the goblins can use to create a defensive flood). It repeatedly emphasizes the opportunity not only for combat, but also roleplaying and clever problem-solving. Everything here implicitly tells the players that their choices matter and teaches the DM how to actively respond to what the PCs are doing.
• The Cragmaw hideout also features multiple scenario hooks, giving the players several options to pursue.
• Whenever the PCs arrive in Phandalin (whether they head there immediately or after pursuing the scenario hooks from the Cragmaw hideout), the entire village is set up to deliver another half dozen or more scenario hooks to them. The result is that the players end up with an entire menu of scenario hooks to choose between, once against emphasizing that their choices matter.
• The individual scenarios are also interconnected, in a really beautiful node-based design that ultimately funnels the PCs into the campaign finale at Wave Echo Cave, which (a) has been foreshadowed since the very beginning of the campaign and (b) is another fantastic dungeon scenario with excellent non-linear design and multiple factions.

I really can’t emphasize just how great this is.

On top of this rock solid campaign frame, the individual adventures are, as I’ve already suggested, equally excellent. I’ve mentioned the strategically interesting non-linear design of the dungeons and the Three Clue Rule, but they also feature retreating foes, personalized magic items redolent with history and flavor, and a wonderfully varied cast of characters.

On top of all that, although I quibbled about the presentation of the random dungeon encounters, the random wilderness encounters are given a very effective procedure AND they’re linked to the scenarios, providing another level of interconnectivity in the campaign.

THE VERDICT

The Starter Set Rulebook is very good, but unfortunately flawed in a couple key ways.

That almost doesn’t matter, though, because I’d pay $20 for just Lost Mine of Phandelver in a heartbeat. And I’d do it even faster than that if I could.

Best introductory adventure for D&D ever published? Definitely.

Best adventure book of any kind published by Wizards of the Coast? Quite possibly.

Overall, the 1983 Basic Set probably remains the best introduction to D&D ever published. But if I’d been given Lost Mine of Phandelver when I was a first-time DM, it would have made me a much better DM than I was, and that’s something special. Even if you’re an experienced DM with years of play under your belt, it’s still a really enjoyable campaign that’s immaculate in its construction.

I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

Grade: A

• Lost Mine of Phandelver: A+

Lead Designers: Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford
Design Team: Christopher Perkins, James Wyatt, Rodney Thompson, Robert J. Schwalb, Peter Lee, Steve Townshend, Bruce R. Cordell
Adventure Designers: Richard Baker, Christopher Perkins

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $19.95
Page Count: 96

D&D Beyond: Lost Mine of Phandelver (Free!)

FURTHER READING
Review: D&D Essentials Kit
Review: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (D&D Starter Set 2022)

Buy Now!

Something that I’ve often said is that the supposed divide between “roleplaying” and “combat” (with the latter sometimes being labeled as “rollplaying”) is an imaginary one. Combat is roleplaying: It’s filled with high-stakes, life-or-death decision-making, and that’s the perfect crucible for exploring, revealing, and developing characters.

What IS frequently missing from our combat scenes in a roleplaying game, however, is talking.

Which is a shame, because if we think about some of the all-time classic fight scenes, they can be as much about the dialogue as the fisticuffs or gun-kata.

• Inigo Montoya vs. the Man in Black from The Princess Bride.
• Neo vs. Agent Smith in The Matrix. (Note the nonverbal communication in this one, too.)
• Robin Hood vs. Sir Guy in The Adventures of Robin Hood.
• Hawkins vs. Ravenhurst in Court Jester.
• Iron Man vs. Captain America in Captain America: Civil War.

It’s not every fight, of course, but it’s a lot of them.

There are a number of reasons why it’s so rare to find interactions like this at our gaming tables.

First, we’re often playing in large groups with lots of characters. Even in other mediums, this complexity tends to cut down on the amount of dialogue, because there’s already a lot of different narrative elements that are being juggled.

Second, there are obviously also a lot of mechanical elements that you’re juggling in a typical RPG during a combat scene.

On top of that, you’re often trying to juggle those elements as quickly as possible; to resolve actions fast, keep the pace high, and get around the table quickly so that the players stay engaged with the game. In fact, I’ve given lots of advice aimed specifically at speeding things up in combat.

That being the case, it’s easy to fall into a smooth rhythm of resolving mechanics, evocatively describing those resolutions, and rapidly passing the ball to the next action declaration while literally not leaving room to get a word in edgewise.

The solution is to co-opt the mechanics: When you’re writing down the initiative list for the fight, simply include Dialogue on one of the initiative counts.

You might list it at the same initiative count in each fight (e.g. first in the round, last in the round, 10, etc.), but when I’ve experimented with this technique I’ve found actually rolling an initiative for Dialogue to be effective because it mixes up the pacing and placement of the initial interaction. (Your mileage may vary.)

All that you need to do now is honor the dialogue prompt: When you hit Dialogue in the initiative count, resist any temptation to skip over it. Take the moment to select one or more of your NPCs and have them say something.

• Taunt a PC.
• Debate the righteousness of their actions.
• Offer a bribe to get the PCs to help them.
• Trick the PCs with an offer of surrender.
• Try to sway one of the PCs’ allies to join their cause.
• Reveal that they’ve been a traitor the entire time.
• Curse the effectiveness of the PCs.
• Vow vengeance.

The possibilities are, of course, limitless.

You’ll often discover that just having the NPCs verbally engage with the PCs will draw the players out and get them to respond in the moment. If not, you can specifically prompt the players. And, in fact, I recommend prompting a specific player. For example, you might have your villain say something like, “You don’t think I know where you live?! When I’m finished with, I’ll make sure Robert rues the day he fell in love with you!” And then ask the player, “How does Clarissa respond to that?”

Clarissa’s response might be to stab him rather than talk with him, and that’s just fine. As such, it can be useful to look at the PC positioned immediately after the Dialogue prompt and target them. (Similarly, if you’re struggling to improvise dialogue, you might take inspiration from NPCs who are immediately before or after the Dialogue prompt.)

A FEW OPTIONS

In larger fights, you might want to roll up multiple Dialogue initiatives. Don’t overdo it, though. One is often enough, and if you put in too many you’ll likely find the temptation to skip them start to grow (which defeats the entire point).

On the flip side, the presence of a Dialogue prompt on your initiative counter should not prevent you from open repartee. In other words, the Dialogue prompt doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to talk during other points in the fight. On the contrary! The whole point of the prompt is to get loosened up. You’ll often find that as you get into the habit and rhythm of combat dialogue, the repartee will break free and start popping up all over the place.

When you hit a Dialogue prompt, don’t forget to consider dialogue from characters not directly involved in the fight. Bystanders, hostages, familiars, etc. It’s a great way of reminding the players about the wider environment in which the fight is taking place (and possibly the stakes they’re fighting for).

If you’re struggling, you might consider jotting down a villain’s catchphrase or a random table of one-liners. Again, these should not be limiters; they’re creative spurs to help kickstart dialogue interactions during the fight.

On a similar note, if a PC takes out a bad guy and the next initiative count is the Dialogue prompt, you might take that as a hint to prompt the player to provide a closing remark. (Think about the type of stuff James Bond or Arnold Schwarznegger quip. Or go for more sinister filler if that’s more appropriate for your campaign.) You can do something similar for villains who knock out a PC or kill one of their allies.

In addition to Dialogue prompts, I’ve also talked about a similar technique using Feng Shui’s shot clock to prompt environmental effects. You can read more about that in Feng Shui: Filling the Shot.

I’m returning to What Would the Smart Party Do, the premiere UK RPG podcast, to share with Gaz and Ben all the amazing secrets of So You Want To Be a Game Master. We had a pretty awesome, free-ranging conversation that often went beyond the book itself and into some really great discussions about GMing in general.

The lads are delighted to have returning Good Friend of the Show, RPG producer and designer at Atlas Games, Justin Alexander. He’s got a new book coming out, available in all good purveyors of such things, So You Want To Be A Game Master. Join for great insights, some not seen or heard before on the Alexandrian (or maybe anywhere!) and to get a unique precis of what is in this fine work. Visit Justin’s excellent RPG resource The Alexandrian, as check out what’s hot at Atlas Games.

Listen Now!

You can find links to my previous appearance on What Would the Smart Party Do at the Alexandrian Auxiliary.

What if RPGs, instead of being invented by Dave Arneson in the early 1970’s, had existed throughout history?

We know that authors like Terry Pratchett, Glen Cook, David Lindsay-Abaire, and George R.R. Martin all played RPGs. What other authors might have done the same, if only they had had the opportunity?

For this social media parody project — collected here for the first time — I modified well-known literary quotes to reflect a tabletop perspective.

“Love not too well the rolls of thy hands & the devices of your character sheet.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Vecnallion

“Roleplay all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you play in particular, so long as you have your roleplaying.” – Henry James, The Dungeon Masters

“Ever rolled. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett, Westmarch Ho

“If you don’t try at anything you can’t fail… it takes backbone to make the rolls you want.” – Richard Yates, Revolutionary Teleportation Circle

“When we roleplay, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, the whole table becomes better, too.” – Paulo Coelho, The Magic-User

“As a Game Master, you need to learn how to select when to roll just the same way you select your clothes every day. That is a power you can cultivate.” – Elizbaeth Gilbert; Eat, Pray, Roll

“Beware; for I am possessed of Fate Points. And therefore powerful.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein’s Game Master

“It does not do to dwell on balance and forget to play, remember that.” – J.K. Rowling, Elminster and the Philosopher’s Stone

“If you are interested in roleplaying, go at it at full speed. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.” – Roald Dahl, My Uncle Arneson

“Nothing that’s worthwhile ever has a low Difficulty Class.” – Nicholas Sparks, Handout in a Bottle

“Above all, don’t fudge to yourself.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Game Masters Karamazov

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to a Sanity check to go insane.” – Philip K. Dick, Azeroth

“If I got rid of my PCs, I’d lose my NPCs.” – Tennessee Williams, Conversations with a Game Master

“The GM is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables.” – Sappho

“It is a far, far better crit I roll, than I have ever rolled before; it is a far, far better long rest I go to than I have ever known before.” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Modules

“I roleplay. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing I do.” – Haruki Murakami, Spelljammer Sweetheart

“Yes: I am a roleplayer. For a roleplayer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Game Master

“When you are GMing, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Icespire Peak

“I don’t want to die without any Twilight Scars.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Ars Magica Club

“If we wait until we’re fully prepped, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.” – Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz GM

“Whenever you feel like critting anyone … just remember that all the characters of this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Volothamp

“Made weak by Fort and Ref, but strong in Will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” – “Arneson,” Alfred Lord Tennyson

“It is impossible to discourage the real Dungeon Masters. They don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to run.” – Sinclair Lewis, The Innocents: A Story for NPCs

“You Game Mastered and I was longing for you. You cooled a heart that burned with desire.” – Sappho

“Whatever ability arrays our characters are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Bronte, Wuthering Dungeon

“You don’t know an NPC until you’ve fought them.” – Shi Nai’an, Outlaws of the Waterdeep

“Reality exists in the players’ minds and nowhere else.” – George Orwell, 1484 DR: The Year of the Awakened Sleepers

“It was the best of campaigns, it was the worst of campaigns.” – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Modules

“Nothing in the campaign is difficult. Only the Game Master makes it so.” – Wu Cheng’en, Journey to the Keep on the Borderlands

“The best GMs are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell, 1484 DR: The Year of the Awakened Sleepers

“He knew everything about D&D except how to enjoy it.” – Joseph Heller, Roll-22

“Meeting an NPC of fame is better than just hearing his name.” – Shi Nai’an, Outlaws of the Waterdeep

“The party seeks XP entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in XP – pure XP.” – George Orwell, 1484 DR: The Year of the Awakened Sleepers

“Treasure is a handful of dirt from your home. Love not ten thousand taels of dungeon gold.” – Wu Cheng’en, Journey to the Keep on the Borderlands

“If you only run the adventures that everyone else is running, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami, Barovian Wood

“‘Are you ready?’ the Dungeon Master asked at last. ‘No,” the player answered. ‘Me neither,’ said another. ‘But if we wait until we’re ready we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives. Let’s play!'” – Daniel Handler, The Ersatz Campaign

“All happy RPG groups are alike; each unhappy RPG group is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Tatyana Karenina

“Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another session.” – Margaret Mitchell, GM With the Wind

“It is a truth universally that a single GM in possession of a good campaign must be in want of a player.” – Jane Austen, Play and Prejudice

“We need never be ashamed of our critical failures.” – Charles Dickens, Roleplaying Expectations

“Nowadays people know the DPS of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde, The Min-Max of Dorian Gray

“How do we know that 2 and 2 make 4? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and external world exist only in the DM’s mind, and if the DM itself is controllable – what then?” – George Orwell, 1484 DR: Year of the Awakened Sleeper

“No GM, for any considerable period, can roll one dice for himself and another for the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Prep Notes

“D&D, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” – James Joyce, Ulysses

“RPG sessions warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” – Haruki Murakami, Gygax on the Shore

“There is an idea of Elminster, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only something illusory. Though you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe even sense our spells are comparable: I simply am not there.” – Bret Easton Ellis, Waterdeep Psycho

“It’s much better to fudge in a way that no one knows anything about it.” – Leo Tolstoy, Tatyana Karenina

“We were the NPCs who were not in the sourcebooks. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of prep. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the sessions.” – Margaret Atwood, The Barmaid’s Tale

“He who controls the dice controls the future.” – George Orwell, 1484 DR: The Year of the Awakened Sleepers

“The only roleplayers for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to play, mad to talk, mad to fight, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Battlemap

“Some players get the world, some players get a killer GM and a railroad to Arizona.” – James Ellroy, Waterdeep Confidential

“An RPG is to be lived, not controlled.” – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Game Master

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn campaign is scared of each other.” – John Steinbeck, Of Goblins and Men

“Nothing succeeds like success.” – Alexandre Dumas, Six Years Fudging

“Come forth into the light of things, let dice be your teacher.” – William Wordsworth, The Random Tables Turned

And now, with all these fanciful quotes fresh in our minds, here is a final quote which is completely real and which I find inspirational in creating RPGs:

“Work on a good piece of writing has three steps: a musical stage where it is composed; an architectural one where it is built; and a textile one where it is woven.” – Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street

In this video, CGP Grey lays out four criteria which determines whether or not an animal can be domesticated:

• Feedable. You need a bunch of grass to feed one cow, but you’ll need a bunch of cows to feed one tiger. So you domesticate herbivores, not carnivores. (And the herbivore shouldn’t be a picky eater.)
• Friendly. Whether carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore, you need an animal that isn’t dangerous, panicky, or both.
• Fecund. You generally want animals that breed a lot, and you absolutely need animals who will breed in captivity. They also need to reproduce frequently enough that you can selectively breed them to effect over the course of a single human lifetime.
• Family Friendly. Animals that have a social hierarchy lend themselves to domestication because we can exploit those instincts in order to herd them and lead them.

You can cheat a little bit around the edges here and there, but you basically need all four of these things to be true in a single animal in order to make it a candidate for domestication, which is why — despite there being thousands and thousands of animal species on this planet — we’ve only domesticated about fifteen or so.

(We can also domesticate plants, but for the purposes of this essay I’m largely going to ignore that.)

When it comes to worldbuilding, however, something interesting happens in fantastical settings: Magic can bypass — often trivially bypass — these barriers to domestication.

For example, in the real world we could never domesticate bears: They’re feedable (in practice, up to 90% of a bear’s diet is actually planet matter). They’re fecund (having litters of two to six cubs every couple of years). They have a family hierarchy you could hypothetically take advantage of (positioning yourself as the Mama Bear).

But it’s just too easy for humans to become tasty bear snacks.

With magic, though, you could employ charm or even dominate effects to avoid becoming a bear snack while selectively breeding your captive bear population for tameness so that, eventually, you would no longer need to use the magical effects.

This is also a good time to briefly discuss the difference between taming an animal and domesticating it: An animal is tamed when it is behaviorally conditioned to safely cohabit and even work with humans. An animal is domesticated when a population becomes genetically modified to have a predisposition towards and advantage for humans.

So with some fantastical elements of magic, alchemy, or genetics, you can just bypass this entire discussion by waving your hand and saying something like, “I’ve magically altered the creatures so that they and their descendants are instantly predisposed to humans.” But, in my opinion, taking the longer path has a distinctly different feel to it — it feels more societal, rather than mad scientist. (Your mileage may vary.)

In any case, you can see how magic and megafauna can give food security that historically didn’t exist for our ancestors; mitigate the risks from otherwise dangerous animals; or, as with the bears, make them subservient in the absence of a natural hierarchy.

Magic could also speed up breeding cycles, but that’s not even necessary if your fantastical setting includes long-lived species. Elephants take too long between generations for a single individual to selectively breed them and reap the benefits? Not if the breeder is an elf.

EFFECTS ON THE CREATURE

At this point we’ve more or less given ourselves permission to take advantage of the entire animal kingdom, simply asking ourselves how a domesticated (and/or trained) version of that animal might prove useful:

• Mercenaries with war bear auxiliaries.
• River barges pulled by domesticated dolphins.
• Zebra mounts.

With a sufficiently decadent civilization, it doesn’t even have to be that useful, just aesthetically pleasing:

• Hummingbird messengers.
• Giraffes bearing noble palanquins.
• Songbirds providing orchestral performances.

As we’re considering these almost limitless possibilities, it might also be useful to keep in mind the effects that domestication can have on the animals themselves: We made pigs larger, engorged cow udders, and added almost ruinous amounts of fluff to our sheep. So you can always ask yourself, “What if this… but more?” (Or less, if that’s appropriate.) Not just zebra mounts, but zebra ponies and draft zebras, too.

It’s also notable that the mere act of domestication itself can apparently have an effect on a creature’s appearance. For example, in the mid-20^th century Soviet scientists began a multigenerational experiment (still ongoing) to domesticate wild foxes. They did this strictly by selecting the tamest foxes in each generation and breeding them.

Selecting for tameness alone, however, also resulted in the domesticated foxes gaining:

• curly fur
• multicolored coats
• floppy ears
• shortened, curly tails

So could we imagine domesticated bears with floppy ears and curly hair? Yes. Yes, we could. And absolutely should.

EFFECTS ON THE WORLD

When you introduce a fantastical domestication, deepen its connection to your setting and fully integrate it into the campaign world by coming up with at least three distinct impacts the domestication has. For example, domesticated chickens mean:

• Chicken coops exist where they’re raised.
• Eggs are served at breakfast.
• Criminals were punished by tarring and feathering them.

And that’s obviously barely even scratching the surface, but if domesticated chickens didn’t actually exist, it would give us a good start at reflecting their presence in the world (even in scenes where there are no chickens directly present).

So if we had merpeople domesticating sharks, we would want to similarly have:

• Necklaces made from shark teeth as a popular fashion item.
• A military academy where shark-riders train and bond with their mounts.
• Shark races with circuits running through underwater grottoes.

And so forth.

NON-HUMAN DOMESTICATION

On that note, let’s remember that we’ve defined a domesticated animal as one that has been genetically modified to have a predisposition towards and advantage for humans.

But in a fantasy world, humans aren’t the only species capable of domesticating animals.

Thus, for example, our merpeople domesticating sharks in ways that land-bound humans would never be motivated to do.

What would dwarves find uniquely useful? Perhaps a bioluminescent worm to serve as their light and tunnel companion?

What about a lich? What needs do the undead have that humans do not? Or vice versa?

And we’re not limited to humanoids, either. If dragons decide to start domesticating stuff, what does that look like?

And, in fact, are the sapient species just what you end up with when the gods domesticate for their needs?

“Okay, we need something that breeds like a plague and has a predilection for idolatry.”

How deep does this rabbit hole go? And if fast-breeding populations are what the gods need, how nervous should the human kingdoms be about the new lapin-folk migrating from the Great Plains? Have you noticed that Artemis isn’t answering as many prayers as she used to?