Johann asks:

[I’m running] an open table with three DMs. I was wondering about the information and knowledge players have and seek out. We ask one player to write kind of like a journal entry for the others, but only a very few dedicated people actually read these. The same goes for the wiki; only a few people look into this.

While we want to keep a low barrier to entry, we also think some information is critical for those players who return often, such as factions, their goals and issues, or rumors placed by us.

How do you handle this? Do you do kind of a recap at the beginning of the session?

Information flow in an open table is different from a dedicated table. In a dedicated table, the expectation is that all players will know everything that’s going on.

An open table is paradoxical because you’ll simultaneously have many more players than a dedicated table, but in many ways each individual player’s experience is more like a Campaign of One: There is no single, unified, overarching story of the group. Instead, each individual character is experiencing their own, individual story.

“How do I know what happened to Bill last session?” Well, either you were there or Bill told you or you asked Bill about it. That’s entirely about what the characters doing. As the GM, you don’t need to take on responsibility for any of that, beyond maybe giving the players a forum for communicating with each other away from the table (e.g., a Discord server or wiki). Either the players will share information with each other or they won’t. Either one is fine.

Other information, of course, will be more publicly known. I think of this as headline news. If somebody burns down the village church, for example, that’s something everybody in town is going to know about. Whether it was an NPC or a PC or a natural disaster that burned the church down, for this type of stuff I’ll prep a short, often bullet-pointed, bulletin and send it out to all of the players. The most effective method of distribution will depend on how you’re organizing your open table. For me:

• I’ll attach the headline news when I send out notices about upcoming sessions, which I’m currently doing via both e-mail and Discord.
• On my campaign status document, I’ll keep a list of recent headline news and review it at the beginning of each session. This might be the PCs literally reading newspapers, or it might just represent the “talk around town.” (In addition to the information itself, I find this is just a nice way to help kick things off and put the world in motion. It’s also a fun little reward when the players see something they’re personally responsible for crop up in the headlines.)

When you should cycle stuff off your Current Headlines list seems to be a bit more art than science, in my opinion. It depends partly on how vital/important the information is, how often people are playing, and also a general desire to not.

But it’s easy to imagine completely different options, too. You might actually write up the front page of a newspaper, for example, as something you can give as a handout or physically post in the game store where you’re playing. Or you could keep a list of headline news, but find more organic ways to weave it into your downtime procedures (rather than just reading out the list).

SCENARIO HOOKS

Of course, there’s also other types of information to be shared about the world. At the other extreme, you have scenario hooks, and this is where things can operate very differently at an open table.

For example, consider a treasure map revealing the location of the Temple of the Ancients. At a dedicated table, if a PC finds the treasure map, then they have it. At an open table, though, a player might find that map… and then literally never play again.

Under these conditions, the inverted Three Clue Rule breaks down due to information loss:

If the PCs have access to ANY three clues, they will reach at least ONE conclusion.

If you prep three leads pointing to the Temple of the Ancients, but then one of them exits the campaign, you’ve effectively broken the rule. In fact, it’s quite possible for all three leads to vanish! And even if they don’t, the rule can still break down due to the diffusion of players: The rule works partly through redundancy, partly through repetition, and partly because of what happens when the players combine multiple pieces of information together. But if each of your three clues is found by a different PC and those PCs rarely or never actually meet each other, the practical effect can be far closer to having just one clue three times over, rather than three clues reacting with each other and backing each other up.

Faced with this dilemma, it can be tempting to want to “liberate” the scenario hooks: Bill finds the treasure map, and the treasure map is added to some kind of group repository where any group can grab that lead and pursue it. (And you could imagine any number of diegetic explanations of this: For example, maybe all of the PCs are members of the Pathfinder Society or Delver’s Guild and are required to make full reports to the local branch office.)

Balanced against this, though, is the fact that secret knowledge is fun and all kinds of fun secondary and tertiary game play can emerge from it. (For example, maybe Bill offers to auction off the treasure map to the highest bidder. Or it motivates Bill to organize a secret expedition. Or someone else learns the map exists and tries to steal it from Bill. Some of the most memorable moments from my open tables involve players horse-trading information and getting excited when they get to reveal secrets to other PCs.)

Taking a step back, the broad situation here is that I have a scenario (e.g., the Temple of the Ancients) and I don’t want to just throw out all of that prep because the three clues pointing to that scenario randomly got misplaced in the dynamics of the open table.

There are generally some straightforward solutions for this:

• Include A LOT more leads pointing to the Temple of the Ancients. (And also track this stuff on a master revelation list, so that you can keep adding more clues if problems emerge.)
• Use a campaign structure that includes alternative methods for hooking scenarios. (For example, if the Temple of the Ancients is keyed to a hexcrawl, then even if the players miss all the clues, they could also just stumble across it via random exploration.)
• Build procedurally generated scenario hooks into your campaign structure. (For example, I’ve picked random hexes to restock rumor tables. Stuff like % tracks results for random encounters create similar effects.)

This isn’t to say that you should stop including clues and leads connecting adventures in your open table. This additional layer in the campaign creates different ways for the PCs to interact with the world, creating a far more dynamic and interesting situation. But it’s probably best to think of their effect as being far more localized than in a dedicated campaign: The primary effect is going to be to enhance and shape the experiences of individual characters, rather than being the primary backbone of the campaign as a whole.

THE OTHER STUFF

Somewhere between headline news that everyone hears about and individual nuggets of information like a treasure map that are accessed by specific individuals, there’s a potentially vast middle ground of stuff happening in the campaign world that the PCs might learn about.

A good example of this are faction downtime actions, as discussed in So You Want to Be a Game Master. The quick version is that you have a bunch of factions in the campaign world, they’re doing stuff, and the fallout from that stuff should be vectored so that it intersects the PCs.

(Rumors, job offers, and random encounters are typical examples of how this stuff can be vectored into the PCs. For example, a couple of gangs might have gotten into a turf war, and the PCs might hear about the gang violence or witness a gang shooting on the street or get hired by one of the gangs to assassinate the leader of the other gang or have one of their contacts get recruited by a gang.)

In a dedicated campaign, you can make a tick on a faction clock, figure out how to vector it into the PCs, and check it off your list: Job done! Good work!

If you do that at an open table, of course, the vector of the faction’s action will only intersect a tiny percentage of the players. Instead of sending shockwaves through the campaign, the faction’s actions are creating tiny little ripples.

To solve this you need to either escalate the faction’s action to headline news or you need to generate multiple vectors, likely keeping the faction action on your To Do list for three or four sessions so that multiple groups (and lots of players!) interact with the fallout.

THE SETTING LORE

A final consideration is bringing players up to speed on the campaign’s lore so that they can create their characters and understand what’s going on.

Here, again, I think you’ll find it most useful to think of the open campaign as many different solo campaigns. In other words, even at session fifty of the open table, a new player is effectively joining a brand new campaign. Imagine that you ran a dedicated campaign in Waterdeep and now you’re running a new campaign in Waterdeep with a completely different group of players: You would need to introduce these new players to the setting, but you wouldn’t spend a bunch of time talking about everything that happened in the previous campaign. The same thing is true of the open table.

Since you want quick character creation for an open table, I generally recommend having no more than a two-page handout and/or a five-minute spiel to orient a new player. In practice, I’ve found that I rarely need to update this. For example, in my Castle Blackmoor open table, the original introduction boiled down to: “There’s a castle and there’s a dungeon underneath it. Adventurers have been going down to explore its depths in the hopes of rescuing Baron Fant, who was kidnapped from the castle by monsters that emerged from the dungeons.”

Lots and lots of stuff happened within the dungeons, but this spiel was largely unaltered until it became common knowledge that Baron Fant had been transformed into a vampire. And even this was, obviously, a pretty minor adjustment: “Adventurers have been going down to explore its depths in pursuit of Baron Fant, who fled into the dungeons after being turned into a vampire.”

What you want to be cautious of is allowing more and more narrative to creep into your spiel. If my Castle Blackmoor campaign had continued, for example, you could imagine the spiel growing over time: “There’s a castle and there’s a dungeon underneath it. The campaign started when it was believed Baron Fant had been kidnapped by monsters that emerged from the dungeons, but it was later discovered that Baron Fant had actually been turned into a vampire and fled into the dungeons. He was later slain, but only after turning one of the adventurers who had gone after him. Lady Eilidh, as she became known, has withdrawn further into the depths of the dungeon, taking with her the vampiric remnants of the hobbit village that was also corrupted by the vampires. It’s currently pixie breeding season, diplomatic relations have been opened with a colony of werelions within the dungeon, and other expeditions continue apace.”

In reality, what I actually did was simplify my spiel: “There’s a castle and there’s a dungeon underneath it, which adventurers have been exploring.”

It wasn’t that current events weren’t relevant, but that information would organically flow to the player through

• the other players discussing which adventure they wanted to go on;
• the random rumors I rolled up for each new character; and
• the events of actual play (including headline news, as discussed above).

For similar reasons, having new players generally default to playing characters who are “new in town” (whatever that means for your particular open table) can be very useful. Even if a new PC isn’t actually new in town, thinking in that paradigm can still be a good way of identifying what information is truly essential.

It seems paradoxical, but often stripping down information a new player needs to process before they start playing can often help them not only get oriented faster, but also get them immersed into the lore faster (because they’ll start encountering it through play as a living experience as they build their own personal story).

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1

T-Prime asks:

I really like your Roll Initiative Last video, but how could you use this with the alternative initiative checks from Pathfinder?

I often get asked questions like this. Here’s another one:

D. asks:

I’ve been using your Dice of Destiny system for years. It revolutionized my Vampire game! But now I see that you’re talking about D&D a lot. How does that work?

There’s also a more hostile variety where someone will, for example, see me talking about perception-type skill checks, and snarkily denounce me for “only playing playing D&D.”

This is, of course, hilarious. Ironically the angriest folk often seem to be those who have played D&D and literally one other RPG and have concluded that any points of difference between the two represents some fundamental divide between D&D and every other RPG in existence.

But the point is, of course, that RPGs do differ from each other. There are a lot of skills and techniques – particularly at the macro-level (like scenario structures) – that you can transfer from one game to another, but there are others that can’t survive the transition. This is particularly true when you get down in the trenches and are finessing how you handle individual action resolutions to best effect. (Consider, for example, Rulings in Practice: Sanity Checks, which is obviously only relevant in systems that have sanity check mechanics.)

So, for example, how can you use Roll Initiative Last in a system like Pathfinder where the initiative check made for each encounter will vary depending on how each encounter gets started (and what individual characters are doing)?

Well… you don’t. Compared to systems where you can Roll Initiative Last, those systems are trading a certain amount of efficiency for the benefit of more accurately modeling different types of encounters (and also likely encouraging players to explore different ways of initiating encounters).

Similarly, Technoir eschews initiative entirely. Instead, during a confrontation, the only rule is that everybody must take an action before anyone is allowed to take a second action, and the order in which those actions are taken is left up to the discretion of the GM. Here, again, efficiency is sacrificed, but with the benefit of both flexibility and seamless action scene transitions.

In the Infinity RPG, on the other hand, the PCs always go first, but the GM can “steal initiative” by spending Heat points. Here the system essentially “bakes in” the benefits of Roll Initiative Last (since you can launch straight into any encounter without pausing for initiative rolls), but instead of Technoir’s completely open flexibility, it plugs the whole thing into fueling the Momentum & Heat economy that’s a core pillar of the game.

Are these trade-offs worth it? That’s ultimately up to you and your group. (And what’s right for one game won’t necessarily be right for another.)

Of course, these other systems will also have expert-level techniques that can’t be used in D&D. For example, in games like Technoir and Infinity where you need to be able to answer the question, “Who hasn’t gone yet this round?”, it’s usually a good idea to keep a list of combatants and check them off as they each take their actions. In a system that uses hot-potato initiative (where, at the end of their turn, each player decides which character is going to take their turn next), it becomes essential to figure out how to make sure everyone at the table has access to this information.

(And that’s an example of a trade-off I don’t like: The extra bookkeeping necessary to make sure everyone knows who’s going to next, plus the extra decision points, plus the analysis paralysis from not being able to plan your turn ahead of time creates a huge drag in actual play and is just not worth whatever marginal benefits the hot-potato initiative is supposedly providing.)

ADAPTING TECHNIQUES

Sometimes, though, a technique that doesn’t work in a new system can be adapted so that it does.

For example, let’s go back to Pathfinder initiative checks. You can’t pre-roll initiative at the end of each encounter because you can’t be certain which type of initiative check each character will be making.

Could you just have everyone pre-roll every type of initiative check and then just use the appropriate set of checks? Probably not. Even if you limited this to just the most common initiative checks (Perception, Stealth, etc.), the extra hassle of collecting all that info and the time spent on wasted rolls probably isn’t worth it. Plus, you’ll still need to sort those variable results into the final initiative order.

Maybe you could use secret rolling to achieve a similar effect? You’ll need to be on your toes, but if you’re good at multitasking you might be able to get all those initiative checks made when it becomes clear a fight is about to happen but before things actually kick off. The trick, of course, is that this is no longer easy to pull off, and you might run into problems with players who don’t like losing the illusory sense of “agency” that comes with rolling their own dice.

Digital tools might help, though. You could imagine one that lets you very quickly select the appropriate skill for each combatant and then click a single button that would roll and organize the entire initiative order for you.

Alternatively, you can actually tweak the mechanics to achieve a desired effect or efficiency.

As an extreme example, you could just drop the entire concept of alternative initiative checks and go back to having just one type of initiative check. (You’d do this if the trade-off of efficiency for modeling different encounter approaches wasn’t worth it to you.)

As a less extreme example, you might learn that your group is overwhelmingly likely to make initiative checks of a particular type. (Probably Perception-based initiative.) So now you can have everyone Roll Initiative Last with that check type, but rule that if an alternative approach is taken (Stealth, for example), then a new roll will be made and supersede the pre-roll.

Would that work? Maybe. But in some groups you might discover that this creates some weird metagaming. (“I’d sneak up on them, but then I’d lose that great Perception initiative check I made!”) You could combat that with secret checks (but now with easier bookkeeping!).

Or you could lean into it by instead ruling that the new initiative check will only supersede the original check if it’s better than the original check. This would, in turn, encourage players to always find an alternative approach to initiating encounters than whatever the default approach is. Is that desirable? That’s a question only you and your group can answer.

FINESSE TECHNIQUES

Taking a slightly broader view here, a lot of what we’re talking about here are finesse techniques: These are the subtle little differences in how we use, interpret, present, implement, and execute the mechanics of an RPG. (And also non-mechanical interactions!)

These techniques can have a huge impact on the quality of a game session, but a surprisingly small amount of GMing advice talks about this stuff. Perhaps this is because such techniques can be so situational in their use. Whatever the case may be, I think you can reap huge rewards by making a point of really thinking not just about the rules you’re using, but how you’re using them.

For another example of finesse techniques, check out Random GM Tips: The Numbers That We Say.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1

David M. asks:

How do you marry scenes (framing, agenda, bangs, etc.) with scenarios/game structures? Do you prepare scene ideas within your scenario “tool bag”, or do they typically pop up in your games organically through your scenario prep?

I ask because scenarios, which I view as more freeform, amorphous, and/or a “bag of tools”, don’t seem to lead directly into scene-framing; however, prepping scenes seem anathema to the flexibility of nodes, scenarios, etc. 

The answer to this question is going to make a lot more sense if you’re familiar with The Art of Pacing, so if you haven’t read that series, you may want to pop over and take a peek. In brief, though, a scene has:

• An agenda, which is what the scene is about. It can be thought of as the question the scene is asking. (For example: Can the PCs escape the kobolds? Can Baron von Stauffen trick the PCs into revealing the identity of their patron? Can they steal the Ruby of Omarrat?)
• A bang, which is the inciting incident that kicks off the scene.
• A location and characters.
• An ending, which may or may not resolve the original agenda of the scene.

The quick answer to your question is that I generally don’t prep full scenes. There are exceptions, but in situation-based scenarios you’re far more likely to be prepping parts of scenes — agendas, bangs, locations, characters, etc. — and then combining and framing those parts into fully realized scenes in reaction to what the players are doing.

For example, my campaign status document is often stocked with a timeline of bangs, many of which are generated by things that have previously happened during play. For example, maybe the PCs have angered the Domingo cartel, so the cartel sends an assassin to kill them.

You could, in fact, prep this as a full scene: The assassin will attack the PCs when they go to a specific place and in a specific way. (For example, when the PCs go to the 1029 Bar, their favorite hangout, the assassin will try to poison their drinks.) And there are many cases when that’s exactly what you should do.

In practice, though, I’m far more likely to just put the assassin in my campaign status document. The actual scene I frame will be the result of combining that scene fragment with the events of actual play. For example, maybe the PCs decide to hole up in a motel outside of town. What might happen next? Well, I can look at my timeline of bangs, pull the assassin, combine it with the given circumstances, and frame up a scene where the assassin attacks them at the motel.

Similarly, if I’ve running a mystery scenario, my adventure notes will likely be filled with locations and characters for the PCs to investigate. But those aren’t necessarily scenes. They’re just parts of scenes, and the actual scenes that get framed up will depend on where the PCs go, what they do, and how events play out.

To take a simple example, the PCs might identify a suspect. When they decide to investigate the suspect, what scene(s) will you frame up? Well, that depends. Are they going to interrogate them? Put them under surveillance? Hack their phone? Try to seduce them under false pretenses? Each of those would be completely different scenes, often playing out at different locations, with different bangs, and with very different agendas.

As this suggests, scenario structures are going to give you guidance on what scene elements to prep and how to use them. In many cases, the structure tell you how to frame your scenes: What scenes to frame, what questions are important to answer, and what to fill those scenes with. It’ll also often tell you a lot about empty time — the unimportant stuff you can and should be framing past to the next scene.

For example, consider a dungeon scenario: You prep individual rooms filled with threats, secrets, and treasures. The structure naturally leads you to frame each room as a scene, with common agendas focused on the content keyed to the room like:

• Can the PCs defeat the monsters?
• Can the PCs find the treasure?
• Can the PCs solve the puzzle?

Similarly, in a node-based scenario one of your nodes might be an NPC with key information (that will lead the PCs to other nodes and/or reveal deeper truths about the conspiracy). The structure here is going to naturally lead you to frame scenes that have some specific variation of, “Can the PCs find the leads they need to continue their investigation?” as the agenda.

Of course, you’re not limited to these basic, structurally suggested scenes. Your scenarios will be enriched if you can find — or follow your players’ lead in finding — agendas that are more unique, personal, and tailored to the context of the campaign. But the fundamental guidance of the structure will nevertheless be helpful.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #20: Transferable Techniques

SPOILERS FOR DRAGON HEIST

Anne asks:

I want to run Dragon Heist for my group. Everyone is exited and we’ve already created characters, but I’ve just discovered that two of my players already know the Cassalanters’ secret. It’s not their fault, but I’m really frustrated. Is there anything I can do?

This is a really tough position to be put in, and it’s definitely something you have to think about when running a published campaign. Particularly when it comes to Wizards of the Coast’s official D&D adventures, a lot of this stuff just kind of leaks into the meme-sphere. Your players may not even realize they’ve been spoiled until they’re actually playing the adventure. For example, the secret identity of the big bad guy in Storm King’s Thunder is spoiled in a Magic the Gathering expansion. I’m currently facing similar concerns for running Descent Into Avernus, which are further complicated because (a) the title of the adventure is a spoiler in itself and (b) there are questions about how much Baldur’s Gate 3 spoils things.

Assuming that you don’t want to swap adventures or drop the players who are spoiled, there are, broadly speaking, three approaches to handling this.

First, talk to the spoiled player and ask them to be discrete and not spoil the experience for others. If you’ve got a really good player who’s willing to be responsible about this, particularly if they tend to play from the Author stance (and, therefore, immersion in their character’s POV is of less importance to them), this can work.

In my experience, though, this is still a diminished experience. It’s like working together to solve a crossword puzzle with someone who’s already solved it: At best, they can sit back and not participate in those elements of the campaign. (Which, in some cases, can be a tell in its own right and still ruin the experience for the other players!)

Second, change the spoiled element or give it a twist to surprise the player. For example:

• Change the Cassalanters’ name (and perhaps a few other pertinent details) so the PCs don’t recognize them.
• The Cassalanters are innocent! The story they tell (i.e., diabolists have cursed their children and they’re trying to lift the curse) is true. Take all the Asmodean elements and shift them to a different noble family. (Maybe the Gralhunds?)
• Since the twist won’t work, simply don’t have the Cassalanters approach the PCs as potential allies. They’ll be open villains when they appear, no different than Xanathar and his minions, and therefore the players’ knowing that they’re diabolists won’t be a problem.

(Can you think of other options for working around a Cassalanter spoiler?)

Making these changes will often mean choosing tradeoffs. For example, making the Cassalanters innocent victims means losing the “It was the parents!” twist. Obviously, you should try to choose tradeoffs that you can live with, and you should also look for ways to not only mitigate the damage, but also create cool new opportunities. (If you’d still like a big twist reveal for the cultists’ identity, for example, maybe it’s Renaer who’s the Asmodean cult leader?)

Something to consider here is whether or not the player knows that they’re spoiled. For example, they might know that the Cassalanters are diabolists because they’ve encountered them in a different adventure, but they might simultaneously have no idea that the Cassalanters are part of the Dragon Heist campaign. If that’s the case, then you might be able to get away with just quietly changing the Cassalanters’ names.

If a player knows that they’re spoiled, on the other hand, and you’re completely altering or removing the spoiled element, then it may be a good idea to tell the player what you’re doing (so that they don’t have to walk on eggshells or worry about it). If you’re twisting their expectations, on the other hand, that twist will likely be at least partly based on subverting the players’ meta-knowledge, so you wouldn’t want to double the spoiler by warning them that it’s coming.

Either way, though, you’ll likely want to combine this with Option #1, warning them not to discuss the spoilers with the other players, even if they’re no longer true for the current campaign.

The third option, however, is to turn the spoiled players into co-conspirators. Since the players know the spoilers, frame things so that their CHARACTERS also know the spoiler, but have a reason not to share it with the other PCs. (At least, not immediately.)

In this case, for example, what if the spoiled players’ characters were actually members of the Asmodean cult, sworn to secrecy? When the Cassalanters approach the group and ask for help (still under false pretenses), it’s at least in part because the cult members are part of the group and can vouch for them. (Note that, depending on how much the spoiled players know, you might still be able to keep some surprises – e.g., the true nature of the ritual the Cassalanters are planning – in reserve, or create new twists that are uniquely possible with the new framing.)

The great thing about this approach is that it once again unifies the player and character experiences, so that the player can enjoy the immersive experience of their character’s POV; the puzzle-solving aspects of game play; and the dramatic satisfaction of surprise and payoff.

In this particular case, of course, it’s also creating potential inter-party antagonism between the PCs, which can be problematic. (And some groups may be uncomfortable with any hidden knowledge, even if the knowledge isn’t inimical to the other PCs’ interests.) A full breakdown of how to handle these concerns is a discussion for another time, but a few things I would think about for this specific scenario are:

• Noting that it doesn’t immediately make the PCs antagonistic with each other. Even when the Cassalanters approach the group, the group’s interests can still remained aligned.
• If/when conflict does arise, making sure it remains clear that the diabolist PCs always have the choice to swap their allegiance. (This would be another strong reason to keep the true nature of the ritual hidden from them, in my opinion.)
• Set up replacement characters in the supporting cast that the diabolist players can easily step into if a rift in the party forces the diabolist characters out. (And making sure the players of the diabolist characters are aware that this is a possible outcome.)

Generally speaking, I’ve found that it’s usually possible to set up this sort of dynamic in a way that’s fun and thrilling for everyone. But it’s also useful to remember that there are other ways to set up motivated hidden knowledge that doesn’t create party strife. For example, I ran a campaign where one of the PCs had access to secret lore through their clan… but the clan’s beliefs also meant that they were honor-bound to keep it a secret. When circumstances and trust resulted in them finally entrusting their fellow PCs with the secrets, it was just a cool moment; nobody felt betrayed or at odds.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #19

suffering asks:

What considerations are there for structuring a scenario so that the PCs are forced to choose between options that are mutually exclusive?

For example, the PCs are investigating a smuggling operation. A ship they suspect is being used for smuggling has docked. The PCs can investigate the ship or stake out the crew, but they don’t have time for both. By the time they’re done on the ship, the crew will have finished their dealings; if they follow the crew, the ship will have been cleaned out of most of the incriminating evidence.

Whichever way they go, they’ll have enough information to proceed, but won’t have the full picture.

The simple answer is: No reason to avoid it!

Framing scenarios or scenes so that they have tough choices in them is actually a great idea! For example, I have a video about dilemma scenario hooks, another example of dilemma-based scenario, that discusses some of the really cool dynamics you can get from designing scenarios this way.

If you want to explore the more advanced answer to this question, though, there are three things I would think about.

First, dilemma-based design can create a lot of wasted prep, as described in the Smart Prep series (among other places). If the PCs can do X or they can do Y, but not both, then your prep for one of those things will end up not being used. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something I would think about a try to mitigate. (For example, if the situation allows for it, maybe you don’t fully prep X or Y until the PCs have made the choice about which path they’re going to follow.)

This seems like less of a concern for the specific scenario you’re describing: The two sequences are pretty short, and the prep for either probably still circles back into the scenario later on. (For example, the stat blocks and write-ups for the crew members the PCs could follow will still be relevant later even if the PCs stay and search the ship.) But it’s probably worth keeping in mind.

Second, when thinking in terms of framing dilemmas, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of contingency-base prep: “If the PCs do X, then… but if they do Y, then…” But it’s going to be more useful (and probably also waste less prep) if — even while you’re aware of the potential dilemma — you keep your eye on situation-based prep.

In other words, think less about what the PCs might do and more about what’s happening. There’s a practical difference between prepping “the PCs can follow the crew or investigate the ship” and “this is what the crew of the ship are doing… I wonder what the PCs will do?”

For example, maybe the PCs spit up and do both. Or maybe they decide to ambush the crew and kill them. Or they wait for one crew member to become isolated, grab ‘em, and interrogate them. Or they set the ship on fire. Or they stage a fake crime so that they can call the cops and have them investigate the ship. Any or all of this could come from “half the crew goes into town on business; the other half stays on the ship and offloads the cargo.”

To read more about contingency-based prep, check out Prep Tools, Not Contingencies.

Finally, what effect does dilemma-based design have on node-based design and the Three Clue Rule?

To some extent, we can simplify this question by ignoring the dilemma aspect and instead focusing on time-limited nodes. For example, there are clues that the PCs can only get by following the smuggler crew while they’re doing their business in town. (Or only at the dark ritual or only at Lord Dalton’s party or only by observing the fall of the blue meteor or whatever.)

This can be even further generalized to “the PCs missed a node” — e.g., they never actually to Danner’s Meats for whatever reason. And even more generalized to “they missed some clues” (because they didn’t find them, couldn’t figure them out, etc.).

The good news is that the core function of the Inverted Three Clue Rule is to solve the problem of “they missed a clue.” So as long as you haven’t put all your eggs in one basket, you probably don’t need to worry about it.

With that being said, if your have a strongly-framed dilemma (such that the PCs can definitely only do A or B, but not both), it probably wouldn’t hurt to toss a few more redundant clues into the scenario and/or prep a proactive element to act as a backup.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #18