JRL writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU

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

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

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

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

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

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #9

João writes:

I don’t want to railroad my players. But how can I create a classic quest to destroy the Evil Thing™ without railroading?

The principle of “don’t prep plots, prep situations” can also be thought of as prepping toys and then letting the players either (a) figure out how they want to play with them and/or (b) how they’re going to react to you actively playing them.

So if you’re prepping an RPG version of The Lord of the Rings, don’t prep the journey to Mt. Doom. Instead, prep:

• the One Ring
• the villains interested in the Ring (Sauron & Saruman)
• the tools those villains can use against the PCs (Nazgul, crebain, orcs)

And so forth.

Let’s say that we’re in Rivendell and Elrond, et. al. have just explained the history of the Ring, that Sauron is seeking it, and that the only way to destroy it is by throwing it into Mt. Doom.

(You could also design this scenario without proscribing one method for destroying the Ring: It could be  Mt. Doom or the fire of an Elder Dragon or the sunken forges of Beleriand. Or you could take one step further back and not make Sauron’s defeat or destruction dependent on the One Ring. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just focus on the McGuffin Delivery concept.)

So you’re in Rivendell. You have the One Ring. And the know the Ring has to go to Mt. Doom.

Add a map of Middle Earth showing where Rivendell and Mt. Doom are.

Now, let the players decide how they want to get to Mt. Doom.

And… that’s it.

Railroad averted.

ACROSS THE MAP

The players now have a vast array of options open to them: Go through Moria? Over Caradhras? Through the Gap of Rohan? Head straight down the coast and sail to Gondor? Escort Bilbo to the Lonely Mountain, call in old favors owed, and taken army of dwarves south?

This, of course, makes a “here’s a map of the whole world, plot a course for yourself” campaign like this incredibly daunting to prep in advance and basically impossible to do so without wasting a bunch of time prepping stuff that will never be used.

If this is for your home campaign, though, you don’t need to prep everything in advance. You can figure out what your players are planning to do and then prep specifically for that.

They’re heading over the mountains? Prep Caradhras.

They’re heading to the coast? Prep the Corsairs of Umbar.

So what DO you need to prep for the map?

You need a broad patina of the world so that the players have enough context to make their decisions regarding route. The map provides the structure here, and so your prep mostly boils down to being able to answer the question, “What’s here?” when the players point at the map and ask.

You don’t need a lot of detail for this. Just one to three sentences for each broad region.

“What’s here?”

“That’s the Lonely Mountain, a dwarven kingdom ruled by King Dain.”

Just drawing the map will honestly do 90% of the work here. (There’s mountains here, a kingdom called Rohan there, etc.)

DEFAULT TO YES, FLESH OUT THE WORLD

As the players begin making their plans, they’re going to propose routes you never even considered. When this happens, default to yes and flesh out the world.

Player 1: There are mountains here. Should we go around them to the north or south?

Player 2: What about climbing straight over them?

Player 3: What about under the mountains? Are there any dungeons we could go through?

DM: (thinking fast) There are two, actually. A system of caves in the north near Mirkwood, infested with goblins. And an abandoned dwarven city to the south.

The players decide that sounds too dangerous and they decide to head south instead.

But now, of course, we’ve established that the Mines of Moria exist…

PLAYING WITH YOUR TOYS

The other thing you’ve prepped, of course, are those toys we mentioned earlier. With the planning session complete, you can use these tools to flesh out your prep for the players’ intended route. For example, they’re heading towards the Gap of Rohan, so you pull out some crebain spies dispatched by Saruman and plan to have those followed up by Uruk-Hai patrols if the PCs get spotted.

But these toys are also designed for active play. When the players do something unexpected that you weren’t prepared for, the first thing to ask your self is: How can I use my scenario toys to respond to that?

The second thing is to see if you have any generic toys that can be plugged in. (The PCs have gotten spooked by the crebain and are heading to Caradhras now? Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got this Living Mountain write-up from the bestiary.)

And the third thing is to say (when the players fail the extended skill check on Caradhras and are forced to turn aside to Moria), “Reaching the top of the stone steps, you look down upon the Walls of Moria. There the Gate stood once upon a time, the Elven Door at the end of the road from Hollin by which you have come… Okay, well this seems like a good place to wrap things up for this week.”

That should give you plenty of time to prep a legendary dungeon.

(Double check your challenge ratings, though. Otherwise someone might die in there.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #8

G. asks:

A villain in my campaign has run away to fight again another day. The players want to pursue them, but the villain is in hiding. How many clues should I prep for a revelation that I don’t want the PCs to access?

One thing to consider is what you mean by “access.” There are lots of non-actionable revelations you can have about, say, the Lost City of Arthak-Val without ever learning where it is or how to find it; i.e., without being able to access the Lost City. The same can be true about your villain’s hiding spot.

But if by “access” you mean “learn the revelation,” then the answer to how many clues you should prep is zero. The Three Clue Rule isn’t about how many clues the players need to draw a conclusion; it’s about having redundancy for missed or misunderstood clues. A single clue can (and usually should) be enough for the players to figure something out.

Of course, that seems to be the case here: You have a revelation that the players want (“the bad guy has gone to location X”) that you don’t want to give them.

My personal druthers here are going to default to playing to find out: If the players can figure out some plausible way to learn that information, let’s roll with it and see what happens.

What I don’t need to do, though, is go out of my way to provide them with those leads. The Three Clue Rule, it should be remembered, only applies to essential revelations. If the finding the bad guy is not, in my opinion, an essential revelation, then I’m under no obligation to provide three clues or any clues for it. I’m just saying that I won’t automatically block the players if they come up with some clever idea.

When your first impulse is “you can’t find that information,” however, here are a few things to consider.

First, looking for the thing they want doesn’t find what they want (i.e., the bad guy), but it does find something interesting. In other words, reward the players’ efforts, albeit not in the way they were expecting.

Second, consider rephasing your initial impulse from “there’s no way to find the bad guy” to “finding the bad guy will not be trivial.” In this case, “not trivial” means that there isn’t a direct vector from the PCs to the bad guy. Instead, the PCs will have to work their way through several revelations to get to the revelation they want.

For example: You don’t find the bad guy, but you do learn that the only person who might know where the bad guy is hiding is Sebastian Raoul, his lieutenant. Where’s Sebastian? Well, turns out he’s gone to ground, too. Looking for a lead on Sebastian turns up his accountant. It takes a raid on an armored compound to get your hands on him. He doesn’t know where Sebastian is, either, but he knows that Sebastian’s bank accounts are held in a Swiss bank. So if you break into the bank, you might be able to trace where the account is being accessed from. That, finally, leads you to Sebastian, who can give you a lead on the bad guy. (Although possibly still not directly to the bad guy.)

During this whole sequence, of course, the players are engaged and excited. They don’t feel thwarted. They’re constantly making progress towards their goal!

Meanwhile, the rest of the scenario — whatever it might be — is still going on. Each of these steps along the path to finding the bad guy can also be seeded with additional clues and rewards that can assist or direct the PCs towards the other stuff happening in the scenario.

On a similar note, you can also respond to this impulse by immediately dogpiling the PCs with distractions. Toss lots of scenario hooks at them. Pull out a bunch of proactive nodes. Sure, they want to go looking for the bad guy, but there are vampires attacking the orphanage right now, so that’s going to have to wait. (Note: You’re not making that decision for them; you’re just putting them in a situation where they need to choose between a long-term goal of finding the bad guy and responding to immediate crises.)

DESIGNING VECTOR PATHS

The example of extending the path to a revelation may seem really complicated, but this is why I find thinking in terms of vectors so useful.

To unpack this a bit, it can be natural to think in terms of where the PCs are now and ask yourself, “What do they need to do from where they are to get where they want to go?”

If there’s a clear answer to that, great. But if there isn’t, you can give yourself a real headache trying to figure it out. Which makes sense: You’re basically trying to solve an imaginary mystery for which you haven’t created the clues yet.

This can also lend itself to overly simplistic resolutions: “I’m at Point A, how do I get to Point B?” tends to result in a straight line from A to B, which is exactly what we’re not looking for right now.

Instead, start from where they want to go (or what they want to know) and ask yourself, “How do they get there?” and/or “Why is it difficult to get there?” Then take the answer to that question and ask it again.

So:

• How do they find the Bad Guy? Sebastian, his lieutenant, knows.
• How do they find Sebastian? By tracking his banking activity.
• How do they find his banking activity? By accessing his Swiss bank account.
• Why is it difficult to access the Swiss bank? It has to be identified.
• How do they identify the Swiss bank? By getting their hands on Sebastian’s accountant.
• Why is it difficult to get their hands on the accountant? Because he’s holed up in an armed compound.

Then you just flip this around to determine the path.

The one trick, though, is that the PCs need to understand that this IS the path. Otherwise, they’re just blindly fumbling around. (If you tell them “there’s an accountant named Bartolo Russo holed up in an armed compound,” they’ll have no idea why they should care about that.)

To close the loop, PCs can figure out the path through non-actionable revelations: “To find the bad guy, you have to find Sebastian.” That’s a non-actionable because they don’t know where Sebastian is. You could have them do another investigation to figure out where Sebastian is, or you could pack that into the “find Sebastian” revelation (i.e., the revelation is “you’ll have to find Sebastian, and Sebastian’s only known associate is an accountant”).

One last subtlety I used here is to obfuscate an intermediary step when the PCs were figuring out the path they needed to pursue: They know they need the accountant, but they don’t realize that the accountant can’t send them directly to Sebastian (and they’ll need to go through the Swiss bank). This is a good technique because it stops the resolution of the path from being rote (you discovered all the steps, now you do all the steps); and it can also tighten up the “finding the path” phase of things to reduce the perception of “endless brick walls” without any sense of forward progress.

The particular example given here is also quite linear. This can be fine, but you can add some extra dynamics by providing multiple vector options at a particular step. For example, instead of the accountant being Sebastian’s only known associate, you might have three different known associates the PCs could potentially learn about and use to track him down. (Keep in mind that you don’t need to fully prep a path until the PCs actually take it. For example, you don’t need to prep the accountant’s compound until the players tell you that’s where they’re heading in the next session.)

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #7

V. writes:

I’m heading into Chapter 2 of Dragon Heist next session. We left off right after Volo “paid” them with a deed for Trollskull Manor, so they want to start with inspecting the tavern in the morning. I’m going to have them re-encounter the urchins there, but then what? I’m not really sure how to keep the session moving after that.

Chapter 2 of Dragon Heist presents a little sandbox-like interlude between the introductory events of Chapter 1 and (in the Remix) the Grand Game literally blowing up on the PCs’ doorstep in the form of the fireball. It includes:

• Fixing up Trollskull Manor so that it can be re-opened (or sold or whatever else the PCs want to do with it).
• Other businesses and NPCs in Trollskull Alley for the PCs to meet and build relationships with.
• A half dozen factions who will be interested in recruiting the PCs, along with short faction missions that the PCs will be asked to do if they join up.
• A hostile businessmen (Emmek Frewn) who will hire a gang of wererats to harass the PCs.

To this toolkit, you can add any loose threads from Chapter 1 that the PCs are interested in pursuing: Relationships with Volo, Renear, Floon, etc. Investigations into the Zhentarim or Xanatharians. And so forth.

That’s a whole bunch of stuff! But how do you actually bring it to the table?

(As a quick aside: One important thing to keep in mind is that you’re not supposed to wrap up everything in Chapter 2 before Chapter 3 begins. The Remix, in particular, decompresses the Grand Game so that you have space to continue incorporating the faction and Trollskull business into the campaign. Doing so will add depth as the PCs’ actions weave together the Grand Game, the factions, and Trollskull into a dynamic interlock. But I digress.)

What you want do at the top of Chapter 2 is basically a massive dump of options — stuff that needs to get done around the tavern, scenario hooks, etc. You want the players to immediately have to start making choices about what they’re going to spend their time and focus on. This is what will keep things interesting.

To achieve this:

1. Factions will start paying house calls to say, “Hi. Heard you’re awesome. We have a job we’d like you to do.” Renaer is a VIP and saving him in Chapter 1 created a lot of buzz for the PCs.
2. Immediately start having guilds show up to discuss repairs that need to be made and services they can provide. (This is why the Remix breaks down the costs associated with repairs and assigns them to specific guilds. The guild reps humanize the expenses and the individual breakdown also gives the players a chance to think creatively about how they might work around each guild’s remit to save cash… while probably earning the guild’s enmity for scab labor.)
3. Get Frewn, the urchins, and one or two other people from Trollskull Alley involved. Frewn, in particular, will start a whole chain of events, but the ongoing relationships with the other NPCs will develop similarly in an organic fashion. (I recommend giving space to the other alley residents to give the PCs a chance to seek them out and explore the alley for themselves.)

Make sure that the guild costs are significantly (but not impossibly) higher than the group’s cash-on-hand. This will motivate them to figure out a paycheck (i.e., they can’t just focus on remodeling the tavern, they’re going to have to go do interesting things to pay for it).

Put them under a time crunch. They should NOT be able to do everything, at least not without splitting up. Have stuff from two different faction missions happen at the same time; or at the same time as the guild reps show up for some “hard negotiations.” They’re going to have to make choices.

Similarly, don’t wait for one thing to wrap up before triggering the next. Interrupt scenes with other scenes and hooks. For example, they’re negotiating with a guild rep when Frewn shows up or one of the urchins runs in to report that Nat has fallen into a sinkhole. Or both.

MAKE YOUR MENU

If this feels like a lot to juggle… it is!

Across all of these different elements of the campaign, you might have forty or fifty different things you’re trying to keep track of. It’s too much.

The solution?

Make lists.

Specifically, make a sequential list for each category:

• Guilds
• Factions
• Trollskull Drama
• Follow-Ups

Under “Guilds” list all the guild visits in the order you think they should happen (or just randomly if order doesn’t seem significant). Do the same for your faction recruitment/mission assignments, Trollskull-related NPCs, etc.

As you’re running, you can now just glance at your lists and trigger something happening by just grabbing the top item off any list. (This isn’t a binding contract, of course. You can still bounce around if it makes sense in the moment.)

This significantly simplifies what you’re trying to keep track of in your head at any moment: Instead of forty or fifty different items, you only have to think in terms of “guild stuff, faction stuff, and alley stuff.”

I think of it like ordering off a menu: If you dump everything into one big category, ordering is a nightmare. So you organize stuff into appetizers, main course, dessert, and so forth.

Then, during play, you’re like, “Hmm… Getting peckish. Let me take a peek at the menu.”

And because you’ve pre-organized stuff, you largely just need to jump back and forth from one menu to the next.

FOLLOW-UPS

“Follow-Ups,” it should be noted, is a list you can use to follow-up on previous scenes: They piss off a glazier guild rep, so you think, “That guy’s gonna bring some muscle to break their new windows.” Jot that down in your Follow-Ups list.

You could, of course, just add this to the end of the Guilds list, but then you’d have to cycle through establishing everything else on the Guilds list before the PCs would start experiencing the consequences of their choices. Alternatively, you could put it on the top of the Guilds list, but then you’d have to cycle through all your follow-ups before you could introduce new stuff. It’s better to keep a mix of new stuff and old stuff cycling through.

Note that stuff from Chapter 1 – like Renaer or Floon or Volo dropping by for a visit – could also go on the Follow-Ups list. This is a good way to transition stuff from one phase of a campaign to the next and is easy to keep track of on your campaign status document.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #6

V. writes:

In the current 5E adventure I’m running, I’ve attempted to apply many of the concepts I’ve learned from the Alexandrian… Generally, multiple clues have been available to transition PCs between nodes. Now the players are about to experience a party scenario. One planned event will be a senior member of the faction that players belong to showing up unexpectedly at the feast. That NPC is going to give a specific mission to the players that would push them towards a particular node. Would this be considered overt railroading? Something to absolutely avoid?

I guess my mind is really spinning after having just re-read the node series. I don’t remember you mentioning a node structure without multiple entry points to a specific node.

The key thing to understand is that, generally speaking, a node with only one potential point of entry is fragile. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, it just means that you – as the adventure designer – should be aware that it’s quite possible the PCs won’t go to that node. (Because, following the principle of the Three Clue Rule, they either won’t find the lead, won’t understand the lead, or won’t follow the lead.)

The exception to this is a proactive node. These are the nodes that come looking for the PCs. They don’t need multiple leads pointing to them (although they can) because the PCs don’t need to go to them in order for them to enter play.

Scenario hooks, in particular, are often rendered as a proactive node. And a very common form of this, particularly in published adventures, is the job offer: Somebody wants the PCs to do something and they tell them what that is.

This is, of course, that situation you’re looking at here.

One thing to note here from a structural viewpoint is that, while the job offer may be proactive, the next step (of taking the job and going to do whatever the patron asks) is theoretically fragile (because you only have one lead; i.e., accepting the job offer).

In actual practice, however, this tends not to be case: First, you have an NPC literally saying, “Do this,” which eliminates most of the ways in which a lead can fail (by the PCs missing it or misinterpreting it), leaving the only fragility the possibility that the PCs will just outright refuse to follow the lead (i.e., turn down the job). And this is comparatively less likely because, in most campaigns, scenario hooks are considered something that the players are expected to follow, so as long as the players recognize that this job offer is a scenario hook, it becomes much more likely that they’ll accept it. Also, as in your current scenario, such job offers often come from organizations or patrons that the PCs have an established relationship with, making it more likely they’ll do it for in-character reasons.

Yes, the expectation that the PCs will take a scenario hook when it’s offered by the GM is very light railroading. But the “scenario of the week” format in play is quite common and not particularly objectionable, and even in campaigns where that’s not the case, in practice explicit/obvious scenario hooks are just treated as having more “weight” than other leads.

With that being said, the advanced technique to understand here is that the patron’s job offer — i.e., the thing the patron wants the PCs to do — IS NOT THE SCENARIO.

The scenario is whatever situation (e.g., a collection of nodes) the patron’s job offer is pointing the PCs towards.

For example, the patron says, “I’d like you to steal four hundred cure disease potions from this Imperial caravan.” The PCs might do that. They might also steal the potions and fence them. Or warn the caravan guards and then help them protect the shipment so that it reaches the plague victims in Vilheim safely. Or steal them and redirect them to the poor people in the Cataris district instead of the self-serving 1% in Vilheim. Or take the patron’s intel and use it to steal something else from the caravan. Or sell the intel itself. Or… well, lots of things. When you’re designing scenarios instead of plots, the possibilities become almost limitless.

It also become easier at this point to recognize that the job offer from the patron doesn’t have to be the only scenario hook pointing at that caravan, the cure disease potions, and/or the plague victims in Vilheim and Cataris.

This moves us towards material I cover more fully in Juggling Scenario Hooks in the Sandbox and the Running the Sandbox video, but it obviously removes the theoretical fragility of having the job offer as the only lead pointing the PCs towards the scenario.

(Of course, in the sandbox the players will know that they aren’t expected to follow every scenario hook. So, paradoxically, it may become more likely that they never go on that caravan raid. On the other hand, that’s just fine because, in sandbox, the fallout from them NOT raiding the caravan may be even more interesting than if they had. But I digress.)

Once you have multiple scenario hooks in play, the next design revelation you may have is that these hooks don’t all need to point at the same node! For example, the patron’s job offer is “raid the caravan” (which points them at the caravan, from which they can learn about where the cure disease potions are being sent and why). But the PCs might also have an ally whose mother lives in Cataris and has become sick (leading the PCs to start in Cataris, learn about the plague, and then potentially discover the cure disease caravan as a possible solution). Or they pass on the job, the patron hires someone else to hit the caravan, and now a wealthy uncle who lives in Vilheim wants them to track down the culprits and recover the cure.

If you stop thinking in terms of plot, you’ll discover that a scenario can often engage the PCs from lots of different angles, which will, in turn, give them lots of meaningful choices about how they want to engage with it.

The short version is this: No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the PCs getting job offers. In fact, it would be weird if they didn’t. Most PCs are hyper-competent and rapidly accumulate a resume of high-profile accomplishments. They’re exactly the sort of people you want solving your problems for you.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #5