Player: So in Dweredell the Guild is like a local trade organization, right?

GM: That’s right. It’s ruled by a large number of powerful merchant families and its official function is to maintain commercial standards and regulate all matters of craft or trade. But in practice it’s more like a protection racket.

Player: Great! Can you tell me every single member of the Guild and also their immediate heirs?

GM: Uh…

As a GM, it’s actually kind of surprising how often you’ll run into questions like this. In the real world this is the sort of encyclopedic data that you could pull up with a five-second search on the internet. But the game world, of course, does not actually exist, and there’s no quicker way to strip back the veneer and reveal that harsh reality than saying something like, “Tell me the names of everyone who lives on Albert Street!”

On the one hand, it’s a lovely vote of confidence: The players are so impressed by the verisimilitude and depth of your game, that they just naturally assume that the answers to these sorts of questions actually exist!

But however flattering that may be, it doesn’t really change the fact that it leaves you staring out into the vast void of the unknown that they’ve invoked, wondering how it could possibly be filled.

Other examples I’ve encountered include stuff like:

• Can you name every Imperial church and chapel in the city?
• Can we get a list of every front page headline from the Gazette for the month of March 1929?
• Before we question [fictional author], can I get a list of every single book she’s written?
• I’m going to go through the warehouse and check the label on every crate. What do they say?

Of course, sometimes you actually will have a list of every Imperial church and chapel in the city. Those moments — as you reach out, grab the information the players are asking for, and present it with a flourish — are, of course, delightful.

But it’s far more typical, of course, for you to have NOT prepped a label for every crate in the warehouse.

And staring into that void, it’s easy to become trapped in it: Maybe you try to improvise your way through it. Maybe you burble some inanities and then stammer to a halt. Maybe you bring the session to a slamming stop as you spend five or ten minutes brainstorming a bibliography for the fictional author.

Sometimes you’ll want to slam the door shut on the void, even if it doesn’t make any sense: “The identities of the Guild families are a secret!” you’ll cry. Or perhaps, “The crates are all labeled in an unbreakable code!”

Stalling for time is another option, particularly if Google, Bing, and their equivalents don’t exist in your campaign setting: “How are you going to find that information?” (The only drawback here is that the stalling tactic is often limited in its effectiveness and frequently rather boring to actually play through.)

What I usually find effective in resolving this kind of research fishing expedition, however, is a much simpler technique:

“What are you looking for?”

The players have made a very large ask and you’ve become fixated on the impossible scope of it. In actual practice, though, the players are actually interested in some very specific thing related to an unspoken plan they haven’t shared with you yet. (For example, they want to know some details about the author’s work so that they can pose as fans when they talk to her. Or they’re searching the Gazette specifically for any reports of odd occurrences in the Ravenswood neighborhood.)

If you can get them to tell you what they’re really looking for and/or what they’re hoping to do with it, then getting the information they want or creating it or giving them an alternative option or whatever else makes the most sense is often A LOT easier than improvising entire history textbooks or Yellow Pages listings for a fictional setting.

In many ways, this is another invocation of a general principle we first explored in Random GM Tips: Are You Sure You Want To Do That?:

If you don’t understand what the players are trying to achieve with a given action, find out before adjudicating the action.

I can’t do a murder mystery because the PCs will just cast zone of truth!

Awhile back I shared Random GM Tip: Speak With Dead Mysteries, which looks at the particular challenges of designing a murder mystery scenario when the PCs have access to the speak with dead spell (or some similar magical or technological effect). A common follow-up question from people reading this article is, “But what about zone of truth?”

As I mentioned in the original article, you have to start by embracing the fundamental dynamic of a mystery: It’s not to withhold information from the detective(s); it’s about the detective(s) acquiring information.

Insofar as the zone of truth serves as one method that the PCs can use to acquire information, therefore, it won’t be a problem. It will only become a problem if (a) it trivializes all other methods of acquiring information and/or (b) short circuits a specific investigation.

Keeping that in mind, let’s take a closer look.

WHICH ZONE OF TRUTH?

There can be considerable differences in how zone of truth and similar effects work, and this will obviously have an impact on how it affects investigations.

First: Do spellcasters know when the targets of their spells — particularly enchantment spells — make their saving throws?

Personally, I prefer No. (And will often apply this as a house rule even in systems where the answer would be Yes under the rules-as-written or rules-as-intended.) I think pretending to go along with a caster’s domination spell, for example, is a classic genre trope.

This is how zone of truth worked in D&D 2^nd Edition and 3^rd Edition, and it obviously adds a layer of ambiguity to the spell. (If two people contradict each other, is that just a difference of opinion/belief? Or did one of them make their saving throw? Or both of them?) D&D 5^th Edition, on the other hand, adds specific language allowing the caster to know when the spell is in effect, stripping ambiguity.

Second: How often can a character resist the effects of the zone of truth? Do they make a single saving throw when entering the zone? Make a new saving throw every round? Make a saving throw each time they need to make a declarative statement or answer an explicit question?

Once again, D&D 5^th Edition’s version of the effect is the most troublesome for mysteries.

Third: Does the target know they’re in a zone of truth before they speak? If so, it allows them to account for the zone in what they say and how they choose to answer questions.

This has been true for every version of the D&D spell. Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, on the other hand, is usually depicted as surprising those bound by it.

Fourth: Does the effect compel the target to answer direct questions? This would obviously also make the spell a much more powerful tool in the detective’s arsenal, but it’s also not how the D&D spell works.

IDENTIFY THE QUESTION

To paraphrase something Margaret Frazer’s Dame Frevisse once said, the secret to solving a mystery is less about the answers you get to your questions than it is knowing what questions to ask and who to ask them of in the first place.

Often when talking about zone of truth mysteries in a hypothetical sense rather than a practical one, it seems people often default to thinking about an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery where there are eight specific suspects isolated on a country estate. In this scenario, with access to a zone of truth, it’s quite easy to identify both the question (Did you kill Bob?) and who you need to ask (the eight suspects).

But this type of scenario isn’t really common in RPGs to begin with: The plotting of these stories depends on the author having tight control over which questions are asked and when they’re asked in order to create a clever logic puzzle, the solution of which can only occur to the detective at the moment of the author’s choosing. Even if you want to prep a plot in an RPG — and you shouldn’t — it’s still basically impossible to force this kind of sequencing at the table.

As a result, RPG mystery scenarios tend to be built around other structures. For example, it’s not unusual for a mystery scenario to begin at a crime scene filled with physical evidence — e.g., the bloody carnage of a worg attack or the pale gray corpse of a vampire killing — and nary a suspect in sight. Before the PCs can start asking questions, they’ll first need to figure out — as Dame Frevisse said — what the questions are.

To put it another way: Zone of truth can’t short circuit the investigation if the investigation is about figuring who you need to question in the first place.

Next time you’re reading a well-made RPG mystery scenario — like Eternal Lies or Quantronic Heat — take note of how rarely NPCs actually lie to the PCs. Even NPCs who are just withholding information aren’t terribly common. In other words, even without a zone of truth, it’s not unusual for every NPC in these scenarios to say nothing but true things, and the scenario still works just fine.

There is one exploit, however, that clever players can use a zone of truth to unlock:

Can you think of anything that would help our investigation if we knew about it?

Given any kind of limited suspect pool, this question can be used as a quick shortcut for identifying the question(s) they need to ask to solve the mystery, so if you don’t want to get caught flat-footed at the table, it can be useful to prep the clever answer your bad guy(s) will use to evade it.

A good, one-size-fits-all solution here is the incomplete answer: They have to speak the truth, so they do, in fact, have to give the PCs something helpful. But it doesn’t have to be everything that they know would be helpful, nor does it need to be the most helpful thing. Stuff that wastes a ton of time while, technically, being useful is a great fit here.

Can you think of anything else that would be helpful?

Clever player.

The NPC can’t say, “No,” of course, but deflecting back to the first answer is usually possible.

Player: Can you think of anything that would help our investigation if we knew about it?

Bad Guy: I’d check the security cameras.

Player: Can you think of anything else that would be helpful?

Bad Guy: Hmm… I really think the security cameras are what you should check next.

GAIN ACCESS

The other crucial thing about deploying a zone of truth is that you need to (a) get the suspect in the zone and (b) get them to answer your questions.

Returning to our Christie-style manor mystery, if seven of the suspects all readily hop into your zone of truth and the eighth suspect refuses, then the jig is probably up. To avoid this problem, you need to have multiple suspects refuse. The PCs may still be able to use the spell (or the threat of the spell) to narrow the scope of their investigation, but not close it.

The reason for refusal might be specific to each character. The most likely explanation would be some dark secret unrelated (or at least not directly related) to the crime that they nevertheless do not want discovered.

Alternatively, it might be a society-wide condition that can be broadly applied. For example, it might be a cultural more that casting an enchantment spell on someone is unacceptably rude or unethical, such that even suggesting it will likely provoke an outraged response. It could even be a matter of explicit law, with the use of such spells being tightly regulated, limited, and controlled.

This touches on another issue, which is whether or not the PCs have the authority to question people. If they’re police detectives, then it will give them an advantage. (Although they’ll also probably have to abide more closely to the aforementioned laws, in which case they may need to do a bunch of legwork before they can deploy their spell.) If they’re just a bunch of random bozos who have wandered into town, it may be a lot easier for the suspect to dodge their calls.

Which leads us to another obstacle to gaining access, which is just literally finding them. Sure, you want to question Bob. But the door to his apartment has been kicked in, the place has been ransacked, and he’s either been kidnapped or is in the wind. In other words, the mystery — or a significant part of the mystery — can just literally be trying to track down the person you want to use your zone of truth spell on.

Of course, in order to find the person you want to question, you first have to identify them. The manor mystery, of course, still assumes that the list of suspects is immediately obvious, but in a lot of mysteries it’s anything but.

For example, you’ve found Bob: He’s been brutally murdered and his corpse dumped in an alley. You can’t question every single person in the city, so you’re going to have to figure out how to narrow down your suspect list first.

Even once you’ve gotten a suspect into the zone of truth, though, access can continue to be a problem if you enforce the time limit. The D&D 5^th Edition spell, for example, only lasts for ten minutes. That time can vanish surprisingly quickly, so set a timer.

This can be even more of a limitation in a manor house mystery: How many suspects can you rush through the circle before you run out of spells for the day?

If the PCs are trying to rush bunches of NPCs through their zones and you don’t want to play through every encounter, might rule that each witness requires 2d6 minutes or questioning; or perhaps 1d4+1 minutes if the PCs take disadvantage on their interrogation checks.

DESIGN THE CRIME

Imagine that it’s 1850 and you’re anachronistically GMing a roleplaying game. The science fiction game you’re running describes strange devices known as “security cameras” which record everything that takes place in a room.

“How am I supposed to design a mystery scenario when there are security cameras everywhere?!” you cry. “They can just see who did the crime!”

Modern criminals, of course, simply know that security cameras exist and they plan their crimes accordingly. In many cases, the evidence they leave behind while countering the security cameras will be the very clues detectives use to track them down!

An easy solution, of course, is to say something like, “I drank a potion of anti-enchantment that lasts for forty-eight hours,” thus negating the zone of truth entirely. (A clever criminal, of course, will make sure they have some perfectly reasonable pretext for having done so. An even cleverer criminal will have slipped it into the drinks last night and everyone at the manor house has immunity.)

This sort of stonewalling — where the PCs’ abilities are simply negated — is mostly just frustrating, however. It’s usually more fun to find ways that don’t just completely shut off the spell.

To put our suspect at their maximum disadvantage, let’s once again return to the manor house scenario that takes so many other options (access, identifications, etc.) off the table. This, however, is precisely the situation in which the murderer would anticipate a zone of truth. So how would they plan for that?

• They would anticipate the question, “Did you kill so-and-so?” and therefore have planned their crime so that they can honestly say, “No,” (e.g., they tricked them into suicide, arranged for a convenient accident, or hired someone else to kill them).
• They sent a dominated doppelganger disguised as themselves to enter the zone of truth. If the doppelganger’s identity is discovered, the PCs will find the NPC “knocked out” and tied up in their room. Who did this to them?! The mystery deepens. (Meanwhile, the zone of truth has expired.)
• They covertly trigger a dispel magic effect that destroys the zone of truth, possibly while someone else is being questioned. How many of those spells can you cast today, exactly?
• They arrange for a distraction. “Can you confirm that your name is Miguel Cavaste?” “Yes.” “Can you—” EXPLOSION. By the time of the chaos of the explosion is dealt with, the zone of truth has once again expired.

And so forth.

CONVERSATIONAL GAMBITS

Taking all of the above into consideration, there will nonetheless come the time when the suspect is in the zone of truth and faced with the PCs’ questions.

Maybe that’s all she wrote: Either they confess dramatically, surrender meekly, or initiate the final action scene by attacking the PCs, summoning reinforcements, or attempting to flee.

On the other hand, maybe not.

Instead, the zone of truth questioning can become a cat-and-mouse game: a final riddle for the players to unravel.

Let’s take a look at the conversational gambits an NPC (or PC!) might use when trapped, literally or metaphorically, in a zone of truth.

We’ve already mentioned giving incomplete answers. Just because you have to say true things, doesn’t mean you need to say EVERY true thing you know. Questions like, “Did you see anything suspicious last night?” gives the suspect a huge latitude in directing the interrogators’ attention towards any number of useful distractions.

They can also answer a question with a question. A question, technically, cannot be a lie. So if they can slip this past the interrogators, it can often create the illusion of a false answer: “Do you think Robert could have done this?” or “I had drinks with Marcia last night… what time was it? Around six?”

Another option is to simply refuse to answer. This, of course, looks suspicious. However, we’ve previously talked about cultural mores (“I plead the fifth!”) and simply feigning outrage (“How dare you ask me that?!”) can deflect or, at the very least, buy time.

On that note, simply rambling, delaying, feigning confusion, or otherwise running out the clock is also a perfectly viable strategy when you know the zone of truth has an unforgiving time limit.

SOLUTION IS A KEY, NOT A CONCLUSION

If you think in terms of node-based scenario design, the goal of any interrogation is to gain a lead that will point you to another node where you can continue your investigation.

As long as this remains true, the zone of truth only provides a key that you wanted the PCs to get in the first place. And therefore, of course, the zone of truth isn’t a problem at all.

So this can also bring us back to some basic first principles in RPG scenario design: Don’t prep the specific things that the PCs will do. Instead, prep a robust, dynamic situation for the PCs to interact with.

If you try to prep a specific thing for the PCs to do, the zone of truth can thwart you by giving them an alternative method of achieving their goal. But if you’ve prepped an interesting situation, then the zone of truth will often just be one more prompt for you to respond to with all the cool toys you’ve made for yourself.

FURTHER READING
Speak with Dead Mysteries
Three Clue Rule

During my last Twitch stream, we were taking a peek at Keeper Tips, a pocket book of collected wisdom published by Chaosium for the 40^th Anniversary of Call of Cthulhu and featuring snippets of useful advice curated from a couple dozen creators. One of the tips we looked at was:

The pineapple on the sideboard. Only put into a scene, session, or scenario what you want your players to investigate. If you put a pineapple on a sideboard in a room they enter, they will investigate it.

The point being that almost anything noteworthy or unusual that you describe in the game world will almost certainly attract the players’ attention, and if they can’t figure out why this thing exists or what it does — often because it is, in fact, just a pineapple — it will only fuel their curiosity. Beware of trivialities metamorphosizing into voracious timesinks that can swallow a session whole!

But I noted that there was, in fact, a practical purpose to which these pineapples could be put:

What if you wanted the players to get distracted?

For example, imagine that the PCs have suddenly veered right and driven off the edge of your prep. You could, of course, call for a break or end the session early, but another option would be to put a pineapple on the nearest sideboard. As the players descend upon the pineapple, vociferously debating with each other about its true meaning and purpose, you’re suddenly free behind your screen to rapidly sketch out a new dungeon level; pull together the stat blocks for a flock of Triad mooks; google blueprints for a mansion; throw together a quick ‘n dirty social event; or whatever else the occasion might call for.

Chat immediately dubbed this technique “pineappling.”

Iconoplast: Dude. I think this GM is pineappling us!

Kevin: No way, man! This has gotta be a clue!

You could even keep a small stockpile of such enigmas in your notes, ready to be deployed whenever an unexpected scene needs to be filled. (101 Curious Items could, in fact, serve such a purpose.)

OPPORTUNISTIC PINEAPPLING

Of course, as the original tip suggests, there’ll likely be plenty of pineapples in your campaign that appear out of nowhere. You’d think you’d need to put the pineapple some place conspicuous, but you can just as easily put it in a fruit bowl or store it in a pantry, and you’ll still inevitably hear a player say something like, “A pineapple is a tropical fruit and out of season! What is it doing here?” or even, “Why would you put a pineapple in a fruit bowl?”

“Because it’s fruit…?” you’ll think to yourself, but it’s too late. The obsession has begun.

And the broader tip here is to take advantage of these moments. Whether the PCs are puzzling over pineapples or debating strategy amongst themselves, learn to identify these periods of grace and shift your attention away from what the players are doing so that you can focus on other tasks:

• Review your notes.
• Check your adversary roster.
• Clear away the stat blocks and minis from the last combat.
• Put your paperwork and rulebooks back in order.
• Pre-roll some random encounters, including non-focal encounters.
• Look at your campaign status document.

Take chaos and restore it to a state of order.

But when your work is done — or if you have no such maintenance to perform — it will be time to get the players to put the pineapple down. At this point, there’s a key question to ask:

Are the players having fun with their pineapple?

If so, then more often than not, it’s fine to just let them have their fun. If possible, default to yes and see if you can find some way to give the players some small reward for their efforts. (Even if it’s just a laugh at themselves as they realize the absurdity of dissecting a pineapple.) For example… why do the Thorndikes have a pineapple in their fruit bowl out of season? Could it have been given to them as a gift by the Tharsian merchants who are trying to buy the jade lion? Maybe!

When fun threatens to become frustration — or if you can see the eyes of the non-obsessed players at the table beginning to glaze over despite their comrade’s enthusiasm — it’s time to bring things to a close. Broadly speaking, you’re looking to either provide a distraction from or a definitive conclusion to the pineapple peering.

Distractions, for example, could include:

• The PCs hear some bad guys in the hallway outside the pantry.
• If the PCs have split up, cut to the other half of the group. When you cut back, use a leading prompt to push players away from the pineapple: “Okay, let’s go back to Iconoplast. Now that you’re done examining the pineapple, what are you doing next?”
• Ask an uninvolved player what their character is doing while the pineapple is being studied. Resolve that, and then, once again, use a leading question to push the pineapple PC into a new activity.

A definitive conclusion, on the other hand, can be achieved by:

• Opportunistically identifying a skill check and then framing the outcome of the check to clearly declare that there’s nothing to be done with the pineapple. (e.g., “After several minutes of intense scrutiny, you conclude that this is, in fact, an ordinary pineapple and nothing more. What do you want to do now?”)
• Asserting a cost and seeing if they’re willing to pay it. “You’ve spent several minutes talking about this pineapple. How long are you planning to continue examining it?” If they’ve become sufficiently obsessed to pay the cost, that’s fine, just make sure you actually apply the cost. (For example, start making random monster checks. Make sure the dice are ominously loud as you roll them.)
• As mentioned before, opportunistically give them some small reward (“This is clearly a Tharsian pineapple; it couldn’t have come from any of the local farms”) and then immediately prompt them for a new action. “Okay, now what are you going to do?”

Each of these, you’ll note, features a strong pivot and prompt asking the players for what they do next. Stubborn players may nevertheless stick with the pineapple, but most will take the hint — often subconsciously doing so without ever realizing the hint was given (“What do you want to do now?” is, after all, a question they hear all the time at the table) — and move on.

When it comes to that stubborn player, however, the ultimate solution is to break the fourth wall and simply declare out of character — as the game master speaking directly to the players — that they have found everything there is to find and there is nothing more to be achieved here.

You can soften the blow by giving them some final bit of information for their efforts (again, that opportunistic reward) while saying, “And that’s all, folks!” Alternatively, you can often achieve a similar effect by asking them, after definitively establishing that they’ve learned everything they can/need to, if there’s anything else they want to do before the scene ends. (This is a little bit of psychological judo, since it puts them in the driver’s seat.)

What you want to make sure you avoid, however, is having the pineapple turn into a grenade. (Pun intended.) The most important thing here is to make sure that you’re not judging them or mocking them for their interest in the pineapple.

After all, pineapples are fun!

Most RPGs have a specialized combat system, and most of those have a formal method of transitioning into the combat system. This usually means triggering some form of initiative system:

• In D&D 5^th Edition, everyone makes an initiative check that determines the sequence in which they take turns declaring and resolving their actions.
• In older editions of D&D, side-based initiative determines whether the PCs go before or after the bad guys. (And, during their side’s initiative, the PCs and bad guys can take their turns in any order they want.)
• Infinity and other 2d20 Systems always have the PCs go first (in an order of their choosing), but the GM can spend Heat to have an NPC jump their initiative and take their turn before the PCs’ finish resolving their actions.
• Feng Shui features an initiative check which places each combatant on the shot clock. The clock is then counted down, with characters taking action each time their shot is reached. The action taken reduces their position by a specific number of shots, determining a new position on the shot clock where they’ll take their next action.
• Games like Technoir and Apocalypse World, on the other hand, don’t have a system for determining character order. But when a confrontation occurs (to use a term from Technoir), we enter a formal scene in which a character can’t take a second action until all other characters in the scene have taken an action.

And so forth. Regardless of the particular details, the simple “trigger initiative, start combat” procedure tends to very quickly run into a conundrum during actual play: What about an ambush?

Whether it’s the PCs wanting to ambush some bad guys or the GM wanting to have the bad guys ambush the PCs, this is both a pretty basic strategic consideration and a very common dramatic trope, so it’ll usually pop up pretty quick in the combat-drenched pulp adventures of a typical RPG campaign.

As a result, it’s pretty common for RPGs to also feature a system for surprise, which will determine (a) whether or not a group has achieved surprise and (b) what effect that surprise has.

Once again, there can be a lot of variation in the specific mechanics here, but a pretty typical combination is:

• Making a surprise check (e.g., an opposed Hiding vs. Spot Hidden check).
• Surprised characters being unable to take action during the first round and/or suffering a penalty to their actions or defense during the first round.

Depending on the system (and sometimes circumstance), surprise might be determined for either the individual or the side, but regardless, these two systems – initiative and surprise – are where most RPGs stop.

And, therefore, also where most GMs stop.

STANDOFFS

But it’s not where we’re going to stop.

Let’s consider the classic standoff from cinema: Everyone has drawn their guns. Everyone has their gun pointed at someone else. But no one’s pulling the trigger yet. Tension hangs thick in the air. Maybe there’s a hostage. Maybe one of them is trying to convince the other to join their side.

And then somebody decides enough is enough and they pull the trigger.

Chaos erupts.

But how should we resolve this in the game?

A couple bad solutions that I recommend you avoid:

• “Everybody can see everybody else, so no one is surprised. Therefore we just roll initiative normally.” …and somehow the guy who literally took the initiative by firing first ends up going last.
• “The guy who shot first took initiative, so we should ignore the mechanics and he just makes an attack roll.” Is that fair, though? Everyone was literally watching everybody else with a hair trigger.

The truth is that we already have the structure for resolving this action, because the person breaking the standoff trying to get the drop on everyone else: By taking the first shot they are trying to surprise them.

Therefore, we can use the surprise, then initiative structure that our chosen RPG has probably already given us. The only difference is the nature of the surprise: The shot-taker has already been seen by their opponents; they aren’t trying to physically sneak past them, but rather to surprise them in a different way, so we’ll probably want to use a different skill or ability or when making the surprise check.

In D&D 5^th Edition, for example, I’d recommend using Insight as the key detection skill (since you’re checking to see if they realize the shot-taker is about to pull the trigger), probably opposed by the shot-taker’s attack proficiency.

Similarly, in Call of Cthulhu, you might use a Psychology or Spot Hidden roll vs. the shot-taker’s weapon skill.

If you wanted to flesh this out a bit, you could also do stuff like:

• Encourage characters to get into standoff situations by giving characters who DON’T have a weapon drawn during a standoff disadvantage on their initiative check if hostilities break out.
• If one character has another character at weapon-point, the unarmed character can attempt to draw their weapon by making a Stealth or weapons-skill check. On a failure, the character who has them at weapon-point can initiate combat while automatically gaining surprise. On a success, they now both have their weapons drawn and the standoff continues.
• In a standoff with multiple characters, you must indicate which opponent you’re training your weapon on. You are at disadvantage for noticing anyone else trying to take the first shot. (This encourages the “swapping your gun from target to target” thing you see in the movies.)

But the core point is the simple shift in the known action resolution structure that allows us to accommodate a completely different situation.

Extra Tip: A common complaint about standoffs in D&D is that, unlike a gunshot in real life, a single attack usually doesn’t carry lethal implications. This is true, but is mostly a question of genre. There are films where a standoff has lethal implications, but also plenty of action films and superhero comics where no one in the audience thinks the direct outcome of “guns bared” will be instant death. (And then one step further to the point where the characters are aware themselves that no fight is likely to end in a single shot/blow.) Depending on edition and level, D&D tends to slide along this scale. And that’s OK.

THE LONG KNIVES

We can find another variant by considering a scene in which the PCs are engaged in tense negotiations… but the negotiations are a trap! In the middle of the scene, the NPCs suddenly draw their weapons and launch a surprise attack!

(Or vice versa. PCs can be a wily and untrustworthy bunch.)

Once again, everyone in the scene is aware of everyone else in the scene. They may even be aware that the other side is bearing arms. But they’re not necessarily aware of the imminent threat.

What I’d recommend here would be an Insight vs. Deception check.

If hidden weapons are involved, we could easily prelude this resolution with Spot Hidden vs. Conceal checks to notice that our scene partners are unexpectedly armed. (Perhaps allowing us to take preventative action and/or gaining advantage on our Insight checks.)

By altering the scene a little bit, we can also consider a situation in which we might use multiple action resolution structures simultaneously: For example, if the NPCs have agents sneaking into position on the shadowy balcony above the negotiations so that, when the moment to attack comes, they will draw their hidden weapons at the same time the archers attack from above, then we might test both Insight vs. Deception (against the negotiators) and Perception vs. Stealth (against the archers) to determine surprise.

DUEL

Yet another variation might be the classic duel: Two gunfighters facing off from opposite ends of a dusty road. A pair of fencers formally squaring off. Two aristocrats firing at ten paces.

Surprise, obviously, is not a factor here, so we can discard that structure.

But what about initiative?

We certainly could use a generic initiative check (e.g., opposed Dexterity checks), but is that the best fit for this specific situation?

For example, might it not make more sense for the gunfighters to make a Shooting vs. Shooting check to determine who gets to take the first shot (i.e., wins initiative)?

We could even use this variant in systems that don’t typically use initiative checks. For example, I mentioned that in Infinity the PCs always go first, although the GM can spend a point of Heat to seize initiative. That might not be satisfying in the case of a duel (since it largely boils down to GM fiat), but there’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t use a face-to-face Ballistics test for this.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The central GM tip here is the alternative structures for resolving:

• Standoffs
• Long Knives
• Duels

But there’s also a deeper truth to be explored here in the universal nature of this advice: That the tip isn’t the specific mechanics, but rather the structures for resolving these actions. These are more universal techniques and skills that allow you to apply your skills as a GM across many different systems.

Not every technique will be useful or applicable to every system, of course. But the reverse is also true: Every system gives you an opportunity to learn new mechanics, and then look for the opportunities to vary and leverage these mechanisms to accomplish even more. (Including, often, more in completely different games.)

Once you start thinking in these terms, you can take it one step further by creating a multitude of sub-variants that reflect the specific actions and intentions of the PCs. For example, I suggested that we could use Insight vs. weapons proficiency to determine surprise in a standoff. But:

• “I’m going to take my finger off the trigger and start putting my gun down, but as soon as they relax, I’ll take the shot!” That could be Insight vs. Deception instead.
• “I’m going to create a distraction so that Sasha can take the shot.” That could be Perception vs. weapons proficiency.
• “While everyone’s focused on the gun I have pointed at James, I’m going to pull my hidden pistol and shoot Jason!” Perception vs. Sleight of Hand.

This flexibility within the structure encourages creativity and specificity from the players as they engage with the game world; it makes the mechanics more accurately reflect the game state; and it creates fun variations in how different scenarios play out.

Are there other ways that combat could start? What ruling would you make? How would you resolve it?

FURTHER READING
Random GM Tip: Collecting Initiative
GM Don’t List: Not Writing Down Initiative
Miss-Initiative

This is going to be a finesse technique, the kind of hyper-specific tip that’s probably not worth focusing on until you’ve mastered a lot of other skills as a game master. (Like the ones described in So You Want to Be a Game Master.) But it’s a subtlety that I’ve found to have a remarkably out-sized impact on the flow of a session.

Imagine that you’re calling for an initiative check: The players all roll their dice, do the appropriate mathematical rituals for your current system of choice, and immediately begin shouting out their results, often at the same time.

Your mileage may vary, but I often find – particularly with larger groups – that this leads to a lot of confusion. I’ll miss or lose track of numbers as I’m trying to get them all written down, leading to a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth between me and the players. I’ve even had a few cases where I’ve realized I didn’t catch someone’s initiative result and asked them to repeat it, only to discover that the player had forgotten what they rolled!

So the tip here is pretty straightforward: Don’t do that.

What I’ve found is that the groups that run smoothest are the ones who roll their initiative check and then wait for me to individually call for the results.

GM: Initiative checks, please.

(dice are rolled)

GM: Nasira?

Jacqueline: 16.

GM: Tithenmamiwen?

Sarah: 24.

And so forth.

Usually I’ll just go around the table, but you can also read the table pretty easily and start with whoever finishes calculating their initiative first.

For a long while, I was aware that collecting initiatives was really easy for some of my tables, but a clusterfuck for others. Eventually I figured out what the difference was (players waiting to deliver the information in turns rather than all at once) and I started training the players at my other tables to follow suit.

It sounds simple, but the difference it makes is startling.

OTHER GROUP CHECKS

Obviously this same technique may apply to other situations where everyone at the table is making a simultaneous check, but I’ve personally only found it necessary when I need to track and write down the specific check results (or other numbers).

More broadly, it’s useful in any situation where you’re resolving each PCs’ result separately. In the case of the typical initiative check, this resolution is recording the results and sorting them into the initiative sequence. Another example would be checks with multiple degrees of success or failure, where you’re probably going to want to resolve the precise result of each check for each PCs’ result in turns.

For other checks, you may find it more useful to focus on identifying the threshold of the check. In other words, if you know what number each PC needs to roll in order to succeed, you can probably resolve each check result near-instantaneously and mentally keep track of which PCs succeeded.

Of course, in some games this will include initiative, since there’s a wide variety of initiative systems out there. For example, in Numenera initiative is resolved by having the PCs make a Speed check against the level of their opponents: Those who succeed go before the opponents (in any order of their choosing); those who fail go after them. That’s just a threshold and it’s usually straightforward to keep track.

If the PCs are facing mixed opposition of multiple levels, however, it’s possible for some of them to go between the bad guys, and I’ll usually transition back to collecting results in turns. (Or I’ll ask, “Who succeeded at level 5? Who succeeded at level 3?” and collect them in batches.)

BONUS TIP: ROLL INITIATIVE LAST

A related tip that I’ve shared before is that, rather than rolling initiative at the beginning of an encounter, you should instead roll initiative at the end of an encounter, write down the results, and then use them for the next encounter.

(This won’t work in every system, but in most systems initiative modifiers never change, so it doesn’t really matter when you roll the check.)

When it looks like the PCs are about to encounter something, roll for its initiative and slot it into the order. If they don’t encounter it for some reason, no big deal, you can just scratch it out.

Using the technique, by the time combat starts, initiative is already completely resolved, so there’s no delay where you ask for initiative, the dice are rolled, your players tell you the results, then you sort those results into order, and then…

Instead, you can start combat instantly. When the PCs are ambushed, for example, you can deliver the adrenalin-packed punch of the ogre smashing through the wall and immediately roll into the action, instead of deflating that moment with the mundane bureaucracy of collecting initiative scores.

SOFTWARE TOOLS

If you’re playing on a computer or have a computer at hand while playing at the table, then VTTs, spreadsheets, and other software tools can often be used to automatically generate, sort, and otherwise manage initiative scores.

The only limitation I’ve found when using these tools is that, if I have a laptop at the table, it’s usually because there’s some other utility that I’m using the screen for (e.g., searching PDF rulebooks, accessing stat blocks, etc.). I generally want the initiative information in a combat encounter at my fingertips, so I don’t want to be tabbing through windows trying to find my list. Make sure to take this into account when setting up your software tools.

FURTHER READING
GM Don’t List: Not Writing Down Initiative
OD&D Combat Sequence