DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 43D: Escapades of the Ogre

Agnarr called Seeaeti off the ogre so that it could successfully regenerate. They wanted to question it.

But when it woke up, it was the one asking the questions. “Who are you?”

They naturally refused to answer. But although they tried to question it, threaten it, intimidate it, and scare it, the ogre just kept on asking questions. “Who sent you? What do you want?” And so forth.

But they resolutely refused to answer.

“Ah,” the ogre said at last. “I see I will learn nothing here.”

And it turned to gas… and then the gas itself vanished.

I think there can be a tendency for NPCs to be passive and reactive in conversations.

There are any number of reasons for this: The PCs are, obviously, positioned as protagonists. As GMs we’re juggling a lot of different elements, and it can be easier to juggle everything if it’s relatively stable (and, therefore, possessed of a certain passivity). Plus, at least for me, GMing is often reaction — the PCs do something and then we play to find out what happens. It can be easy for a conversation to slip into the same pattern, with the PCs setting the (only) agenda and the NPCs simply reacting to their efforts.

Unfortunately, a one-sided conversation is pretty boring. This inclination can also lead is into some bad habits, with NPCs who are either pushovers or complete intransigents who just senselessly say, “No!” to everything the PCs suggest.

Sometimes, of course, we key specific information to an NPC and their function is to deliver that information to the PCs: “Yes, I saw Sally down by the lake last night.” That has the advantage of giving the conversation some narrative substance, but it’s ultimately still pretty passive and placid.

To truly bring an NPC conversation to life, you need to ask one simple question:

What does this NPC want?

What is this NPC’s goal? What is the thing they’re trying to achieve? Why?

And perhaps most importantly:

How is this conversation going to help them get it?

What do they need the PCs do? What information do they want from the PCs? What do they need the PCs to believe? What do they need to hear the PCs say? What do they need to hide from the PCs?

This is the NPC’s agenda. You want to keep it simple, short, and actionable. And then you want to play it hard, with the NPC employing all kinds of tactics and conversational gambits to get what they want.

In this session, we see a particularly strong example of this with an ogre whose overwhelming motivation is figuring out who the PCs are, where they come from, and what their interest in the Banewarrens is. He also wants to make sure that the PCs don’t find out anything about his own organization or their intentions.

Since the PCs want the exact opposite, this puts them into a strong antithesis and the entire scene can boil out from there.

Importantly, however, this kind of open antithesis isn’t necessary to generate an interesting thing. The NPC just needs to want something different than the PCs, even if it’s only subtly different.

It’s also important to remember that, when antithesis does exist, that doesn’t mean it should never be surmountable. Yes, it’s dramatic when the Jedi Council refuses Qui-Gon Jinn’s request to train Anakin Skywalker. But it’s also a classic moment when Robin Hood convinces Friar Tuck to join his Merry Men.

In other cases the solution will be for the PCs to figure out how both their interests and the NPCs’ interests can be mutually achieved. That’s a puzzle for the players to ponder!

And, of course, achieving any of this will require first figuring out what the NPC actually wants! Some characters will politely (or not so politely) announce the intentions of course, but others will be quite sly about it.

Sometimes the conversation won’t be about overcoming or fulfilling the NPCs’ agenda at all! Nevertheless, the presence of the agenda — and the NPCs’ desire to fulfill it — will fill the scene with life.

In summary, for each meaningful NPC in a conversation, think about what the NPC’s conversational agenda is. Ideally, you should be able to state this in one clear sentence.

And then pursue it with all the strength you can muster!

Campaign Journal: Session 43E – Running the Campaign: Prepping Porphyry House
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 43C: Battle of the Banewarrens

They had pushed the lamia back into the generator chamber itself, but discovered that the darkness extended even here.

Tor, hanging close to the lamia in an effort to keep her under control, was taking a terrible beating. He called out for help. Nasira, still standing outside the area of magical darkness, shook her head. “I don’t want to go in there.”

But she plunged in anyway. They needed her, after all.

The exact details of how you need to handle magical darkness — particularly the mechanical details — will depend on exactly how it’s defined in your RPG of choice. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that magical darkness

• fills a specific three-dimensional area; and
• nullifies and blocks all light within the area.

So no light source within the area will illuminate and you also can’t see light (or anything else) on the far side of an area of magical darkness. (As opposed to normal darkness, in which you could see a distant light even if you couldn’t see some of the intervening space due to a lack of illumination.)

In real life, if you had to fight or maneuver in a sealed room without any light you would effectively be blind. If you were swinging a sword, you would just be swinging it wildly, perhaps guided a little by sound or physical feedback (e.g., your sword hitting the wall or furniture or even your target).

At the game table, though, this is difficult to emulate. If a character blindly gropes in front of them with their hand, how should we determine what they feel? If they swing their sword, how do we figure out if they actually hit anything?

KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPACE

The first thing to consider is whether the character knows what’s in the darkness.

Imagine a room in your house that’s been shrouded in magical darkness. You might even have experienced something akin to this if the power has gone out in a windowless room or on a moonless night. You would have an advantage navigating through this space even in utter darkness because you’ve seen it before. You know the rough dimensions of the room and where the furniture is and where the exits are.

But if the same thing happened to you in a room you’ve never seen before, you’d be much more likely to bark your shins on the coffee table.

This is also going to be true for a character in an RPG: Standing in a room and having darkness cast on you after you’ve already observed your surroundings is fundamentally different than, for example, opening a door in a dungeon and being confronted by a face full of darkness with no idea what lies beyond it/within it.

So this is the first paradigm to grasp in running magical darkness: Moving blindly through a known space is different than blindly exploring an unknown space.

Let’s start by assuming that the PC knows the space, but can’t see it:

1. They’re still going to be using their sense of touch to try to orient (i.e., putting their hand out to find a piece of furniture they know is “around here somewhere”).
2. They’re probably going to be moving more slowly/cautiously.
3. There’s still a risk that they’ll make a mistake and “get lost” – ending up in the wrong place, tripping over something, etc.

To achieve the first point, you’ll want to adopt a strong POV narration. As GMs, it’s not unusual for our descriptions to be in the third person, describing rooms in holistic, general terms of what the whole group collectively sees. This inclination can leave you baffled when you try to describe the blind character’s perceptions, for they will largely not have a holistic view of the room — they will often be perceiving only sound, perhaps some details of the surface they’re walking on (texture, angle, etc.), and the one thing that their outstretched hand is touching. You can (and should!) employ the Three of Five (sans sight, of course), but frame the description intimately for each PC as they take action:

You step towards where you remember the door being. After a couple of steps, you feel the crunch of the broken eggshells under your feet. Your hand touches the back of the rocking chair, and you can run you fingers along that, reaching out with your other hand until it finds the back of the door.

Darkness turns us all into islands. Even if the PCs are all in the same room, it will likely feel much more like they’ve split up and are all exploring different areas at the same time. (Although clever PCs may counteract that to some extent by, for example, linking arms so that they don’t become separated.)

In terms of movement, I generally find it useful to have a mechanical model for both caution and disorientation. It’s also useful if the player can choose to trade-off between the two — e.g., they can try to move faster, but the risk of running into stuff goes up; or they can move even more cautiously and reduce their potential hazard.

A simple example would be, when blind:

• You must make a Perception check. On a failure, you suffer a disorientation complication due to being unable to see. (This is at the GM’s discretion — e.g., you become disoriented and go in the wrong direction. Or you stumble over something and have to make a Tumble check or fall prone.)
• You move at half speed. If you choose to move at full speed instead, you must make a Tumble check or fall prone and your Perception check to avoid a disorientation complication is made at a penalty.
• You can move with extra caution at one-quarter speed, in which case you gain advantage on your Perception check to avoid disorientation.

This is, again, just one example. You could also imagine:

• When PCs are moving blind, the GM rolls 1d6. On a roll of 1 or 2, they suffer a disorientation complication. On a roll of 6 they must make a save vs. Paralysis or fall prone.
• PCs moving with caution at half-speed through darkness only suffer a disorientation complication on a roll of 1.

But, as you can see, this general paradigm can be adapted for use across many different mechanical systems. (And can usually incorporate what the system’s normal mechanics for blindness — vis-à-vis penalties on Perception/Spot Hidden/whatever rolls — may be.)

UNKNOWN SPACES

When a character is entering a darkened area they haven’t seen before, it becomes more difficult because the player can’t describe their intentions in terms of the known space. (They can’t, for example, say, “I’m going to head over towards the couch,” or, “I’m going to try to find the door on the far side of the room,” because, obviously, they don’t know the couch or the door exist.)

There a couple ways to handle this.

First, there’s groping by square. This works best if you’re using something like a Chessex battlemap where you can literally draw the room one space at a time. The player essentially moves their character one space at a time, revealing the space as they go. If they encounter an obstacle, you can call for perception-type tests and acrobatics-type tests to avoid complications tripping over stuff, making loud noises, and/or suffering damage (depending on the situation).

Second, there’s groping by vector. This is generally the way I prefer to handle it. The players will announce an intention about how they’re going to try to move through the darkness — e.g., “I’m going to walk into the room” or “I’m going to put my hand on the wall and try to follow it around” — and you can think of that as a vector pointing through the darkened area. Follow that vector until it hits something — e.g., a couch, the far wall, an ogre mage — and describe the scene accordingly. For example, “Okay, you walk into the room, you hand outstretched. You go about ten feet and then your hand encounters some sort of firm object covered in a velvety fabric.”

Characters can burn up additional movement or perhaps expend an action or bonus action, depending on the system you’re using, to stop and investigate obstacles they encounter.

As they explore the darkness, of course, they’ll be building up a mental picture of where stuff is in the darkened space.

Note: What about getting disoriented and moving in the wrong direction? Practically speaking, this is essentially impossible when groping by square. If you’re groping by vector it’s more achievable as a complication, but will almost always result in horrific confusion for the players. Unless you’re specifically aiming for that, I recommend avoiding it. You can reintroduce getting lost once they’ve established a mental picture of the space and begin declaring intentions like, “Okay, I’m going to go back over to the couch.” (Do they actually get to the couch or end up missing it in the dark?) In other words, as the unknown space transitions to a known space — even if they only know it through their fingertips — you can similarly transition to the known space structure.

PINPOINTING

Another useful mental model for handling blindness is pinpointing sound. For example, a PC hears someone running through a darkened room. Can they figure out where the footsteps are coming from and where they’re going?

To put this another way, when describing what the PCs hear in a darkened area there are, I tend to think of it as being in one of three broad states:

• They can hear it (e.g., you hear something breathing loudly).
• They have a general sense of where it’s coming from (e.g., you hear heavy breathing coming from off to your left).
• They can pinpoint its location (e.g., you hear heavy breathing; someone — or something! — is standing by the bookshelf).

Which state applies will depend on the situation. (For example, if the PCs are in a bathroom and they hear splashing, you don’t have to wonder whether or not they can figure out it’s coming from the full bath they saw before the lights went out.)

If a PC hasn’t already pinpointed where a sound is coming from, they can likely do so through a perception-type test. When implementing this mechanically, I recommend doing so in a way that lets them pinpoint and take an action in the same round (e.g., as a reaction to the sound or as a bonus action in D&D 5^th Edition). It’s possible that different thresholds of success will give a more accurate idea of location — e.g., DC 10 means you hear the heavy breathing; DC 14 means you have a general sense of where it’s coming from; DC 18 means you can pinpoint its location.

If you’re already making perception-type tests for maneuvering through the darkness, you might also use the results from that check to feed auditory information.

IN COMBAT

Now that we have a basic mental model for how to handle characters interacting with and moving through darkened areas, we can add the massive complication of trying to fight people in the darkness.

It’s not unusual, of course, for an RPG to have specific mechanics for fighting in darkness. Sometimes these mechanics are great. Sometimes they’re convoluted messes. Sometimes, like in D&D 5^th Edition, they’re just dumb. (It’s just as easy to shoot someone completely hidden in darkness as it is to shoot someone standing in broad daylight because the advantage and disadvantage cancel out! Derp, derp, derp.)

Broadly speaking, though, there are three things to consider for combat in darkened areas:

1. Movement, which can be handled as per the above.
2. If you want to make an attack, you need to guess where you target is.
3. Your attack will have some sort of penalty or miss chance.

The penalty to your attack will usually be handled by your RPG’s mechanics. (If not, of course, you’ll need to make a ruling on this. Generally, I would suggest a moderate penalty: Needing to guess the target’s location is going to cause a lot of whiffing all by itself.)

If they’re guessing on a battlegrid, this is as simple as the player declaring what space they’re going to target. If someone/something is standing there, you can resolve the attack. (Even if there isn’t, I recommend still having them roll attack as a metagame effect. You can imagine someone potentially wailing away at a coat rack while being utterly convinced they’re locked in mortal combat.)

If they’re guessing in the theater of the mind, the challenge is getting a clear targeting declaration from the player and then figuring out how to translate that into the combat mechanics. Diegetically, you’re going to get (or want to encourage) declarations like:

• “He’s off to my left! I swing my sword at him!” (i.e., a direction)
• “I think she’s standing by the bookshelf! I empty my pistol at her!” (i.e., a landmark)
• “She’s trying to run away! I lay down suppressive fire on the doorway!” (i.e., a specific spot)
• “I can hear splashing, so they must be somewhere down by the water line!”

A useful mental model for parsing these declarations it to classify them as:

• specific spot
• small area
• large area
• wild shot (e.g., “I shoot the darkness!”)

Think about how you might mechanically adjudicate these to make them distinct and meaningful. That might be a random determination if they actually hit the right spot; a miss chance check; or simply a penalty to their attack roll. For example:

• Specific Spot: If there’s a target there, resolve the attack normally, with modifiers for being blind.
• Small Area: 5 in 6 chance they picked right.
• Large Area: 2 in 6 chance they picked right.
• Wild Shot: 1 in 6 chance they picked right.

Again, this is just one possible way of adjudicating the underlying mental model of the ruling.

When shooting blindly into an area, you may also want to model the risk of hitting the wrong target. For example, if there are three potential targets (enemy and ally alike) in the area a PC has said they’re wildly swinging their sword through, then you might pick one randomly before checking to see if they hit anything at all.

Note: You can also use the techniques for declaring targets in the theater of the mind when using a battlemap. There may be times when a player’s understanding of the situation is just better suited to “I swing sword wildly off to my left” or “I shoot towards the grand piano” are better fits than “I pick that specific square.”

NPCs

Of course, to do any of this you will need to keep track of where the NPCs are located.

If you’re running the encounter in the theater of the mind, then you can just handle this the way you always do. You just won’t give the players access to information that the PCs don’t have.

If you’re using a battlemap, on the other hand, then darkened areas pose a unique difficulty (unless you’re using some sort of VTT option that can handle line of sight automatically). What I typically do is just transition darkened areas into theater of the mind tracking. You might instead prefer to sketch out a small map of the darkened area behind the GM screen and keep track of the NPC combatants on that.

The truth is that, no matter which approach you take, there will likely be some metagame knowledge for the players to contend with. (For example, when you tell Arathorn’s player that they can feel a door with their outstretched, groping hands, Lady Emily’s player will also become aware of that even if her character doesn’t yet.) If you’ve got a group who can handle that kind of metagame knowledge maturely, things will be a lot easier. If not, then you may need to figure out what information needs to be communicated secretly (which tends to create a lot of extra headaches and confusion).

Note: Keep in mind there’s a gray area here. Can we assume, for example, that Arathorn calls out the door’s location to his companions even if he doesn’t explicitly say that? Frequently. And if Lady Emily is attacked by goblins, it’s not unreasonable for other players to act as if their players heard the attack and her screams of pain even if, again, that’s never explicitly stated.

Another factor to consider is roleplaying blinded NPCs. Unlike the players, as the GM you have an omniscient knowledge of the battlefield. This makes it essentially impossible for you to truly make blind guesses for where the NPCs will be targeting their attacks.

The key, though, is really in the word “roleplaying.” When deciding what a particular NPC will do, you really want to imagine yourself in their shoes: What do they know? What are they thinking? What emotions are they feeling? What decision might they make as a result?

When in doubt, use perception-type tests to figure out if they’ve got a PCs’ location narrowed down to a pinpoint, small area, or large area. Or just flip a coin to see if they make a mistake.

IN SUMMARY

This has been a lengthy discussion. It may feel like it’s too complicated or overwhelming. The truth, though, is that if you make this a practice point and maybe run a few training scenarios featuring darkness, then you’ll quickly come to grips with it.

The key thing to grok is that there are a handful of useful mental models for making these rulings.

How PCs move through the dark.

• They declare movement by either a known landmark or groping (by square or vector).
• They likely move with a reduced speed.
• There is a risk of a complication (falling, making noise, suffering injury, etc.).

How PCs perceive information in the dark.

• Emphasize touch and sound with a strong POV narration.
• For sounds, characters can hear it, have the sense of a general location, or pinpoint its location.

How the PCs declare a target in the dark.

• They can declare their target by specific area, small area, large area, or wild shot.
• There may be a risk of hitting the wrong target.

You will also need to keep track of where characters are located.

Once you master these mental models, you’ll find it fairly easy to use them to make rulings in almost any RPG you choose to run. The specific mechanics, of course, will vary and have an impact on how things actually work in play, but the model will give consistent guidance and help you provide a high-quality experience at the table.

Campaign Journal: Session 43D – Running the Campaign: NPC Conversation Agendas
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 43B: Kalerecent’s Cry

Porphyry House stood on one end of an open plaza in the Guildsman’s District near the Warrens facing a large, dilapidated open-air rotunda which stood along the Old Sea Road near East Street. It was an elegant, two-story structure constructed of dark purple and mauve porphyry. Minarets rose from each of the buildings’ four corners, and a central dome served as the roof. Its façade was decorated with several statues, bas-reliefs, and other carvings of handsome men and beautiful women (many of them striking a variety of lewdly suggestive poses).

Here’s a fun fact: For a very long time I thought porphyry was some kind of incense or spice. Perhaps something similar to frankincense or ambergris. (Although ambergris was also something that I misapprehended, assuming it be far more akin to amber than its etymology would, in my opinion, suggest.) The trick was that I had only encountered “porphyry” in print, usually as part of a pulp story where it would be tucked into a list of treasures or opulent extravagances.

(Along similar lines, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many “serpentine statues” became significantly more orphidic in my mind’s eye than an author had intended.)

In reality, of course, porphyry is actually a beautiful, purple-red stone.

“The Porphyry House of Horrors” is an adventure by James Jacobs which first appeared in Dungeon Magazine #95. When I first read the title and even the opening pitch, I was still belaboring under my false understanding of porphyry’s nature.

“Ah yes,” I thought. “A high-class whorehouse of porphyry. The luxurious chambers must be redolent with the rich scents of porphyry.”

Sigh.

In any case, Jacobs’ adventure quickly cured me of my misapprehension and running the adventure locked the true beauty of porphyry into my imaginative lexicon.

This is just one minor example of how D&D, and roleplaying games in general, can be so potently educational. As a text-based medium, of course, they carry all the benefits of vocabulary and knowledge that any reading does. But, as a creative medium, they also encourage research into a vast array of topics.

Even more so than that, playing RPG adventures creates “living memories” that are, in my experience, far more powerful than stuff you just read in a book. It’s not the same thing as real life, obviously, but it’s still “stickier.” Sometimes, of course, this means that you know more about Ptolus than you do western European geography, but there’s also all kinds of “real” stuff you can pick up along the way. (Like what porphyry is.)

For example, while putting together the Malta chapter of the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies, I did A LOT of research into the island and its history. Running the sessions built on top of that research really locked it in.

Similarly, a bunch of the Zalozhniy Quartet campaign for Night’s Black Agents takes place in western Europe. Doing research for that and running the PCs through transnational chases through the region means I’m not nearly as shaky on western European geography as I was five years ago.

The great thing is that there’s always new stuff to learn. And RPGs are a really fun – and effective! – way of doing it.

Campaign Journal: Session 43C – Running the Campaign: Running Darkness
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 43A: Scouting Porphyry House

They knew that Porphyry House was engaged in illicit as well as salacious trade, and they doubted the cultists were bringing their other business brazenly through the front door. There had to be a second, surreptitious entrance somewhere.

Probably underground.

Probably in the sewers.

So what’s happening at the beginning of this session is that, after giving up on the idea of finding an entrance to Porphyry House through the sewers at the end of last session, the players almost immediately worked their way back around to the same conclusion: There must be an entrance through the sewers!

There isn’t.

Whereas the PCs’ scouting in the last session was still taking them interesting places (because they were following paths to interesting things, even if their reasons for doing so were erroneous), we’ve now reached the point where they’re really just ramming their faces into a wall. It’s like searching a dungeon room you’ve already searched three times and hoping you’ll find something new, only at a slightly larger scale.

So, as a GM, what do you do about this?

Well, I actually have an article about this: Random GM Tips — Driving Past the Dead End.

They eventually found their way to the right area beneath Porphyry House… but found nothing except a few impassable pipes which might (or might not) lead into the House.

By the time they re-emerged from the sewers, evening was settling in and they were reminded that they had an appointment with Rehobath in the not-too-distant future. They decided to leave and try again the next day, and on their way back to the Ghostly Minstrel laid out a plan to magically tunnel their way into the house from below (if they could figure out exactly where they should be digging).

What you’re seeing reflected in the campaign journal here is a very hard frame — the time spent at the table is minimal, while the time that passes in the campaign world is significant. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it would have been along the lines of, “Okay, going down into the sewers you begin exploring. You’re right in the heart of where the older sewer systems in the Warrens meet the newer systems of the Guildsman District and it’s all a chaotic jumble. You eventually find your way to the area right under Porphyry house, but there’s nothing there except drainage pipes.”

To break this down, there are four key components:

• I’m shifting from Now Time to Abstract Time. (There’s no reason to, for example, play out a tunnel-by-tunnel exploration of the sewers because there’s nothing meaningful to find and no meaningful choices to be made during that exploration.)
• The PCs are still doing the thing that the players want them to do. (I’m not saying, “No, you can’t search the sewers.”)
• The passage of time is significant. (I’ve talked about handling the passage of time through a mental model of Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Overnight. In this case, they spent their afternoon on the sewer search, thus the frame of, “By the time they re-emerged from the sewers, evening was settling in…” This is further reinforced because they have an evening appointment.)
• Their action has a concrete conclusion. (They didn’t just “not find an entrance to Porphyry House.” Their efforts resulted in them finding the point closest to Porphyry House. The distinction is subtle, but distinct: The former says “maybe you missed something, so you could look again.” The latter says, “you succeeded in your search and this is what you found, even if it isn’t what you wanted to find.”)

We have, thus, spent only a couple minutes of our valuable table time on this interaction. And while the players feel that they’ve been allowed to do the thing they wanted to do, they’re also been pushed away from the idea of “let’s just search again” because (a) the result has been framed as a definitive answer to their query and (b) we’ve also established that it will cost them a significant resource (time) to continue pursuing this.

Now, as you’ll see in the journal entries for the rest of this session, the players nevertheless did continue masticating this idea, intermittently discussing their options while pursuing other agendas. They really wanted a discreet entrance to Porphyry House. But rather than just boiling away table time fruitlessly searching the sewers, they instead turned their thoughts to more creative solutions: First by hatching the idea of drilling up into Porphyry House from the section of sewer they had identified as lying under the whorehouse, and then by refining that idea into stoneshaping through the rear wall of the building.

So, in short, I’m making a note here, “Huge success.”

Campaign Journal: Session 43B – Running the Campaign: D&D is Educational
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 42B: False Brothels

With the other mothers still trapped in the web. Tee was able to broker a bargain in which they would be freed if one of them would lead the party to the southern sewer entrance. While the mothers were carefully freed from the web, Tor started discreetly taking ears and fingers from the dead as trophies. Meanwhile, Elestra distracted the ratlings with small talk to keep them from noticing Tee looting the coffers of the nest master (which were filled with gems, jewelry, and large amounts of coin; although given the bones and skulls dangling from the ceiling, Tee didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about where it had all come from).

A surprisingly frequent critique of xandering the dungeon is that navigational choice in a dungeon is irrelevant because, when confronted with Path A and Path B, the players will have no way of knowing where either path goes. Since the choice is blind, the “logic” goes, the choice is meaningless and no different than a linear dungeon!

This entire concept is so utterly alien to my experience running dungeons that I honestly have difficulty understanding what’s happening at these tables. I try to imagine a session in which the players are repeatedly making these navigational choices without ANY insight or reason and I literally can’t fathom what it would look like. It would seem to require both the GM and the players to deliberately go out of their way to make it happen.

Let’s start with the GM. It’s a common rejoinder to the “it’s all blind choices!’ gambit that it’s the GM’s responsibility to fill the dungeon with navigational hints like:

• strange sounds emanating from a passage
• physical evidence (e.g., tracks, blood smeared on the walls)
• treasure maps or similar intel
• navigational cues used by the inhabitants (e.g., signs or runes)

This isn’t bad advice. Any dungeon will certainly be improved by including this kind of stuff. Plus, if you’re designing your dungeon as a real place filled with history and life, this stuff will just naturally find its way into your dungeon key.

But I’m a pretty big believer in RPGs as a collaborative activity, and I’ve grown pretty skeptical of design philosophies that position the GM as the sole bearer of responsibility for the group’s experience. In practice, it’s just not necessary for the GM to lard up every crossroads with clues in order for the navigational choice to have meaningful context.

For example, a pillar of old school dungeon design is that the further down you go, the more deadly the challenges become (and the larger the rewards). Even in the absence of this classic design conceit, “going deeper into enemy territory is more dangerous” is going to be generally true just as a situational truism. (Particularly if the bad guys are being played as an active opposition and not just XP pinatas waiting for the PCs to kick down their door.)

Obviously, this principle won’t apply to every dungeon, but there are other diegetic cues that emerge from even the most cursory understanding of what’s happening and where you are. For example, “Should we finish clearing out this tower first or make a beeline for the central ziggurat?” or “Should we chase those goblins that ran away before they can reach reinforcements or should we move to a completely different sector of the dungeon to avoid pursuit?”

Similarly, if the PCs choose to “always go right,” that’s a meaningful navigational choice, as are other maze-solving techniques.

All of these provide a broad context for the players that can meaningfully guide navigational decisions even if they lack all other knowledge about the dungeon.

That lack of more specific knowledge should also be considered, however, because even if the PCs end up faced with a navigational choice for which they truly have no information, that only makes the choice meaningless if they ALSO lack the ability to gain that information. As long as they have that ability, the choice to NOT get that information is, in fact, a meaningful choice in itself.

And the truth is that, even without the GM seeding specific hints and clues into the adventure, the players have ample opportunities to gather the information they need.

Let’s start with the ubiquitous opportunities for interrogation. Almost anyone you can fight, you can also hold at sword point and demand answers from. “Which way to the lair of Bartox One-Eye?”

Note: This is a good place to mention that if you, as the GM, don’t want to bear sole responsibility for force-feeding information to your players, then you also need to make sure you’re not blocking the players from taking that responsibility. An occasional henchmen biting down on a cyanide capsule is all well and good, but if you teach the players that they ALWAYS bite down on cyanide capsules and they should never waste time trying to gain actionable intelligence, then you’ll have needlessly flattened — and perhaps even crippled — your game.

Even if there are no bad guys they can question, you can often just ask the gods. D&D comes well-stocked with divination spells that can be used to glean information about the dungeon. Augury, for example, is a 2^nd-level spell and I’ve often seen it make the difference between life and death.

Then there’s literally just physically scouting your options. From a central junction you can go left, take a peek around, then come back, go right, and poke around a little more. With information about both options in hand, you can figure out which direction seems the most promising and/or least dangerous.

Often, though, you don’t even need to personally go and check things. Given what you’ve already discovered about a dungeon, it’s often not difficult to use logical induction to make informed choices. For example, “We know the kobold warrens are in that direction, so it’s likely this tunnel will also lead us to them.”

You’ll also obviously have navigational information if you’re revisiting a location. This might be because you’re mounting a fresh expedition into the dungeon after returning to town or taking a long rest. It might be because you’ve been repelled by the kobolds and are trying to figure out a way around them.

You can also see from this how these different methods of gathering information can combine and reinforce each other: If you’ve previously been repelled by a kobold stronghold and encounter a small force of koblds while physically scouting, you can easily conclude that this passage must also be connected to that stronghold somehow. This conclusion would only be reinforced if, consulting your maps, you can see it’s also heading in the direction of that stronghold. This might prompt you to cast speak with dead and question one of the dead kobolds, which could lead to you learning that the passage does lead to the stronghold, but via a rear entrance which is only lightly guarded. Do you use this information to mount a fresh assault on the kobolds or choose a different path and avoid them?

What we’re beginning to touch on here is the dungeon as both a tactical and strategic battlefield. I’ve previously talked about Dungeon as a Theater of Operations, and once you start thinking of the dungeon experience in this more holistic fashion it’s easy to see how it can inform almost any navigational decision the PCs are making.

AN IMPERFECT WORLD

It should be noted, though, that the goal of all this is generally not for the PCs to end up with a perfect understanding of the dungeon. That might happen occasionally, but it’s not to be expected and, even if it does happen, it’s likely to pass quickly (as the PCs’ information becomes dated or irrelevant).

Sometimes your educated guesses don’t turn out right. And that’s just fine. Desirable, even.

It turns out that one of the key ways you can distinguish choice from calculation is through imperfect information. And these choices — rather than calculations — are the heart and soul of meaningful gameplay.

You can see an example of what it looks like when the PCs have made a mistake in the current campaign journal. The PCs have formed a goal (find an underground entrance to Porphyry House) and are actively pursuing it. You can see that they’ve engaged in a bunch of the different information-gathering techniques we’ve discussed:

• They’ve found maps.
• They’ve interrogated prisoners.
• They’ve used inductive reasoning to figure out where various passages are likely to lead.

The only problem?

Elestra flung open the shutters on a nearby window… and looked out over the Southern Sea. They were on the coast cliffs deep within the Warrens. Far from Porphyry House.

They retreated back to the sewer, retraced their path, and used the kennel rat to take the sewer route they hadn’t chosen before. The rat brought them to another tunnel leading away from the sewer proper, and although this one bore no resemblance to the work of Ghul, they sought out the nearest sewer entrance, poked their heads into the street above… and concluded that this wasn’t Porphyry House either.

In utter frustration at the time they had wasted, they left the sewers altogether and decided to head straight to Porphyry House’s front door.

The route to Porphyry House that they concluded must exist… doesn’t. Whoops.

But that’s OK. The choices they made along the way were still meaningful. They still led to interesting adventures. And, at every step along the way, the PCs were continuing to gather information and feeding that information back into their choices (both navigational and otherwise).

Campaign Journal: Session 43A – Running the Campaign: It’s Gotta Be Here!
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index