Designing The Dungeon (RPG All)

NB: One week to go before the flight. 

This week's post is inspired by The Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying (Jonah & Tristan Fishel) p137: 

Remember that the encounter, not the adventure, is the fundamental unit of play. If you design your whole dungeon expecting characters to follow a certain path or explore it in a certain way, you will always be let down. Consider your dungeon a collection of encounters, not a story in itself. The story will emerge organically, as characters pursue their goals and adapt to overcome the encounters you've designed.

You can tell the Fishels came from a Dungeons and Dragons background, and that's not just because they use the word dungeon. It's because they see encounters as things to be overcome. That follows the basic D&D principle that even live action play follows, to an extent: the things you find in front of you are obstacles, not parts of the narrative, and they are to be beaten, not navigated past, negotiated or otherwise engaged with. When you are in a 10 by 10 room, everything looks like an orc guarding a chest.  

However, the advice is sound. You can't expect players to navigate the space the way it's drawn. One of the reasons why I've never liked drawing maps isn't my lack of artistic ability - though that definitely helps - it's the realization that the map does the players no good. They don't want to tap-tap-tap their way down the corridor checking for traps with their 10ft pole. Or chickens.

Zee Bashew

But if you present the characters with an elaborate map, they explore the map. Or try to. Before they get bored and start to make their own fun. 

In my experience the best maps are the ones like the train in Orient Express: not a dungeon so much as a convenient way of illustrating the surroundings, so the characters can say 'while such-and-such is in the dining car, being distracted by Charlie's scintillating conversation, I shall be in the baggage car, going through their trunk and belongings.' 

Still! A series of encounters. OK. Let's game that out.

Assume this is a Facility. The characters have discovered it and want to investigate it. It doesn't really matter which setting this is, but for the purpose of example I'm going to assume it's Night's Black Agents. Modern day spycraft, in other words, and this is a Manufacturing Facility with Medium Security and Medium Monitoring. That means Difficulty 4 for most tests, and any investigative point spends to find out information start at 1 point for the basics. Medium Monitoring suggests that any enemy response will be relatively quick, something like 5-10 minutes armed response for any blatant oopsie, and Medium Security suggests that there are guards and cameras on-site as this is a reasonably important installation. 

OK, fine. There are locks on the doors and people paying attention to what's going on. It doesn't matter, in this example, what the Facility is manufacturing. Assume it's narrative-important. It makes MacGuffins.

So if this is a series of encounters, not a set of rooms to explore, what are those encounters?

Well, let's take a step back and talk a little bit about the Building. 

This is, after all, a mini-Building. It's the narrative space in which you expect players to meet people, creating plot. We already know it's a Manufacturing Facility. That suggests semi-industrial at least, possibly biological or chemical depending on the nature of the MacGuffin. A Supernatural setting might be different; a funeral home could be a Manufacturing Facility, if you assume they're making zombies or torturing souls. However, let's keep it simple and assume that it's semi-industrial. 

That implies there's not much in the way of residential or commercial nearby. There might be a caff for local trade, somewhere that sells fish and chips, say. There won't be a high street stuffed full of shoppers. The traffic on the roads is more likely to be trucks than Ferraris. Not many tourists, if any at all. The people here have a purpose for being here; they're transporting, lifting, carrying, on their way to A from B, not noodling around looking for entertainment. If there are thieves or neer-do-wells lurking about, they're not muggers or pickpockets. There's slim pickings for that type. Car thieves or burglars might do well here. 

Most important to note, unless the enemy have a good relationship with the local law, there probably aren't any police nearby. After all, what they're doing is illegal, or at best borderline-legal. They don't want straight law enforcement breathing down their necks. Thus, if there are coppers nearby, they're working hand-in-hand with the folks running the Facility. 

OK, that's a decent thumbnail. Encounters?

Well, there are several points to consider. Let's start outside and work our way in. 

Assume the characters are standing outside the Facility looking for a way in. They're looking at a semi-industrial area. If this is London, or most places in Europe that haven't been bombed flat in wartime, then the area is a mix of 1900s red brick, 1960s concrete and 2000s cheap industrial, all glass and metal. The first encounter area is external security. Locked doors and cameras. There might be a bloke on the main door, or if there is a loading dock area then there may be security there, and workers loading/unloading lorries as well. 

There is the Direct and the Indirect approach. 

The Direct approach is obvious, and it's the one a lot of players opt for: smash your way in. Tackle the bloke on the main door, or the ones at the loading dock. That means you need combat stats for them and anyone else in the immediate area. You also need response times for backup, since unless the characters are very quick and clever someone's going to ring the alarm right about now. 

The Indirect approach involves going round the back, looking for covert ways in. Or going over the roof of a nearby building to see if you can sneak in. If you have a hacker on the payroll, they might be using this time to take over the enemy's cameras. If you know there's an underground passage or sewer, now's the time to crawl up from below, that sort of thing. This part might not involve a physical challenge but it will want a technical one. Disguises or covert identities may come into play at this point. Remember, you already know that the base Difficulty for most tests is 4. That should help you decide how difficult any particular encounter is. 

OK, now they're in. The question now becomes, what Encounters do they find inside?

Well, let's stick with the Rule of 4. This is a relatively simple Facility, after all. It's not one you designed specifically for this campaign. It's one you had to come up with on the fly.  That means you have four potential encounters in this Facility, one of which must be Rome. That translates to three ordinary encounter types and one special. The Boss.

Thus:

• Flunkies. Low level civilian types, admin, people doing data entry or monitoring cameras. Unarmed, with no combat rating. If the entry was Indirect and no alarm has been triggered then they go about their jobs assuming all is as it should be. Any who encounter the characters assume they have a right to be there, unless they obviously pose a threat. After all, if they didn't have a right to be there, why would they be there? Possible clue to the nature of the Facility found by interrogating the flunky or looking at whatever it is the flunky is doing.     
• Self-Aware Flunky. Civilian types, but with seniority. They may have combat skills. More importantly, they know the characters aren't supposed to be there and will raise the alarm if given the chance. They definitely possess clues to the nature of the Facility and might have a MacGuffin on them, assuming the MacGuffin is transportable and not unique. There is a chance that one of the self-aware flunkies is actually someone important to the Conspiracy as a whole, eg. a top scientist, necromancer or named NPC of some kind. 
• Security. These may or may not be armed. If armed, they will use lethal force. If unarmed, they use nonlethal (tasers, pepper spray) and attempt to capture.  If armed, well ... If the alarm has not been raised then security does not automatically assume everyone they encounter is a threat. If the alarm has been raised, then security treats everyone they meet as a threat, unless there's reason to behave otherwise. So, eg, if the characters disguise themselves as flunkies, they might not automatically trigger an armed response. 
• Rome. This might be a thing, rather than a person. In Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, for instance, the strange canister at the heart of the church crypt is Rome. I'm not going to go into great detail here since your Rome may be very different, but the point is, this is the heart of the Facility. Whether it's a vampire on the prowl, a portal to another dimension, a smelting pot for souls or something else altogether, is up to you. The broader point is this: whatever Rome is, it is dangerous, and it is the reason why the Facility exists/functions. 

Those are the basic encounters. Do you need more?

Sure, you can have more. Whether you need them or not is up to you. However, for the sake of this example let's assume that there are other factions out there interested in what the enemy is up to. Let's assume the Mysterious Monseigneur and his Vatican friends take an interest in the Facility. They may be watching it from afar. They haven't decided to take action against it, not yet. They want to know more about where the Facility fits into the overall network, so they're just monitoring it for now. 

However, now the players decide to move in, and the MM needs to decide what to do about that. 

The MM isn't necessarily opposed to the characters. The Vatican's involvement might be simply to watch what happens when the characters poke the hornet's nest. Or it might be to swoop in like the cavalry should the characters want a rescue. Or the characters might notice the MM's people hanging around the Facility and decide to strike up a short-term alliance. Any of these options are on the table, which means the Director needs a rough idea what the MM has to play with. Are his people armed special ops types? Researchers? Occultists? Something else? 

Let's further assume that the local authorities are not in the enemy's pocket. That means if the police, firefighters, emergency response or what-have-you show up, their arrival might stop whatever armed response the enemy had in mind. Time for a chase scene, perhaps?

Finally, let's assume some non-aligned media types are lurking nearby. It might be actual media from an honest-to-God news outlet, or it might be random bloggers with drones and cameras. They're here for other reasons, but they might be attracted to the Facility if something eye-catching happens. Like an explosion. Or the beginnings of a chase scene. Again, not a combat encounter, but it is something which complicates the narrative. Sometimes the narrative needs a good complication now and again. 

The great thing about encounters like these is that you don't need them for just this moment. You need yes-and contingencies for all kinds of moments. That means you can re-use, say, the police encounter you designed, or the media encounter, in other scenes. 

So there you have it. A series of encounters, rather than a set of dungeon tiles. A Facility with a little flesh on its bones.

Enjoy!

Factional Differences (RPG All, Bookhounds)

Recently I talked about Jonah and Tristen Fishel’s Proactive Roleplaying book, which goes into great detail about factions and their impact on the game. I wanted to discuss this in more detail, using Bookhounds of London as an example.

In broad terms, the Fishels use factions as what amounts to a sounding board for PC actions. If the PCs want to do X, the various factions in the game universe will be interested in that action and may react as a response to that action. Similarly, the factions have their own goals with their own timetables and, if the players don’t interfere with those goals, then the faction may succeed.

If this were Night's Black Agents, these are essentially Nodes. The difference being, in NBA Nodes are enemy assets, while here any group, enemy or not, can be a Faction.

What a Faction's success looks like will depend on the nature of the goal and the faction. A band of orcs who want to sack the town will succeed if they sack the town, burning and pillaging. A turncoat in the palace who wants to usurp a political rival may succeed if the rival is kicked out of power. Those two end results look very different, in-universe, but the effect of kicking the rival out of power may end up being far more destructive than an orc raid.

In Pelgrane, this is sometimes referred to as the Icon system. Each Icon represents a power – a faction – within the in-game universe. Each faction has an interest in what the characters are up to. A Heroic Icon, Ambiguous Icon or Villainous Icon will each have its own goals, ambitions, and effect on the in-game universe but, mechanically speaking, they all operate in the same way. Spend points, get stuff. What stuff looks like will depend on whether your character’s relationship with the Icon is positive, conflicted or negative.

OK, so far so familiar. However, most systems like these talk in high fantasy or major conflict terms. Even in Night’s Black Agents, where there is an optional Icon system, it’s talking about the higher echelons of state, or criminal enterprises that could topple governments. The Archmage in 13th Age isn’t interested in helping you improve your chess game, any more than Edom cares whether or not your character wakes up on time to make it to a job interview. They have more important fish to fry.

What changes when the factions are less significant?

Bookhounds of London is a game in which a small group of entrepreneurs stave off financial ruin by selling secrets man was not meant to know. They avoid disaster in the here-and-now by sowing the seeds of future destruction. But while the things they deal in may end up causing death on a grand scale, the forces the Bookhounds contend with are more mundane. The Hounds don’t clash with the Metropolitan Police; they clash with the constable on the beat. They don’t fight off shadowy cabals; they fight off debt collectors. The contests they wage are never recorded in the annals of history. They’d be lucky if they were recorded on the wall of the nearest public toilet.

Ultimately a faction is a group sufficiently powerful enough, and interested enough, to have an effect on your characters. Or, to re-use an old idea, it has:

• Power, appropriate to its function within the narrative.
• Goals.
• Assets, to be used to achieve its goals.

Some factions are going to be obvious, some not. It’s reasonable to say, for example, that every campaign has some kind of authority that handles governmental tasks. Whether this is set in some distant future dystopia or a brooding, unhappy 1930s London, someone is taking out the trash. Or, possibly, failing to take out the trash. Whichever.

In a Bookhounds setting, then, a potential governmental faction could be:

The Local Council: faceless bureaucrats who are doing their best and yet, somehow, not.

For which there are the following Goals:

• Make sure all records are current and up-to-date.
• Levy fines for non-compliance.
• Enforce parking laws.

Add to these minor day-to-day annoyances one major Goal:

• Slum Clearance. The Council has been given grants to clear out slum housing and build new. This includes the street the Hounds’ shop is on.

That one will cause some angst.

Some factions will arise as a consequence of the setting. Bookhounds is a little unique in that its core function is retail: the characters are engaged in the sale of books. Which means the characters have to deal with the unwashed masses.

That wants a special faction:

The Book Club: self-satisfied enthusiasts who have never run a business and yet know how to run a business. Specifically, your business.

For which there are the following Goals:

• Make sure there’s enough tea & biscuits.
• Make sure there’s enough of what we want on the shelves.
• Engage speakers on interesting topics to come and lecture on those topics.

Again, sounds perfectly reasonable. Except it’s not going to be the Club paying for the tea & biscuits, is it? That will be coming out of the shop’s limited petty cash. Just because the Book Club wants it doesn’t mean they’ll buy it all, so if the shop stocks the shelves with titles the Club wants it'll be draining the shop’s limited income as this dross rots upon the shelf. As for those speakers, picture the snorefest as some dusty academic puts off paying customers with his blow-by-blow account of something only the Book Club cares about.

Add to these the major Goal:

• Hold a Séance. One of the Club members fancies themselves a Madame Blavatsky and wants to hold a spiritualist session. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Each group is sufficiently powerful enough, and interested enough, to have an effect on the characters. The effect doesn’t have to be some world-shattering contest or a fight atop the Reichenbach Falls. The effect has to be in keeping with the theme of the campaign. That’s it.

Among other things this means the end Goal doesn't have to be a campaign-ending event. It can be a major annoyance. It can create a scenario all on its own. But it doesn't have to be the capstone unless you want it to be. 

Slum Clearance, for example, seems like an obvious capstone. It can be one, if you like. Or it can be a catalyst, forcing the Hounds to relocate the shop but not ending their careers. It could also involve some clever scheming to make sure that their street isn't included in the slum clearance scheme. That warrants a scenario, perhaps two, as they reestablish elsewhere. Not a Game Over.

There’s one other thing I want to talk about.

The Fishels mention a mechanic they swiped from Blades in the Dark: the pie chart. It’s simple, visual and works well. Divide the Goal up into a pie chart with four, six, eight segments – as many as necessary. Each time a section of that chart is filled in, the faction is one step closer to its Goal. Fill in all the sections, and the Goal is complete.

Hmmm.

I don’t mind swiping ideas from other systems but that seems like a lot of faff.

Was it me, this is how I’d handle it. Have four markers, one Reaction, as follows:

• Marker One
• Marker Two
• Reaction
• Marker Three
• Marker Four: Goal Reached.

The Faction is working towards a Goal. If it achieves three of its objectives, its Markers, then number four is the Goal, which in this case is Hold a Séance. The Reaction is there as a floating response to anything the characters might do.

Exactly what these markers are will depend on the faction, but if we were talking about the Book Club, eg, then the markers would be:

• Make sure there’s enough tea & biscuits.
• Make sure there’s enough of what we want on the shelves.
• Engage speakers on interesting topics to come and lecture on those topics.

As time goes by the Book Club works towards its ultimate Goal, and the more successes it has along the way the more likely it is that the ultimate Goal will be achieved. The Reaction is there for when the Book Club feels slighted or threatened by something the characters do.

Are these markers a threat to the characters? No, not necessarily. Getting tea and biscuits is hardly the same thing as a note written in blood. But it is often the case that even people who seem harmless end up doing a lot of damage, whether they mean to or not.

The tea and biscuits are fine. The séance, not so much. But you don’t get to a point where the séance is possible before granting the Book Club a great deal of leeway, which is what will happen if the Club gets what it wants all the time. Like, eg, tea and biscuits on demand.

As for the Reaction, the Club might, if slighted, withdraw its support. For a while. They might go to a rival store, set up shop there. Take their business somewhere else, perhaps even persuade other customers to follow their lead. This, if not prevented, leads to a financial Reversal for the shop, affecting its credit rating and its ability to buy new stock.

Note the ‘if not prevented’ bit. The characters may decide to keep the Club on, but to do that they’ll need to give the Club something it wants. Like, say, put more of what the Club wants on the shelves, or engage speakers on interesting topics to come and lecture on those topics.

Then comes the séance …

That’s it for this week. Enjoy!

Not Quite Book Review Corner: Proactive Roleplaying

Proactive Roleplaying: Guidelines and Strategies for Running PC-Driven Narratives in 5E Adventures by Jonah and Tristen Fishel, Media Lab Books 2023 

I mentioned this a short while back and I finally got my hands on a copy.  

Short version: It’s a breezy read and I’d recommend it to anyone starting their RPG journey. 

Long version: Well … 

This is a first effort and a fine one from the Fishels. You can sense their enthusiasm. It’s spilling off the page. They do make some egregious clangers but I’d chalk that up to inexperience and, if this first effort is anything to go by, I expect future efforts to be much better.  

I could have lived without the constant pop culture references. If you mention, say, Dune, to me, I no longer know whether you mean the books by Frank Herbert, the ones by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the 1984 film, the 2021 film, the 2024 film, the various different television series, the graphic novels ... Particularly these days when there are more streaming services than fleas on a fat dog’s arse, and other creators line up around the block to create fiction in a dead writer’s style, I do not pretend to keep up with all the pop culture all the time. Nobody human could.  

Those who try come away … changed. By their strangeness ye shall know them. 

That said, I think this is a brilliant book for anyone new to the hobby trying to run a D&D game. Its advice is commonsense. The base idea is that, as DM, you should make your 5E game more player-facing by allowing them to pick their own path through the narrative.  

Some of you may feel a slight twitch at this point; a certain spasm in the spinal column. 

That’s because this is exactly the same argument that Trail of Cthulhu had with Call, sixteen years ago. The argument that led to Trail taking dice out of the equation, allowing the players to pick the direction of the game by allowing them to piece together the threads of the narrative without resorting to dice rolls. Dice rolls when failure is interesting? Absolutely. Dice rolls when dice become gatekeepers preventing players from accessing story? No thank you. 

Later this became systems in which the players were allowed to pick the direction of the campaign, not just the game. The big two are Dracula Dossier and Armitage Files, but truthfully it applies to pretty much any GUMSHOE product. The base argument there is exactly the same as the base argument here. Give players some control over the narrative and you strengthen the narrative.  

The big difference being, this time, we’re talking about 5E D&D. Dungeons and Dragons gave birth to the RPG genre but it also gave birth to the DM-driven narrative. The linear path, carefully scripted by one person. It drives a lot of DMs down that same road, even now.  

With dice. Lots and lots of dice. And charts. God. O Lord. The charts. I see the Fishels still love ‘em some charty goodness. Best of luck to them. Some people’s creative style differ from mine. I found myself wishing for the bare simplicity of GUMSHOE towards the end of the book’s example scenario section. It was beginning to feel like eating an entire cheesecake in one sitting. The first slice? Goes down easy. Second slice? Mmm. Slice eight? O God …   

It does feel at times as if D&D folks drag the mechanics of the game along with them like damned souls hauling chains and weights from now until salvation. As if they don't see the chains as chains, somehow. jhj

Honestly, I’d like to see more DMs make player-facing games. Particularly player-facing D&D games, which often tend to be anything but. I think it can only add to the hobby. This is one of those times when you can see the authors taking their first steps down that path and I wish them well.  

If you’re looking for a birthday present for your DM or hoping for some tips on how to make your 5E game a better experience for everyone at the table, I highly recommend this book.  

See you next week!