Storm King's Thunder marks the fifth hardcover campaign adventure for the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons and it takes quite a departure from previous adventures. In short, Storm King's Thunder is huge. Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat were also huge, but they had one big central plot going on—stop the rise of Tiamat. Storm King's Thunder is huge but its central story is much more relaxed. As written in the adventure, there is no doomsday clock going on in this adventure. The characters are free to explore the wide range of the Sword Coast as much as they desire.

Though it spans roughly ten levels of play, there is no reason we can't fill this adventure out into a huge level 1 to 20 adventure, filling in the gaps wherever and however we see fit. Storm King's Thunder is one part adventure and one part campaign setting, giving us this freedom with lots of blanks for us to fill in.

We'll likely be writing a lot about filling these blanks in articles to come. In the mean time, as he did with previous published adventures, Sean McGovern of the Power Score blog has an excellent guide to Storm King's Thunder along with a pay what you want PDF on the DM's Guild. It's an extremely thorough article, much more thorough than we will get into here, so give it a look.

In this article, we'll narrow down to our very first session and how we might steer the campaign from the moment our players sit down to run it.

Our First Session: Session Zero

Dungeon Masters have talked about the concept of a session zero quite a bit in the past but this adventure, moreso than most, really benefits from a strong session zero. A session zero is a session that focuses on building characters, sharing backgrounds, setting guidelines for the campaign, and generally just relaxing with the players to get everyone comfortable with the theme of the adventure.

Players don't have to come with anything at all to join in a session zero. It's a time to build characters and fill in the blanks along with the rest of the group. It can be a high improv session with lots of "what if" and "yes, and" sort of questions coming up as players figure out what they want to play and how their characters relate.

That said, a session zero isn't totally freeform. It behooves the DM to spend time talking about what sort of campaign its going to be. I described Storm King's Thunder as a grand tour of the Sword Coast, with wide ranging travel, lots of interesting personal stories and plots going on, and no big overarching doomsday sort of event going on (which sets it apart from many previous adventures).

A session zero also gives the DM the chance to guide characters as they join together. "Did the two of you meet at Candlekeep?" or "did you two meet up when Leosin Erlanthar came into the Star Forest to find you?" are examples of questions that tie characters together and to the game world. There's lots of opportunities to build interesting interconnected backgrounds here. Because the adventure is so wide ranging, we don't have to get too specific into ensuring that the backgrounds fit the campaign. Any solid connection to the Sword Coast can help.

Capitalizing on Player's Investments in Previous Campaigns

Because this campaign is set firmly in the Sword Coast, it has lots of potential interconnects with three of the previous adventures including Horde of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat, Princes of the Apocalypse, and Out of the Abyss. It can even tie into adventures published before 5e was fully formed such as Murder at Baldur's Gate, Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, Scourge of the Sword Coast, Dead in Thay, and Legacy of the Crystal Shard.

If our players have played in these adventures, we can reference back to these locations and the NPCs within them to give our players a strong sense of connection with the world. If we haven't played in these adventures, we can use them to fill out parts of this larger campaign if we want offer a lot of options. There is no reason, for example, that the characters will get involved in the issues around Dragonspear Castle while they're investigating this whole Ordening thing going on. Depending on which adventures they've played, the world will fill out quite a bit more.

If the players have played in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, we might re-introduce NPC such as Leosin Erlanthar, Gemna Gleamsilver, and Ontharr Frume. Even if the characters in this campaign don't know those NPCs, the players will and they'll enjoy seeing them again. The same goes for NPCs from other adventures such as Sir Isteval from the older Sword Coast adventures. Whenever we can tie a connection back to previous adventures or campaigns, we can empower our players and give them a strong connection between this campaign and previous ones.

Choosing a Single Primary Faction

One way to start off Storm King's Thunder is to have the group decide together on a primary faction instead of each choosing separately. You can describe each of the five factions and have the group decide together which one they are connected to. Not every character need be connected to that faction but having a strong group connection to a single faction can build in a big hook that will matter to most, if not all, of the characters.

When they have chosen their faction, they might all meet up with their perspective faction leader at the Happy Cow tavern at Daggerford to begin their adventure. Here are some potential faction leader NPCs:

• Harpers: Leosin Erlanthar
• Order of the Gauntlet: Ontharr Frume
• Emerald Enclave: Delaan Winterhound
• Lord's Alliance: Sir Isteval
• Zhentarim: Jamna Gleamsilver

You can replace any of these agents with other NPCs the players might recognize from previous adventures.

Choosing a single faction has the advantage of setting a large scope of the campaign in a particular direction. It also gives good reason for the characters to all be together for one cause. Some might feel it is too limiting so bring this up as an option to your players and, if they don't want to do it, skip it.

Also, if they all choose Zhent, make sure they agree that group cohesion and general civility are still the rules of the table. No one wants to run a group of five murderous assholes.

The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide: Rick Steve's Sword Coast

You might mention to your players that this campaign can go hand-in-hand with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Players can use that book to read up about places you visit or places they hear about. They can tie themselves closer to the campaign by choosing backgrounds found in the book. They might even choose one of the class builds that focuses closer on the events of the Realms. This whole book can act as a giant set of handouts for the players if they're willing to invest in it.

Buy an Awesome Map

If you have the means, you might consider investing in an awesome Sword Coast map to use as a continuing table prop. You can buy a massive digital download of the Sword Coast map from the artist, Mike Schley, and then have it printed and laminated at Kinkos. This will run about $50 but you'll have a beautiful big map of the sword coast that will last a lifetime and you can even draw on it with a dry-erase marker like a huge table battle map.

Level 1, a Giant Vulture and a Strong Conversation

If you choose to start the campaign at level 1, which I recommend, remember how much level 1 can suck. There is no level more dangerous than level 1. For this reason, I suggest one house rule you might mention at your first session—there is no instant death due to massive damage until level 5. This helps ensure that the campaign doesn't start off with a single bad critical hit ruining the night for someone. If you're group prefers more hard core play, however, go with the gods.

Getting from level 1 to level 2 shouldn't take much more than a strong conversation at the Happy Cow and maybe a fight with a giant vulture along the Trade Way. By the time the characters start getting involved in the events of Nightstone, they should be well on their way to level 2.

Stay tuned for further articles on this fantastic adventure as we continue our epic trek across the Sword Coast!

In the book The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, all of the communication of human beings has been compromised by alien supercomputers the size of protons called "sophons". The only way humanity can build a strategy to combat these aliens is if a small number of people, known as Wallfacers, come up with that strategy completely in their heads without describing a single part of it to anyone else.

Our brains are amazing simulators of the universe (perhaps many universes). We have never built computers capable of building simulations as rich and powerful as the ones we have going on in our brains all the time. This is what makes D&D such a compelling game, it's a shared simulation processed across the brains of everyone at the table.

We've talked before about playing D&D anywhere, even if you don't happen to be sitting at the table with a bunch of friends. We've also talked about the power of developing our own DM's brain attic. What if we happen to be by ourselves, our cellphone batteries dead and our pens fresh out of ink? How can we play D&D entirely in our heads?

In the ways of the lazy dungeon master and in our construction of fantastic locations, we ask ourselves a series of questions that helps us prepare for our next game. These questions help steer our wonderful brains into the right direction, focusing our time and energy on the activities that create the biggest impact towards improving the fun of the game. Many of these activities are simply thinking about the right questions such as "where will the game start?" or "what three scenes do I see taking place in the next session?"

What other questions might we consider when we focus our minds on our games? What are the questions that help fire up our creativity to build fantastic D&D games? What happens when we, ourselves, become wallfacers?

Today we're going to look at a few questions that help us steer our brains into the right direction to come up with great ideas for our D&D games. We can pick one or more of these questions and give ourselves some time to ponder them and see where they lead you.

What is the villain doing right now?

This is a favorite of mine—one I often use to put myself to sleep at night. In our campaigns we likely have one or more villains. These villains aren't just sitting around waiting for the characters to show up. These villains have quests. They're doing things. What things? What are they doing right now?

For example, While our characters are busy exploring the ruined castle of Argynvostholt, Strahd the Vampire Lord is watching them, sending out his minions to plant seeds of terror in the villagers of Valliki, or hunting down the whereabouts of Ireena Kolyana. He's doing things.

This is where we put our simulator brains to excellent use. Far too often we use our brains to imagine how other actual people are thinking, only to be terribly wrong about it. Instead, we can use our awesome simulator brains to think like imaginary people. We can't be wrong about that.

What are our villains up to right now?

Who are the characters in my game? Where did they come from and what do they want?

We talked at length about this in Preparation Step Zero: Review the Characters. The more we think about the characters; who they are, where they came from, and what they want; the more we're likely to take that into account as the unformed gray ethereal matter of our games starts to become solid people, places, stories, and events. Running down a list of each of the player characters is a great way to start any prep session, even if we're just taking a walk in the park, falling asleep in a boring class, or stuck in traffic somewhere.

If you're having trouble remembering much about the characters, write down their info on your very own campaign worksheet and take a picture of it with your cellphone so you can read over it on the go.

We might not, however, want to think about what they're going to do. We have no idea. That's up to the players. Trying to guess what they're going to do means we're trying to simulate another actual person's brain and, as we mentioned before, therein lies railroading, frustration, and disappointment.

What character hook can I pull into our next game?

Likewise, we can aim our fantastic supercomputer brains on the question of how to hook the characters into our next game. How can we steer our next game to highlight one of the characters? What interesting piece of their background can we pull in? Did they have a villain in their past that's coming to town? Is an old relative going to show up? Is a revenant seeking that magical sword they bought at the shady vendor in Waterdeep? Are they about to be arrested for a crime they committed in Amn years ago? Is their intelligent sword about to rebel? While we can't simulate how those characters will act, we can simulate what the world will do around them. What interesting situation will a character find themselves in next session?

What secrets can the characters uncover?

We talk a lot about secrets here at Sly Flourish and this is a prime example of the sort of question that can drive the creation of secrets. In our campaign world, whether our own or a pre-published one, what pieces of history might the characters discover? We don't need to write a novel, nor should we. A line or two will do. How many can we remember without having to write them down?

The key to steering this question is focusing it on things the characters can actually learn and that players will find useful and interesting. "Why will they give a shit?" should be the question first and foremost in your mind. This prevents us pontificating and pondering irrelevant crap.

What secrets will the characters discover?

What are three fantastic features of this location?

This is the key blueprint to the construction of fantastic locations. Whenever we come up with an interesting location, big or small, we can ask ourselves to note the three fantastic elements of this location. Does this old keep nestled between two mile-high waterfalls? Does this hill-side mine glow an incandescent blue in the dead of night? Do these strange narrow caves seem to breathe sulphuric gas?

Coming up with a single fantastic feature usually isn't hard. A second one isn't too terrible either. The third starts to get tricky but that's often where we find something really unique. Going with our first response alone usually isn't the best answer.

What are the three fantastic features of this location?

What interesting NPCs can I draw from books, TV shows, or movies?

Interesting NPCs are a cornerstone to a great D&D game and we needn't look much further than the characters in our favorite movies, TV shows, or books. Jack Teller of Sons of Anarchy would make for an excellent Xolken, the head of the Seven Snakes Zhentarim mercenary group in Storm King's Thunder. In fact, most of the biker gang from that show would make excellent models for Zhentarim field agents on the Sword Coast.

It's amazing how many other interesting characteristics come out of our NPCs when we start matching them up with interesting characters in fiction.

Some questions that might not be useful

It's very possible, if we let our mind wander with wanton abandon, that it might focus upon questions that aren't as valuable to the strength and joy of our game. Here are a couple of examples:

What will the players do?

When we try to predict how our players will behave, we're likely wasting our time. We're back to attempting to simulate the brains of other living people and that just doesn't work. It's unlikely we can guess, beyond a few obvious next steps, how our players will react to something.

Instead, we can focus on creating interesting situations and become delighted when they choose paths we never thought of.

What is the long history of this world?

Any history we decide to create should be history exposed to and relevant to the characters. Often it's better to draw this out in small pieces rather than all at once. No one needs a history lesson on the empire of the Netherese but learning about a Netherese royal assassin through his sentient shadow-bladed dagger might get the players' attention. Break up our history into tiny bite-sized chunks when can tie to objects, magic items, tavern rumors, or other pieces of discovery throughout the characters' adventures.

How can I fuck with the characters?

I heard this idea come up a couple of times when discussing it on Twitter and it's not one I am fond of. Instead of building situations specifically designed to screw with the characters, we can build interesting story-relevant situations and see how they react.

In many conversations discussing encounter balance and as a theme in the 2016 D&D DM Questionnaire Results, it's clear that many GMs prefer to build situations, scenes, and encounters that make contextual sense for that part in the story, not ones balanced for the current power of the characters. How the characters choose to react to it is up to them. This can be a much stronger approach to take than setting out from the get-go to screw with the characters directly.

Structuring our Mind Palace

Our brains are amazing simulation machines beyond any we might comprehend. They can simulate entire universes, drive us completely mad, or, sometimes, both. If we put some structure to our thoughts, we can steer them to create fantastic stories, characters, and worlds for our players to explore.

The next time you're out for a nice walk in the autumn air, take some time to ponder one of these questions. You might discover something wonderful in your very own head.

On 28 October 2016 I released a survey for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters to help us all get a better understanding of how DMs prepare for and run their D&D games.

This article analyzes the results of the survey and discusses the methods I used to conduct and analyze the results. I analyzed the results in a bunch of different ways including standard result counts for each question and more advanced (and not necessarily accurate) methods such as result correlations and text processing of the questions regarding tools and DM tips.

I'm going to avoid jumping to any conclusions from these results. When we look at these results, it is easy for us to want to leap to answer the question of "why". We're not going to do that here. This is just the facts, ma'am.

If you want to explore the data yourself, you can download the original survey results or a cleaned up version of the results both in CSV format. You can also examine the code used to conduct the analysis and all of the various ways I sliced the data at the 2016 D&D DM Survey Github site.

This is a huge article, weighing in at about 5,000 words, so here's a table of contents to get you to the stuff you're most interested in:

• Primary Results
• The Locations People Play
• Survey Response Correlations
• Top Tools DMs Use
• Favorite Tips
• Favorite Tips Text Clusters
• Favorite Tips Word Graph
• How I Analyzed the Results
• Potential Survey Flaws
• Explore the Data Yourself
• A Data-Driven View of Our Hobby

The Primary Results

Once I removed duplicate entries and trimmed the data to the pre-determined date range (more on this in our methods), there were a total of 6,600 results from 28 October to 28 November 2016.

The three charts below show the results of the survey for frequency of sessions, length of sessions, and overall preparation time.

Below are the results for other categorical questions of the survey:

Of 6,600 respondents on primary locations played, 55% answered home, 16% answered Roll20, 14% answered another private location, 5% answered local game shop, 4% answered another public location, 2% answered another online tool, 2% answered equal mix, and 1% answered Fantasy Grounds.

Of 6,600 respondents on primary campaign worlds used, 55% answered personal setting, 38% answered Forgotten Realms, 5% answered another D&D campaign world, and 2% answered non-D&D campaign world.

Of 6,600 respondents on primary adventures used, 64% answered personal adventures and 36% answered published adventures.

Of 6,600 respondents on preferred combat type, 63% answered 5' gridded combat, 19% answered abstract maps, and 18% answered theater of the mind.

The chart below shows the results of the 6,600 responses for various preparation activities. They are generally ordered from the activities most often using the most time to the activities most often using the least time.

The Locations People Play

One of the survey questions let respondents select all of the locations they play along with the question on their primary location, noted above.

Of 9,711 total locations selected, 48% of the selections were for home, 19% were for another private location, 17% were for Roll20, 6% were for a local game shop, 5% were for another public location, 4% were for another online tool, and 1% were for fantasy grounds.

We can also examine at the results of this question by looking at the combinations of locations selected by respondents. The table below shows the top 10 combinations of locations selected.

This table covers the top 87% of responses to this question. The remaining 13% were spread across the remaining combinations with less than 2% for any single combination of results so I didn't bother adding them to the table.

Survey Response Correlations

Beyond raw results, we can also examine how the responses of some questions correlate to the responses of other questions. Are DMs who run games less often more likely to take longer preparing for their games? Are DMs who primarily run games on Roll20 more likely to run shorter games? We can investigate these correlations using a technique called categorical chi-squared testing, which helps us mathematically figure out potential correlations by matching all of the actual results for any pair of questions with the expected result based on a typical distribution.

The result is a series of graphs that show when some results are more or less likely than the expected distribution. Here are a few example charts.

Note that large dark red dots indicate a high negative correlation between those two responses (respondents were less likely to select one of those responses if they had selected the other). A large blue dot represents a high positive correlation between those two responses (respondents were more likely to select one response if they had selected the other. The size and intensity of the dots indicates the difference from the expected norm. The larger and darker the dot, the greater the residual difference from zero and the stronger the correlation.

In the above chart you can see a strong positive correlation between running games at a local game shop and spending 15 minutes preparing for a session. We have a slightly smaller negative correlation between spending about 15 minutes on preparation and running games on Roll20.

In the above plot, you can see a strong positive correlation between preparing for four hours or more and running games monthly or less than monthly.

In the above plot we can see strong positive correlations with running published adventures in published campaign worlds and the same for personal adventures and personal campaign worlds. We see strong negative correlations for the opposite. This chart is a good benchmark of what we would expect to see. People who play in the Forgotten Realms are more likely to play published adventures while those who run homebrew campaign worlds are more likely to play their own adventures. Makes sense.

Below is a full list of correlation plots for each combination of question results. I removed combinations that had a p-value lower than .02, essentially filtering out results had a high chance for inaccuracy.

• Frequency of Games by Length of Games
• Frequency of Games by Primary Locations
• Frequency of Games by Campaign Worlds
• Frequency of Games by Adventures
• Frequency of Games by Preferred Combat Type
• Length of Games by Primary Locations
• Length of Games by Adventures
• Length of Games by Preferred Combat Type
• Length of Games by Preparation Time
• Primary Locations by Campaign Worlds
• Primary Locations by Adventures
• Primary Locations by Preferred Combat Type
• Campaign Worlds by Preparation Time
• Adventures by Preparation Time
• Preferred Combat Type by Preparation Time

It is also important to note that most of these strong correlations appear for results with fewer answers. This indicates that answers with a greater number of responses, such as running 4 hour sessions, running sessions weekly, or running games at home, rarely have a strong correlation to any other response since those answers were selected by the most people regardless of the rest of their other answers.

Top Tools Used

This survey included two open text fields that respondents could fill in with their top tools and their favorite tip for running a great game. Because these were open fields, our count of top tools isn't as accurate as the survey results above. Take the numbers below as an estimate instead of an exact figure.

Here are the results for the top 30 tools chosen by 4,164 survey respondents.

Favorite Tips

Grouping up top tips is much harder than grouping up tools, which were much easier to normalize around commonly recommended tools. I used a bunch of different natural language processing techniques to attempt to summarize the 4,046 tips people submitted.

First, we can do a simple word aggregation. We start by processing the text by removing common words (called "stopwords"), lower-casing the text, and removing punctuation. Next, we "lemmatize" words to group them into their root form (turning "players" into "player" and "stories" into "story"). Finally, we can count up all of the words used in all of the tips and take a look at the top 50 words with counts in parens:

player (2044), story (522), character (461), game (425), npc (410), dont (350), fun (278), thing (271), session (254), keep (244), time (233), encounter (217), will (205), pc (199), combat (198), play (175), idea (173), good (163), sure (153), adventure (148), rule (142), feel (138), roll (137), lot (135), party (131), making (130), action (129), plan (127), plot (127), dm (123), work (120), campaign (119), great (112), improv (110), going (101), create (99), group (93), improvise (93), choice (90), help (89), trick (86), monster (85), prep (84), build (83), find (83), happen (80), music (80), letting (80), table (79), prepare (79).

That's not particular useful, obviously. We see common words but we don't know the context at all. We can step this up by taking a look at top "bi-grams" or pairs of words once we removed stopwords. Here are the top fifty bi-grams for the 4,046 tips:

player character (54), player will (51), letting player (49), listen player (42), player story (39), making sure (38), player feel (32), player game (32), player dont (31), sure player (30), keep player (29), player action (29), player idea (28), game player (27), dont afraid (27), player fun (27), player choice (26), allow player (26), story player (25), keep thing (25), combat encounter (25), role play (22), character story (21), knowing player (19), player agency (19), player decide (19), random encounter (18), player play (18), player find (18), fun player (17), player thing (17), thing player (17), rule cool (17), listening player (17), drive story (16), ahead time (16), magic item (16), player going (15), plot point (15), npc player (15), player describe (15), plot twist (15), role playing (14), side quest (14), memorable npc (14), player control (14), player engaged (14), plot hook (14), spend time (14), player decision (13).

This is somewhat more interesting, we can start to get an idea what we're talking about. Note that the number of results drops significantly compared to single words, limiting the potential significance. Still, we can go one more level with "tri-grams" which, as you might have guessed, is three words together. Here are the top 50 tri-grams:

keep thing moving (13), making sure player (11), player drive story (11), sure player fun (6), pay attention player (6), making sure fun (6), player character story (5), allow player freedom (5), player guide story (5), spend lot time (5), player write story (5), random encounter table (4), keep flow going (4), player develop story (4), letting player story (4), listen player idea (4), keep thing interesting (4), fudge dice roll (4), dont sweat small (4), great dd game (4), sweat small stuff (4), keep player engaged (4), player feel character (4), player feel awesome (4), keep action moving (4), game player play (4), player role play (4), dm screen initiative (3), idea session will (3), solution letting player (3), flying seat pant (3), sure player engaged (3), letting player decide (3), pop culture reference (3), player heavy lifting (3), player decision matter (3), list name npc (3), music help set (3), change thing fly (3), dont afraid change (3), dont rule lawyer (3), great game player (3), character moment shine (3), open communication player (3), side quest ready (3), skill check player (3), list npc name (3), character dont afraid (3), player moment shine (3), consequence player action (3)

The phrases get more meaningful but the counts go way down making them less useful for understand at a high-level what we're looking at.

Favorite Tips Text Clustering

There's another natural language technique for analyzing big piles of text called "text clustering". You do this when you have a lot of text and don't really know what's in it. This technique, called K-means clustering, attempts to group up tips into a number of clusters and then tells you what the top words were that defined each cluster.

I'll warn you, this is a bit like reading tea leaves. We have to sort of squint to see the results and the results are still a bit fuzzy. Still, it brings up some interesting terms.

Here's the result when I attempted to bin all 4,153 tips into eight clusters and list out the 100 significant terms per cluster:

Cluster 0 (427 tips): game, session, use, player, like, rule, thing, time, card, initiative, combat, make, cool, world, npc, run, story, dont, dm, idea, start, encounter, know, way, think, help, prep, pc, try, rule cool, best, play, lot, want, note, monster, people, adventure, create, cliffhanger, feel, trick, end, possible, just, campaign, track, work, need, great, inspiration, build, roll, use player, music, good, little, map, book, ha, really, player game, table, ive, come, plan, allow, game player, ask, outline, character, running, end session, set, moment, point, im, stuff, background, let, having, prepared, want game, write, event, important, great game, previous, remember, prepare, scene, using, small, flow, going, run game, start session, make game, different, player session

Cluster 1 (742 tips): player, want, story, player want, listen, world, idea, letting, listen player, letting player, action, know, play, try, choice, work, know player, roll, thing, listening, game, npc, listening player, dont, ask, think, time, build, player idea, come, adventure, freedom, like, possible, open, knowing, way, campaign, knowing player, allow, making, ask player, building, good, player action, encounter, tell, going, giving, great, player choice, engage, setting, run, plan, moment, just, invested, agency, scene, dm, expect, getting, better, consequence, work player, question, path, interact, enjoy, need, player agency, having, allowing, improvising, create, flow, allow player, really, giving player, getting player, using, player come, twist, lot, develop, good player, roll player, react, learn, plot, option, player story, player try, player think, mind, allowing player, control, prep, remember

Cluster 2 (316 tips): make, sure, make sure, player, make player, player make, npc, feel, world, game, story, sure player, like, dont, make world, thing, try, making, combat, make sure player, try make, pc, time, just, make game, great, think, making sure, npc make, choice, want, ha, fly, interesting, real, know, party, good, campaign, decision, player feel, going, matter, engaged, plan, make feel, cool, action, just make, make interesting, enemy, idea, character, enjoy, really, moment, fun, session, work, make story, make pc, feel like, situation, way, make sense, make combat, hard, sure ha, theyre, make npc, encounter, having, making sure player, prepared, sense, setting, make player feel, better, change, fight, play, kill, solution, consequence, awesome, motivation, scene, shine, help, note, alive, let, happen, voice, run, group, playing, people, roll, important

Cluster 3 (295 tips): let, let player, player, story, want, world, dont, try, just, let player want, thing, adventure, idea, game, player want, rule, fun, let player run, run, let player try, player run, decide, think, guide, player try, dont let, dictate, world let, control, build, say, action, drive, play, let player decide, make, create, let story, plot, let player drive, player decide, player drive, tell, lead, let player guide, drive story, talk, let player drive story, player guide, player drive story, player let, flow, plan, player tell, fun let player, know, let player tell, let player play, npc, fun let, let player dictate, work, follow, player dictate, let player tell story, player play, possible, tell story, run game, player control, let player talk, player tell story, let player lead, succeed, develop, let player make, let try, player lead, world let player, roll, let player think, let player run game, improvise, player run game, character, like, player talk, explore, happen, player create, let player control, good, pace, bogged, build world, use, solution, write, story just, campaign

Cluster 4 (307 tips): character, player, player character, story, npc, world, make, game, plot, play, like, background, character story, getting, making, encounter, voice, think, feel, backstory, way, ask, personal, know, create, character background, combat, help, character backstory, session, invested, let, group, choice, thing, want, build, campaign, just, lot, goal, make character, using, try, include, hook, specific, giving, having, shine, develop, people, dont, character feel, information, getting character, npc character, good, dm, action, adventure, situation, scene, encourage, interaction, really, know character, moment, sheet, character dont, point, pc, main, question, interesting, use, letting character, let character, possible, event, tell, tie, ask player, involved, party, story character, letting, character voice, space, arc, character npc, motivation, development, care, ha, character make, like character, doing, important, stay

Cluster 5 (1689 tips): npc, dont, pc, music, just, improvise, improv, combat, good, encounter, story, voice, prepare, time, thing, party, know, lot, prepared, improvisation, roll, world, random, trick, great, preparation, note, monster, player, try, using, plan, flexible, plot, adventure, having, making, way, like, description, table, ready, group, prep, flow, play, dm, going, idea, set, fly, steal, map, really, playing, memorable, moving, campaign, unexpected, wing, work, interesting, keeping, twist, enemy, humor, setting, situation, happen, planned, say, mind, skill, rule, mood, dont know, list, alcohol, create, choice, background, improvising, im, effect, scene, look, friend, open, people, need, dungeon, moment, long, dice, funny, think, location, possible, hand, d

Cluster 6 (113 tips): yes, say, say yes, yes player, say yes player, saying yes, player, saying, yes yes, improv, improvisation, try say yes, try, reason, try say, possible, player want, rule, phrase, want, time, dm, npc, consequence, working, way, work, instead, storytelling, lot, thing, let, play, doesnt, happens, let player, creative, sense, player choice, set, flow, pc, accent, having, improvisational, generally, best, choice, relax, prepare, difficulty, problem, adaptable, stupid, listen, style, make, happen, wing, story, remembering, id, realistic, audience, fun, appropriate, thing player, think, aka, thats, game play, imagination, stay, matter, make work, answer, reward, let player want, let player dictate, exciting, environment player, energy, player dictate, bad, knowing, player action, player control, shape, game, drama, old, plan, flesh, fast, just try, amazing, heavy, rule cool, imagine, dictate

Cluster 7 (157 tips): fun, having fun, having, rule, player, game, sure, just, making, making sure, make, fun player, player fun, player having fun, dont, make fun, player having, let, dm, sure having fun, sure having, try, focus, group, story, remember, want, fun dont, just fun, npc, youre, improv, loose, letting, like, play, end, know player, sure player, make sure, plan, everybody, flexible, providing, pc, doing, matter, just try, fun npc, encounter, important, make sure having, run, cool, know, rule cool, isnt, lot, ha, way, lead, stuff, plot, say, dont let, making sure player, interesting, ask, adventure, forget, outcome, thing, meant, inspiration, bend, roll, consequence, happen, working, job, try make, asking, adapt, dd, choose, long, roleplay, come, improvisation, having player, time, game fun, great, gm, want play, think, dont sweat, preparation, friend, thats

If we squint and swirl around these words in our teacup, we can start to see a few general trends.

Cluster 0 is a big mix of stuff. No clear trend there that I can see.

Cluster 1 we might call the focus on the player cluster.

Cluster 2 is all about the words make things happen; "make", "making", and "make sure".

Cluster 3 is sort of the opposite, it's the let things happen cluster; let things happen. Let the players do things. Let things go as they are. "Make" is highly active. "Let" is much more passive. Interesting.

Cluster 4 is the focus on character background and story cluster.

Cluster 5 are the party theater people. Lots about improvise, voice, stealing, and alcohol.

Cluster 6 is the say yes cluster.

Cluster 7 is our have fun cluster.

So, given our tea-leaf reading, here are the big tips we might coalesce around:

• Focus on the players.
• Make things happen.
• Let things happen.
• Focus on characters, backgrounds, and stories.
• Improvise.
• Say yes.
• Have fun.

Not a bad set of tips if you ask me.

Favorite Tips in a Word Graph

We have one final way we can look at submitted tips, in what is called a "word graph". In this case, we take those bi-grams we created up above and use them to map relationships between every pair of words. This is known as a graph in which you have two nodes (the words) connected by an "edge" (the fact that those two words showed up as a pair). We can then visualize all of the relationships of the words. Showing every pair of words would make the visualization too dense, so instead we only show word pairs that have occurred at least five times. Here is the resulting graph. Click on it to load a much larger image and explore it a bit.

This gives us a lot of interesting information and it beats "word clouds" all to hell. Now we can see what words connect to the word "dont" and all of the words related to "player". The little disconnected word pairs around the outer edge are also interesting.

We'll look at another graph in which I removed the word "player" since it so heavily dominates the graph, and focus in on the central cluster, getting rid of those extra word pairs around the edge. Take a look.

This gives us other interesting insights into the tips that people submitted.

Of course, if we want to read over 4,000 tips, we can just go look at all the tips and see for ourselves what's in them.

When Did People Respond?

I announced the survey on 28 October and each response included a datestamp for the time the survey was submitted. I wanted to analyze this datestamp in order to see the overall trends of posting. The chart below shows every survey response by date and by time. The bands have been "jittered" randomly so that they don't all pile up on one another. Here's the result.

This chart shows the the high number of responses after I advertised and re-advertised the survey on five social media platforms: Enworld, Reddit, Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter.

Note that these responses in this chart haven't been de-duplicated yet. Overall I identified about 120 duplicate responses in which every field in the response, including non-blank text fields, were identical to another. I left in 44 potential duplicate responses in which every result was the same but had blank text fields since it was possible multiple people submitted the exact same results and chose not to fill out the text field. Given the small number (0.6%) of potential duplicates with blank text fields, it was unlikely to affect the results one way or the other.

How I Analyzed the Results

For this survey I used a host of scripts to run the survey and analyze the data. I hosted the survey itself using the "form" from Google Drive. It scaled well for the number of responses and dumped out the results into a handy comma separated file (known as a CSV file). The survey form was fast to load, easy to fill out, and worked well on mobile devices.

During the survey I wrote a big pile of scripts in both Python and R to analyze the data. I also used good old Microsoft Excel (the only Microsoft product I like) to double-check the results to ensure I didn't screw something up in the Python and R code.

The R and Python scripts run through a bunch of different jobs including the following:

• Cleaning up the data by converting column names and response values into values more manageable by the software and visualizations. For example, I changed "How often do you run 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons games?" to "Frequency of Games" and "I prefer to run combat with maps, miniatures, and five foot per square grids." to "5' gridded combat".
• General data cleanup (turning all results into strings, formatting dates, that sort of stuff).
• Eliminating results outside of the survey range (7pm on the 28th of October to 7pm on the 28th of November)
• Sorting and prepping the data to build plots.
• Building the actual plots.
• Generating the statistical sentences of the primary results.
• Analyzing the multiple locations selection question using Excel.
• Running a series of Chi-squared tests on the survey results to identify correlations on results for pairs of questions and graphed them in R.
• Generating a plot of dates and times of the survey responses to check for weird anomalies.
• Removing duplicate entries where every field matched more than once including non-blank text fields. 44 (0.6%) potential duplicate entries that had blank text fields were retained.
• Building a different output for the "locations played" multiple potential choices per answer. I used Excel for this.
• Running a bunch of Python scripts for natural language processing including general text processing, lemmatization, word counts, bi-gram counts, and tri-gram counts.
• Running a Python script to build word-vectors of the tips, build a tf-idf of the word vectors, and run a k-means clustering algorithm to generate clusters of tips.
• Running an R script to generate a word-graph from a big bi-gram list of tips.

All of the scripts and data are hosted on the 2016 DM Survey Github site.

Potential Survey Flaws

Survey data like this is almost always inherently flawed. Instead of using it to build what we think is a perfect model of a typical D&D DM, we can use these results to get a general feeling for how DMs prepare and run their games.

In particular, I chose to use categorical groups for answers rather than a wider variety of choices (such as number of hours, whatever they be). This was to aid in the overall aggregation of results, avoid wild variances in potential responses, and to make the survey easier to answer. I also chose to ask mostly questions that required a single answer. I suspected that, had I offered a lot of "all of the above" answers, I wouldn't get a good gauge of the differences between styles and activities.

I posted the request to take the survey to a number of different online communities including the Dungeons & Dragons Google Plus community, the Reddit D&D Next community, on the ENWorld forum for D&D, the Facebook D&D community, and on Twitter. From the links above you can see the comments and criticism people left about the survey, all of which is worth considering when we look at these results.

Many DMs who commented on these forums stated that they often front-load their prep time and don't have a specific amount of time between sessions. They might spend many hours preparing for a big campaign and then spend only a little bit of time between sessions on preparation. The survey does not account for this and it's not clear how such a DM would respond to the question of time per week.

Though I requested participation in this survey across many online communities, there is still a high likelihood of a sample bias which is true for just about any online survey. Given the avenues of the survey's reach, the respondents only make up a small and particular portion of DMs who actually run.

We should consider all of these flaws when we look at the results. That said, I, for one, think that these flaws do not negate the results of the survey. Given the high number of respondents, I'm willing to bet it is a good general model of how DMs prepare and run their games.

Explore the Data Yourself

As part of this analysis I built a web-based DM Survey Explorer tool that lets us all explore the data and filter it by various responses. Give it a shot. Beware of p-hacking, however, by filtering the data until you get whatever response you want to see. As data visualization sage Edward Tufte states, if you beat your data hard enough, it will tell you whatever you want. Further, the more you filter the data, the fewer results you'll be looking at and the less statistically significant the results will be.

If you want to explore the raw data yourself, you can download the original 2016 D&D DM Survey CSV file or the cleaned up 2016 D&D DM Survey response CSV file and explore it with a tool like Excel. The cleaned-up file removes the timestamps, gets rid of duplicates, and renames columns and answers to make it a bit more manageable.

All of the code used to explore the data and build the plots is available on Github.

I am releasing the data and software under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license. You are free to download, analyze, explore, and post your results as long as you link back to this article, reference Mike Shea at Sly Flourish, and do so without commercializing the results, the data, or the code.

A Data-Driven View of Our Hobby

My hope in conducting this survey and exploring the results was to gain a more accurate view of how D&D DMs prepare for and run their D&D games. I'm glad to see the results, even if they are somewhat unsurprising. The wider the view we can get of our hobby, the more we can understand each other and ourselves. Look for more articles diving deeper into these results in the future. I hope you've enjoyed looking through the results as much as I enjoyed working with them.

I want to give special thanks to Emily Dresner, James Introcaso, Jacky Leung, Benjamin Reinhart, and Mike Schiller for their great help in reviewing and editing this article before it's release.

The D&D hardback adventure Storm King's Thunder needs help from the DM to grow into a deep and fulfilling campaign for our groups. As a vast adventure exploring the North, the material in the book gives us a thin layer over a vast landscape but lacks the depth needed in both quests and locations for a powerful and memorable adventure. It's up to us DMs to add this depth to the vast breadth of this adventure in a few different ways. These ways include adding meaningful character-driven quests, secrets of the Sword Coast, and small dungeons everywhere.

Today we're going to look at all three of these categories so we can make our exploration of the Sword Coast as rich and deep as we desire.

Add Meaningful Character-Driven Quests

As written, the quest lines in Storm King's Thunder are paper thin. Few players will get excited about traveling thousands of miles to the north to deliver bad news from Nightstone to Bryn Shander.

The quests don't get much better as the adventure goes on. Most of the adventure seems made up of side quests that do little to tie the characters to the main storyline until they meet up with Harshnag the Frost Giant and visit Annam's Temple in later chapters of the book.

Until then, there's the risk of the characters wandering about without a clear direction or clear idea what's going on.

We can see this as a deficiency in the adventure or we can see it as an opportunity to inject stories and adventures from our own ideas and the ideas of our players. We can start with a solid "session zero" determining more about the characters, where they came from, what they want, and what threads we might weave into the rest of the campaign. Each time we prep a session we can start with a review of the characters to see how we can weave the characters' backgrounds into the adventure.

Many times these personal quests will replace the vanilla quests in Storm King's Thunder.

A Request from One's Faction

As we discussed in our look at session zero of Storm King's Thunder, we might ask our players to choose a single faction for the whole group rather than split their alliances across a number of factions. If they agree, we'll have a strong bond between the characters before the game has even yet started. With this single faction, we can bring in key faction-focused NPCs who request that the characters investigate this recent uprising of the giants and stop whatever is causing it. Each faction may have a different reason for doing so, of course, but likely all of them want an end to the chaos of giant attacks.

These faction quests can form the backbone of the adventure. If Leosin Erlanthar is asking the characters to investigate the shattering of the Ordening and what effect it might have on the Sword Coast, it's a stronger tie than just some random NPC they run into on the road.

A Larger Campaign Quest

Early on, until the characters meet Harshnag, they don't really have a clear idea how they're involved in the whole shattering of the Ordening or how to restore it. Until they meet the oracle and hear the whole deal, they're just bumbling around on a bunch of one-off quests delivering messages or getting involved in local politics. It's very possible your group enjoys wandering around and getting involved in small adventures rather than having some big overall goal. Other groups, though, might like a strong central storyline they're always working on.

For this second group we can help bridge the gap between the earliest stages of the campaign and their meeting with Harshnag with a stronger campaign thread.

The core of this quest can come from any number of NPCs of importance to the characters including the above-mentioned faction quest giver. The core of the quest is "discover what's going on with the Ordining and fix it". We can break down the initial parts of this larger quest into various smaller components.

Discover the cause for the fall of the Ordening. This series of quests can take the characters across the Sword Coast meeting historians and archaeologists who know bits and pieces of giant lore and can piece together the cause of the fall of the Ordening. It might guide them Candlekeep where they can dig into old histories. It can also take them into old dungeons or other fantastic locations filled with relics and texts of the Ostorian empire. They might also discover clues that lead to the Eye of the All-Father.

Identify and disrupt the plots of the giant lords. This series of quests can take place as the characters deal with various giant threats. Giant attacks of all sorts might be taking place that demand their attention, including the three giant attacks on Triboar, Greenfields, and Bryn Shander. Interrogations with giants, their allies, or their captives could teach them much about their desires and send them on the way to disrupt these plots. The fire giant and cloud giant plots, in particular, are strong ones for the characters to disrupt. The hill giant gorge fest and the stone giant "screw with civilizations" isn't as clear. In the case of the stone giants, we can add in a whole new twist with the Dodkong, the Death King, a Stone Giant Lich who sees the fall of the Ordening as his chance to rise his giant death cult to new heights. You can read about the Dodkong in the Grand History of the Realms. Look for more on this in a future article.

We might be tempted to fill out a World of Warcraft-like quest tree with a thousand interwoven hierarchical quest chains but really we only need to know the next two or three of paths and the end goal. New quest ideas will come up as the characters go through them. As we discuss in the Lazy Dungeon Master we generally only need to know where we start, where we're headed, and what the next couple of steps are to get there.

Add Secrets of the Ordining, Ostoria, and the North

The giants have a rich history in the Realms and the story of the Ordining is one that the characters can learn through their exploration throughout the Sword Coast. Their journey throughout the Sword Coast will reveal a great many secrets. Some may come from NPCs they meet, others from places they explore. As they travel, we can expose these secrets, or parts of them, in whatever way makes sense.

To inspire us, we can delve deep into the history of this era by digging into the Dawn Age. Or reading through the Grand History of the Realms.

Here are some example big secrets. Likely these can be further broken down into a bunch of smaller secrets.

• The Ordining has shattered the natural hierarchy of giants and all of the giants seek the opportunity to change their station.
• Each giant race seeks to enhance their station in the way that seems natural to their race.
• The hill giants seek to increase their station with raw gluttony.
• The fire giants seek to build a machine of war to unleash across the Sword Coast.
• The cloud giants seek ancient magic from the days of the Ostorian empire and its war with the dragons.
• The frost giants seek an ancient and powerful artifacts aligned to the goddess Auril in the North, in particular, the fabled Ring of Winter.
• The stone giants seek to disrupt the growth and civilization of the humanoids of the North.
• The storm giants appear to be missing from these trials. No one knows where they have disappeared to.
• The shattering of the Ordining will cause chaos for the smallfolk who will fall underfoot of the giants and their activities. All of the factions seek to prevent this.
• Many ancient battlegrounds, burial sites, keeps, tombs, and vaults from the Ostorian age and the war between dragons and giants lay buried across the Sword Coast.
• Dark Hold, the Zhentarim fortress, is one such well known Ostorian keep.
• The Uthgardt barbarians sought out many giant artifacts and felt that they brought great power to their tribes.
• The fire giants have a divination magic they use to seek out pieces of their powerful weapon.
• A wicked stone giant necromancer cursed his clan with a cursed crown that devoured his queen. (see the Dodkong. Note, this is one I'm likely to add myself.

We can also weave in many general secrets of the the Sword Coast. We can make heavy use of the material in chapter 3 of Storm King's Thunder and also start really digging into the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and letting our players dig in as well, using the book as a giant handout of sorts. We can dig into the lore of the Realms as much as we want, going back 50,000 years and getting into all of struggles of the gods. We can break all of it down into a whole big pile of tweet-sized factoids to drop in as our characters explore the world.

Of course, we should not expect or demand that our players will give a shit. We might dig into this deep Realmslore for our own fun but that doesn't mean it is, or should be, fun for them. Sometimes it's interesting to know that a strange shadowy blade once belonged to a Netherese assassin but they might not know or care what the Netherese were at all. That's fine, sometimes just knowing that the world is big and deep is enough for the players' minds to wander.

Add Small Dungeons Everywhere

Storm King's Thunder lacks dungeons early on but we can add quite a few where we want them. Instead of vast complexes with hundreds of rooms, we have lots of opportunities to add in five-room dungeons, the perfect size dungeon for a session's worth of activities. If you need some maps for this, check out the vast selection of great maps by Dyson. You can also use the guidelines for building fantastic locations to fill these out as you need them. In short, outline three fantastic elements to each chamber of your dungeon.

You can place these small dungeons all over the Sword Coast. Each of those Uthgardt burial mounds could have a dungeon underneath it. Each of the towns likely has some historical dig going on that unearthed everything from an old Netherese tomb to a forgotten treasure vault of the Illefarn elves.

You need only put in as many dungeons as you want. If it feels like it's time for some deep explorations, throw in a dungeon. If you and your players have had enough with the historical digs, go back to roaming the countryside and getting into giant-fueled mischief.

A Hub to Other Adventures

If you haven't already played them, Storm King's Thunder can make for a great hub adventure to include with Out of the Abyss and Princes of the Apocalypse. There's no reason these three major timeline can't be going on at once. In our episodes of behind the DM screen Jeff Greiner used a similar approach for a long campaign, smashing tree big campaign adventures togeter and letting the players decide which plots they wanted to get into. If you choose this route, be prepared for them to end up focusing on one while the others languish. If your players end up delving into Out of the Abyss, you migt not ever see the events in Storm King's Thunder again.

A Solid Skeleton In Need of Flesh and Muscle

As written, Storm King's Thunder is a solid adventure that guides the characters across the Sword Coast. As written, however, us DMs will have to add quite a bit to it to fill it out and customize it around the group we run through it. We can do this by ensuring we add quests customized for the characters, reveal secrets of the Sword Coast, and add dungeons everywhere. In the end we'll have an epic campaign that is as deep as it is broad.

Back in June 2016 I had the great privilege winning a grand prize award for my entry into the one page dungeon contest for a dungeon called the Chambers of the Dread Titan.

Download Chambers of the Dread Titan in PDF

My goal for this adventure was to have a simple and replayable adventure, printable on one page. It's an adventure you could stick in your GM go bag and run whenever you find yourself wanting to run an adventure with little to no prep time.

The adventure makes heavy use of many of the lazy dungeon master techniques we've discussed here before including starting strong, focusing the adventure around a fantastic location (in this case, a dungeon built within the remains of a dead titan's corpse), and making a lot of use of the random generation of names, monsters, quests, and magic items without removing the solidity of the dungeon itself.

Like Fantastic Locations, the dungeon is designed so you only need to use whatever chambers you want or that fit the type and timeframe of adventure you want to run. If you want to run a one-hour game, you might focus on a single chamber after the intro. If you want a two hour game, pick two or three rooms. If you want a four hour game, choose all of them. Expand or contract the dungeon to whatever size fits the story you want to tell.

I'm not much of an artist but I hand-drew my own map in the style of Dyson's Maps. I liked the format of direct labeling, drawing lines on the map to the full description instead of using a key. I also wrote the room descriptions so they can be read aloud and included bolded text for the "aspects" of the room in case you'd rather just describe the important parts yourself.

I don't think adventures need to be as complicated as we make them sometimes. There's obviously a big difference between a 256 page adventure like Storm King's Thunder and a one page dungeon like Chambers of the Dread Titan, but when it comes down to it, us adventure writers are trying to give DMs material they can use to help them run a fun game for themselves and their players. My hope is that Chambers of the Dread Titan hits the mark.

Injecting the fantastic into our games can be rough work. Our minds fall to to the cliche, pulling up those goddamned Argonath statues from Lord of the Rings time and again.

Unlike a lot of parts of our RPGs, fantastic things are hard to just create right at the table. This is the reason Fantastic Locations exists. Awe inspiring things that capture the imagination usually don't just pop out of our heads on game-nights. They take time consider, create, and make original.

One thought exercise we might engage in is thinking up a number of fantastic features. These features are things our characters might discover throughout their journey. These features might be the centerpiece of a town. They might be something discovered deep in the swamps or high up on an abandoned goat path on a mountainside. Like secrets we might drop a few fantastic features into our notebook when we're thinking about our game and think we might need something to grab the imaginations of the players.

Here's one such example list of twenty fantastic features we can drop into our game:

• A large perfectly-uniformed black cube that, no matter what measurement scale used, always come out to "23".
• A series of glass archways that seem incredibly delicate yet cannot be broken.
• A meteorite thirty feet in diameter that floats one hundred feet off of the ground and quivers as though straining with great force to crash down to the earth.
• A tall abandoned iron tower with no doors and no windows. Moss covers the base of the tower that shows it to be thousands of years old.
• A sheer side of a mountain has been carved into an incredibly intricate battle axe that measures over a thousand feet high.
• A stone hand ending in sharp claws that appears to be piercing out of the ground, reaching for the sky.
• A black iron statue one hundred feet high shaped into a draconic humanoid sitting cross legged with a glaive across its lap.
• A series of ancient raised aqueducts that appears to have once served a large city but no such city can be found.
• A stone brazier fifty feet in diameter that burns with an eternal violet flame, day and night.
• An emerald geode floating over the ground with the shadow of a humanoid figure trapped within.
• A grusome totem carved out of a dead tree of a variety not seen within a thousand miles of this location.
• A giant draconic skull buried in the ground with a large glyph carved into its forehead.
• Three large rings floating about five feet off the ground that whirl around a twelve-sided symmetrical black stone.
• A crucified and half-decayed werewolf corpse with three silver swords piercing through its breastbone. Blood still drips from the corpse but the scaffold and blades look to be centuries old.
• A bridge carved from the horned spinal column of a great beast.
• The wreckage of a ship buried half in the stone of the ground though no water large enough to host such a ship exists for many miles.
• A stone mausoleum of countless ages bound in huge chains and depicting a twisted and screaming figure on its door.
• A working brass clockwork model of the sky powered by a nearby stream that depicts the position of the sun and moon but also containing models for another black moon that no one has ever seen or heard of before.
• A ring of statues depicting dancing faeries and satyrs. When one looks away from them, the statues seem to move to new positions and poses.
• A black orb floating above a silver pedestal that whirls continually but somehow cannot be moved.

Directly or Indirectly Involved

These fantastic features may have a part to play in the adventure or they might just be some piece of fantastic scenery. You might not even know how it will come into play until you drop it into the world and see what happens. Some of these might become seeds for adventure. Other times they're just weird shit the characters run into. Sometimes the characters might find something useful about them. Other times they might remain a mystery.

Need some help? Try Ancient Monuments

If you find yourself at the table and want to add some fantastic variety to a location, consider dropping in a randomly generated ancient monument. You might need a little bit of time to figure out just what the hell that monument is, but often it will come up with something that sparks the imagination.

Dripping Fantasy Into Our Games

One of the many responsibilities we GMs have is to take our players away. We have to break past their daily issues and bring them to a different world. This is a world of details, of drama, and of fantasy. The more we get into the practice of thinking up such fantastic features, the better able we'll be to bring our players to the worlds that surround them. What does your own list of twenty fantastic features look like?

As part of the 2016 D&D Dungeon Master Survey, I asked DMs to describe their favorite trick for running a great D&D game. I wrangled the answers a bunch of different ways, all of which you can read about in the survey results article. As part of this, I clustered the text for the tips into eight different clusters, all built algorithmically. I didn't define what the clusters were. Nearly all of the clusters had something interesting to say but two of them caught my attention. These two clusters focused on two specific contradictory words: "make" and "let".

At first this clustering stuff sounds like a bunch of technobabbling tealeaf-reading bullshit, but when we think about it for a minute, "make" and "let" represents an interesting split in attitudes.

"Make", for example, is very active. We make things. We make the story do things. We make monsters do things. We make sure the game is fun. We make the monsters challenging.

"Let" is the opposite. We sit back and let things happen. We let the characters drive the story. We let major villains die in surprising ways. We let the story flow naturally. We say yes and let ourselves lose control of the narrative.

There's no right answer between "make" and "let". Both of these attitudes serve our game. Circumstances sometimes dictate that we're better off making things happen. In other circumstances, we're better off letting things go as they will. There's a careful balance between "make" and "let", one we must constantly and continually gauge as we run our games.

Are things slowing down and players are starting to reach for their phones? Maybe it's time to make something happen. Are the players fully engaged in discussing their plans to disarm the huge dwarven vault door? Maybe we should sit back and let the discussion unfold.

In Weird Discoveries, Monte Cook describes the importance of pacing. Knowing when to make things happen and when to let things happen is the pulse of pacing. It's the clock cycle of our game that we must continually monitor.

Ok, enough philosophy. What are some things we might "make" and what are some things we might "let" happen? Let's jot down some ideas. A few of these I stole directly from the tips people submitted in the survey.

Ten Things to Make Happen

• Make NPCs come alive.
• Make locations fantastic.
• Make characters (and players) sweat (but not all the time).
• Make the characters heroic.
• Make the actions of the characters matter.
• Make monsters horrific and memorable.
• Make the story move.
• Make the world live and breathe.
• Make trouble.
• Make character and story hooks with deep barbs.
• Make the game fun.

Ten Things We Let Happen

• Let go of the direction of the story.
• Let the world move on its own.
• Let players make meaningful decisions.
• Let players describe their actions.
• Let villains die in unexpected ways.
• Let players debate important and interesting decisions.
• Let players laugh and banter.
• Let the direction of the story surprise you.
• Let characters try something crazy.
• Let the dice decide!

Leaning Forward and Sitting Back

We DMs must maintain both strength and flexibility. We have to be fluid enough to let a world grow from our minds and the minds of our players and solid enough to make that world move, breathe, and live. We need to make our game fun so they keep coming back. We need to let the game go so it becomes something greater than ourselves. Sometimes we must let these two contrary ideas live in our minds and manifest at the table if we want the game to turn into something wonderful. What will you make happen? What will you let happen?

On 12 January 2017 I hosted the first of a new series of shows as part of the Don't Split the Podcast network hosted by my friends Rudy Basso and James Introcaso called the DM's Deep Dive.

This monthly show, broadcast live on Twitch and available on Youtube and as a podcast, will take a single topic of interest to dungeon masters, primarily of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, and dive into it with a guest who has spent a good deal of time and brain power digging deep into this game we love.

In the first episode of this show, I spent an hour with my friend Enrique Bertran who has run the website NewbieDM since 2008 and focused much of his attention on how to improve and provide tools for DMs to run great games.

Over the hour, Enrique and I discussed a number of topics including:

• How best to introduce new DMs to the game in the days of Youtube.
• A look at the current rule system and how accessible it is.
• The difficulty of the existing encounter building rules.
• Gridded and narrative combat.
• The value of the D&D Starter Set for new dungeon masters

We also took a handful of questions from the audience including:

• How do we prep our games to aid in improvisation? (hint!)
• Given the professionals we see on the internet, are we building an unfair expectation of what a D&D game looks like?
• How do you make low level characters feel important in your world?

This last one included Enrique's "Golden Rule for Nebie DMing":

"Start Small. You're not Tolkien. Nobody cares about your prose. Nobody cares about your world. Nobody cares about the mystical mount where the oracle lives. No one gives a shit."

"The way you make your players buy in is to make them the heroes of their own little world."

Here are a few links to articles we mentioned in the podcast:

• Sly Flourish's Five Tips for New Dungeon Masters
• The Dungeon and the Newbie DM
• Matt Mercer's Force Gray live-play videos
• The 2016 Dungeon Master Survey
• Sly Flourish's Guide to Narrative Combat
• Enrique's answers to the 2016 DM Questionnaire
• Roll20
• Kobold Fight Club
• The Lazy Dungeon Master

You can watch the Youtube broadcast of the DM's Deep Dive: New Dungeon Masters or subscribe to the podcast feed to listen to it in your favorite podcast app.

Note: This article is updated from the original published in November 2012.

You're about to learn a lazy dungeon master technique that can save you thousands of hours in game preparation time and lets the story drive your game at the table without sacrificing interesting monster mechanics. It's a simple technique that lets you capitalize on the design work of the best RPG designers on the planet and yet gives you the freedom to build any monster from the deepest and darkest reaches of your imagination. And you can do all of this in a few seconds.

Though we describe this technique for the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, we can use this technique with just about any fantasy roleplaying game.

Reskinning in a Nutshell

Here's the single step instructions for reskinning a monster:

Use the stat block for a monster in the Monster Manual but describe its apperance and actions as an entirely different type of monster.

That's it. There's no step two. All you have to do is choose a stat block in the book that matches the general challenge and style you're looking for and the describe it using the features and actions of the monster you want it to be.

An Example: The Tomb Guardian of Xvim

Our adventurers are on their way out from plundering an ancient temple to the demigod Xvim. On their way out, a four-armed mechanical statue animates and attacks. We don't happen to have a great stat block for this monster but we want it to be really powerful and dangerous so we'll reskin an Adult White Dragon as our base. The hit points, armor class, save DCs, attack bonuses, saving throws, and damage will be that of the Adult White Dragon. Instead of all of the different types of attacks the White Dragon has, we'll just use its claw attack and say it's a scimitar attack. We'll give it one extra attack as part of its multi-attack to make up for this lower damage and to fit the theme of the four-armed scimitar-wielding tomb guardian.

Instead of cold damage, we'll change the breath weapon into necrotic damage to fit the undead nature of the guardian.

And that's it! Just by looking at the Adult White Dragon stat block and some creative descriptions of a four-armed huge skeletal tomb guardian we have an entirely new monster.

Reskinning Actions

Whenever we choose a monster stat block to reskin, we're likely to have to change the actions around a little bit. We can save ourselves some work by choosing a monster's stat block whose actions roughly fit what our new imaginary monster has. If we can get it close, we can usually wing the rest right in our head.

We can reskin NPC stat blocks the same way by wrapping one NPC stat block with the description of an entirely different type of NPC. Instead of a big hulking gladiator, we might describe it as an agile and slender monk trained in the dark monastary of the Black Lotus.

Embracing the Monster Manual

The Monster Manual is the best tool to help you reskin. A lot of energy went into designing those monsters and we can use any those hundreds of stat blocks to build the monster we want. Their mechanics will run well at the table even when wrapped by a completely different description. It helps to be familiar with the monster stat blocks you might use by giving the Monster Manual a good thorough read-through.

Reskinning Resistance

Some GMs avoid using the technique of reskinning. Some feel it's cheating or that their players will see through their clever ruse. If you're worried about it, give it a try it sometime and see how it feels. You and your players might find it more interesting when monsters don't behave like they expect and it can end up saving you a lot of time designing your own specific flavor of enemies.

If you find yourself spending a lot of time designing your own monsters, it might be worth asking whether you and your players are getting all of the enjoyment out of the time you're spending. It can take hours to fully design a good monster and it might only last a few minutes in a battle. Consider spending that time on other activities like reviewing the backgrounds of the characters, building some fantastic locations, or thinking through the eyes of your villains, or engaging in a number of other creative mind exercises instead of coming up with new stat blocks for them. With the technique of reskinning, you might find yourself able to spend that time previously spent designing monsters on other more valuable areas.

On the surface, reskinning might appear to be too easy and too simple to work. It does work, however, and it works very well. For fun and rich RPG games, reskinning is an excellent technique to help you save time and run a more interesting game. Give it a try.

The roleplaying game Dungeon World gave us many wonderful things, not the least of which is one of the best lists of DM advice ever put on paper:

Dungeon World also gave us the idea of "fronts". Fronts are the main threats of our campaigns, whether they be big villains or large uncaring forces (like a looming apocalypse or something).

Fronts are a powerful and effective way to shift our thinking when we're planning our campaigns. Instead of worrying about what the characters will do at any given moment, we can shift our perspective to the plans, actions, and motivations of the rest of the world.

Storm King's Thunder is a huge wide-spread adventure with a lot of potential fronts. When we each choose to run this adventure, we can choose the fronts that best fit our interests, the story we watch unfold, and the interests of our players. More than previous adventures, Storm King's Thunder requires that we tailor it for our own game. If we don't, it's going to get stale fast with thin quests and meaningless excursions.

In this article, we're going to look at a few major potential fronts for Storm King's Thunder. Your own game likely won't, and shouldn't use these same fronts. Instead, you can use these sample fronts as a guide and as inspiration for coming up with your own fronts for your own execution of Storm King's Thunder.

Refined Front Criteria

For this exercise, we're going to use a simplified version of Dungeon World's fronts. Here's the outline for each front:

• The front's driving force. Usually an entity like a giant lord or a dragon or something.
• The front's impulse. What is its motivation? Where is it trying to go? What does it want?
• The front's three grim portents. What are the next three big steps the front is doing to accomplish its goal?
• The impending doom. What will happen if the front succeeds?

Here are the five fronts we're going to focus on in this article. Again, your own fronts will likely be different and that's great. Think of this as an example you can use directly or indirectly to support your own fronts.

• Duke Zalto, the fire giant warlord.
• Countess Sansuri, the cloud giant sorceress.
• Iymrith the blue dragon.
• The Death King, the stone giant lich. This isn't in the adventure but it's a really cool idea mentioned in the Grand History of the Realms.
• Yeenogu. This also isn't in the adventure but it's a fun tie to Out of the Abyss.

Minor fronts

Here's a list of other potential fronts in Storm King's Thunder but we're going to either ignore or put on hold while we focus on the five above.

• Chief Guh. The hill giant chief. Not really a direct threat but sends hill giants on annoying raids. We're not going to worry about her.
• Jarl Storvald. The frost giant jarl. Too far north for us to worry about. Let the dwarves, cities, and tribes of the north worry about them.
• The Zhentarim. They make for a great antagonistic competitor, particular the Seven Snakes. We'll bring them in.
• The Kraken Society. A great idea for a major front and one we might bring in later on in the campaign. It can work especially well late in the campaign when the characters migth have a chance to face Slarkrethel. In the mean time, we'll make them agents of Iymrith.

Duke Zalto, the Fire Giant Warlord

Impulse: Seeks to rebuild the Vonnindod war machine and use it to take over the surface of the Sword Coast.

Grim Portent #1: Warhammer Kirusk brings orc troops to the Dam of Beselmir Kings and begins to smash through the dam to get to the chamber of artifacts to recover a pauldron of the Vonnindod.

Grim Portent #2: Zalto has sent a warband of three fire giants and their minions to hunt down pieces of the Vonnindod buried at burial mounds of the Uthgardt barbarian tribes.

Grim Portent #3: Zalto has allied with the drow of house Xorlarrin to steal the primordial Maegera from the forges of Gauntlgrym. Xorlarrin spies infiltrate Gauntlgrym and steal the primordial.

Impending Doom: If he succeeds, the Vonnindod will storm over the Sword Coast, destroying towns and cities all along the coast to show Zalto's might to the All-Father.

Countess Sansuri, the Cloud Giant Enchanter

Impulse: Seeks to recover the magic of the Ostorian age and use it to propel herself to the head of the Ordening. She has already begun this by stealing the night stone from it's namesake village at the beginning of the adventure.

Grim Portent #1: The cloud giants attack Deadsnows (SKT page 80), breaking into an old Beselmir vault beneath the abbey to recover an ioun stone of insight used by the giant sages of the Ostorian Empire.

Grim Portent #2: Sansuri attacks Everlund (SKT pg 82), seeking the ancient draconic staff of fire wielded by Krowen Valharrow. The harpers manage to hold off the cloud giants for a short while but will fall if the characters don't intervene.

Grim Portent #3: Sansuri and her cloud giants capture Klauth, the ancient red dragon who knows much of the draconic artifacts of old and has a secret stash of them himeslf. Klauth replaces the bronze dragon listed in the adventure as Sansuri's captive.

Impending Doom: Armed with powerful magic, Sansuri will take the war to Waterdeep, pelting the city and destroying its defenses with her new found magic. Sansuri and her cloud giant wizards kill thousands as they seek to rule the giant city that lays underneath it.

The Death King, the Stone Giant Lich

Goal: Seeks to power a terrible machine beneath the mountains of sacrifice to bring undeath to the surface of Faerun.

Grim Portent #1: The stone giant wights of Cairnheim go to battle against the giants of Deadstone Cleft. They murder the Blue Bear tribe and those stone giants who will not serve the Dodkong in death.

Grim Portent #2: The Dodkong's surface commander, a stone giant death knight named Greth, animates the slain Blue Bear tribe and sends them as wights into Orlbar and Llorkh to gather humans at Deadstone Cleft before journeying into the Underdark on their way to Cairnheim.

Grim Portent #3: The Death King brings hundreds of captured humanoids to Cairnheim and begins to fuel his soul engine by sacrificing them dozens at a time.

Impending Doom: The Death King's soul engine tears open a hole into the negative energy plane and starts a storm of death that begins rolling out from the east through the high forest. Every death fuels the engine even more.

Iymrith, the Ancient Blue Sorceress

Goal: Seeks to shatter the Ordening and bring chaos to the giants and to the Sword Coast alike.

Grim Portent #1: Iymrith sends out her human champion to find the draconic blade, Hazirawn, lost in the Well of Dragons after the fall of Tiamat's temple.

Grim Portent #2: Iymrith uses her magic to scry upon ancient draconic magic items forged and used by her ancestors, the dragon sorcerers who battled the giants of the Ostorian age. This includes items possessed or recovered by the characters. She sends Kraken society murder squads to recover and disrupt any plots that might disrupt the chaos of the giants.

Grim Portent #3: Iymrith sends out a coordinated group of Kraken society assassins to kill the prominent leaders of the five factions to add further chaos to the Sword Coast.

Impending Doom: Iymrith sends the kingdoms into chaos, murdering leaders of Waterdeep, Neverwinter, Baldur's Gate, and other major institutions. She calls Slarkrethel to the shores, destroying hundreds of ships and the minds of every being aboard them.

Yeenoghu, Demon Prince of Gnolls

Impulse: Yeenoghu and the cult of the devourer seek to build an army of his children to devour the humanoids of the surface of the Sword Coast.

Grim Portent #1: A sect of cultists of Yeenoghu conduct a large sacrifice of captured villagers and townsfolk and successfully resurrect them as undead gnolls.

Grim Portent #2: A large force of hyenas, gnolls, and these new "ghnolls", attack a reasonably large town. Gnolls slain in the battle are quickly restored as undead gnolls.

Grim Portent #3: Yeenoghu rises to the surface. The sky turns blood red. The city of Luskin is under siege by these gnoll forces and cult assassins within the town have cut down any meaningful organized defense.

Impending Doom: Yeenoghu wipes out the town of Luskin, building a throne of bone from his victims, and sends forth his children to the neighboring cities, spreading a bloom of blood across the map of the Sword Coast.

A Relaxed Timeline

From the looks of it, you'd think the whole world was going to end if all, or even some, of these impending dooms come to pass. Storm King's Thunder, however, is intended to be a more relaxed adventure, without a big doomsday clock taking place like it was in previous adventures.

We can keep this relaxed pace and still have these fronts moving forward. They just move slow. Characters who learn of the movement of these fronts have opportunities to stop them, even all of them, before they come to pass. These multiple fronts don't force the characters to stop one threat only to have four others move foward. They're slowly burning.

One Possible Future

This set of fronts represents only one possible future. It certainly won't work for every Storm King's Thunder campaign. Hell, it might not even work for the one I wrote it for. Each of these fronts and each step in those fronts are fluid. They shift and weave and twist and turn as the world moves on. This list of fronts does give us a model we might use as the winds of chaos blow and it helps us fire up our imaginations to watch the world live and breathe. What do your fronts look like?

This is a scenario intended replace the Triboar encounter in Storm King's Thunder in which a pair of fire giants attacks the town seeking a piece of the huge armored war machine they want to use to gain control with the shattering of the Ordening.

This scenario makes use of the Dam of Kings location in Sly Flourish's Fantastic Locations.

Scenario Summary

In this scenario, the dwarven armorer of Triboar, Ghelryn Foehammer, asks the adventurers to take him to the Dam of the Beselmir Kings to seek out the mysteries of the Ostorian giants. The Beselmir dwarves had long studied these ancient giant artifacts.

When they arrive at the dam, the adventurers discover that a fire giant is laying siege to the dam, hammering into its surface and battling a clan of gnolls who have used parts of the dam as a lair in worship to Yeenogu. Within one of the vaults of the dam resides a pauldron of the giant war machine the fire giants hope to restore, a machine known as the Vonnindod. The party must get past both the giant, his war party, the gnolls, and other creatures within the dam before reaching the pauldron. Then they must figure out what to do with the five ton piece of metal.

Secrets and Clues

• The Ostorian giants were a huge power and force on the Sword Coast and in the North dating back 30 to 50 thousand years.
• The Ostorian empire fell when they fought the dragons of the realms. Both sides lost their seats of power.
• The humanoids grew from the wreckage of the giants and dragons, building their own empires.
• The Besilmer Dwarves ruled over the Desserin Valley six thousand years ago. Much of their architecture and lore they recovered from the fallen Ostorian empire.
• The Besilmer dwarves knew more about the Ostorian Empire than anyone but their knowledge is buried throughout the valley.
• The Besilmer dwarves built fantastic cities both above and underground. Some of their ruins are whispered to still reside below the Desserin valley (see Princes of the Apocalypse).
• The Dam of Besilmer Kings is one of the great visible artifacts of the dwarves. For six thousand years it has held back the rivers of the northern mountains, making the lands around Triboar rich and fertile.
• The Besilmer dwarves have recovered artifacts of one of the last battles between the dragons and Ostorian giants from 30,000 years ago. Some of these artifacts are within the dam.
• Something has brought the fire giants out of their deep forges and into the North. They seek something.
• The fire giants are beings of war, having built great machines to wage their battles long ago.
• A clan of svirfneblin was rumored to have broken into the chambers of the dam of kings.
• Vile gnolls and other dangers have kept explorers from getting too far into the chambers within the dam.

Start: Assault on the Dam

As the characters approach the dam, they see a fire giant hurling rocks at the keep in the center of the dam. Barbed arrows with black fletchings have killed a number of orcs, fired from the keep. A few rock tosses routes whatever enemies the fire giant is facing. He proceeds to get closer to the keep and start smashing his way in with a great hammer. Every so often he takes out a rod from his belt and waves it over the area, nodding to himself and ordering his orcs to enter the dam through great cracks he has created in the dam's surface.

How the characters get past the fire giant and his orc mercenaries is up to them. They might sneak or deceive their way in or find another entrance.

The dam itself has the heads of four dwarven kings on the side facing Triboar. One of these mouths is open and spews water into a thousand-foot-high waterfall to the stream below. It is possible to repel down and into the mouth. It is also possible to swim below the great reservoir on the other side of the dam and find one of the huge entry vents. The vents are covered with centuries of debris that is pressed up against huge iron bars in front of the huge water intake. The suction is immense.

Locations of the Dam

The Watchtowers

Area Aspects: Three-story stone watchtowers, orc observers, huge stone roadblocks hanging above

For the first few hundred feet of the dam, the fire giant has stationed orc guards to ensure they are not flanked by another force. These orcs are only moderately perceptive. If they see intruders and have trouble dispatching them, they will call to the giant who will come over and attempt to crush the adventurers by collapsing the twenty-ton stone roadblock on them if they will go under it.

The King's Keep

Area Aspects: Dilapidated keep, steep overhang, cracked floor leading to lower chambers

The central keep has been under siege by the fire giant who has hurled huge rocks at it, crushing much of the structure. A handful of gnolls still attempts to fight them off but many of them have been crushed to death by the boulders. The upper floor of the two-story keep has a steep drop-off that falls 1000 feet to the streams below. Deep cracks in the stone floor of the lower level of the keep lead to the chambers below.

The Waterworks

Area Aspects: Great machines that open the dams, huge trenches intended for the passage of water, gnoll slaughter camp

The gnolls have set up a small camp in the huge chamber that houses the waterworks of the dams. Four giant trenches are intended to bring water through the dam and power huge machines deeper in the dam itself. Three of these trenches are dry, their doors closed on either side and controlled by a complicated set of iron levers on a nearby control platform.

The gnolls have set up a small camp within one of the dry trenches where they feast on the remains of a clan of svirfneblin they have hunted throughout the dam. A handful of deep gnomes are imprisoned, some of them with limbs amputated, by the gnolls who use them as food and sacrifices to the demon prince Yeenoghu in the Ostorian Vault (found below). One of these, the svirfneblin loremaster, Gavren, knows much of the dam, the dwarves, and their discoveries of the giants and is willing to lead the party deeper into the dam if the characters free the remainder of his clan.

The Slaughtered Excursion

Area Aspects: Formed stone pillars, gore-covered small burrows, the slaughter fields

A band of svirfneblin had made an excursion from the underdark into the dam of kings, using their rock-forming ways to open up a passage from natural tunnels into the worked stone of the dam. Within the tunnel is a small svirfneblin campsite. The svirfneblin formed small burrows in the walls of the cavern and a built pillars that look like naturally forming pillars of stone except for their impossible uniformity. Within the center of the camp is the site where the gnolls slaughtered most of the svirfneblin, devouring their bodies and leaving their destroyed corpses and bones in a terrible pool. A pack of hyenas are still in the camp, seeking any remaining svirfneblin and continuing to gorge on the remains of the corpses.

The Hall of Giants

Area Aspects: Dead gnolls, frescoes of Ostorian giants, knee-deep water

On the path to the Ostorian vault, the Besilmer dwarves built a hall of brilliantly-carved frescoes of the giants. It depicts giants of all types, in the order of the Ordening, from hill giants to storm giants. One of the carvings depicts a stone giant placing a crown on a dying stone giant queen (a hint about the Dodkong, the stone giant lich). This hallway is trapped with a lightning glyph that sends bolts of lightning the hall, electrocuting any who stand in the water. A number of gnolls were killed by the trap, leaving their electrocuted bodies floating in the water.

The Ostorian Vault

Area Aspects: Damaged statues of giant kings, huge suits of armor, flooded floor, massive black-iron pauldron, altar to Yeenoghu

This vault contains the Ostorian artifacts of the Beselmir dwarves. Murals hang on the wall depicting the empire of the giants and their war with the dragons. Huge weapons hang crossed on the walls and enormous suits of armor stand in the corners. Great statues of the giant kings of old stand in the center of the swamped chamber, some having crumbled to dust. On the far side of the chamber sits the huge black-iron pauldron that the fire giant sought. It weighs nearly five tons and cannot be easily dragged through the small chambers of the dam. What the characters do or how they get it out is up to them.

The clan leader of these gnolls, a flind named Soulrend, has built an altar to Yeenoghu. He and his remaining gnolls will fight to the death, screaming that their lord has returned to the world and hunts in the underdark (a hint that things still aren't right in Out of the Abyss).

A Model For Your Own Adventures

This adventure outline is intended to give you a usable replacement to the fire giant encounter at Triboar but is also intended to show you a different way to think about adventures. It focuses on where the adventure starts, what secrets and clues the adventurers might find, and what interesting locations they might discover. Hopefully it serves either to give you a usable small adventure or stir your own mind when you think about how you put together adventures yourself.

Note: This article has been updated since the original written in February 2015.

Below is a summary of the numbers you can keep in your head to help you run Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition roleplaying games. These numbers can help you adjudicate challenge, traps, encounters, and environmental effects without needing to look it up in a chart or table. Though it looks like you could build monsters on the fly with these numbers, you're probably better off reskinning monsters in the Monster Manual instead.

Here are the numbers to keep in your head:

• DC / AC / Save DC: 10 (easy) to 20 (hard)
• Attacks, Trained Skills, Primary Saves: +3 (easy) to +10 (hard)
• Single Target Damage: 6 (1d10) per challenge level
• Multi-Target Damage: 3 (1d6) per challenge level
• Hit Points: 20 per challenge level
• Building Encounters: Monster CR = 1/3 Character Level

A Deeper Look at the Numbers

The flat math system of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition makes it easier to calculate mechanics on the fly. We've talked about customizing monsters by tweaking attributes as one such example. Unlike the damage per level cheat sheets we used back with 4th edition, 5e's flat math gives us more flexibility when determining the right number for the right challenge.

In most cases, these numerical ranges go from "moderately easy" to "hard". We can omit "easy" numbers because most of the time these don't even require a roll. We can assume that difficulty checks (DCs) of less than 10 are easy enough not to warrant a roll. Likewise, anything higher than DC 20 is going to be very hard to reach, so we don't have to bother keeping higher numbers in our head. Instead, we can set a range of numbers useful for quantifying challenges for just about any situation in D&D.

Difficulty Check / Armor Class / Saving Throw DC: 10 to 20

When a situation comes up that requires a difficulty check, choose a number between 10 and 20 as the target. The harder the challenge, the higher the number. A 10 is considered relatively easy yet still challenging enough to warrant a roll. A 20 is considered hard.

Whenever a situation comes up, consider how hard the situation is from easy (DC 10) to very hard (DC 20) and choose a number that feels right. No tables needed!

This number also works for an improvised armor class and save DC if needed. If you happen to improvise a trap or an effect of some sort, or the characters start attacking a stone statue, you can use this range to set the AC of the statue or the DC of the trap's saving throw.

Example: The Icebolt Trap

Say you've decided on the spot that a particular room has an icebolt trap in it. How tough was the wizard who planted the trap? Was he an apprentice or an archmage? Choose a number between 10 and 20 to determine the difficulty of finding and disarming the trap. For this example, let's say this icebolt trap has a DC of 14 to detect and disarm.

Attack Bonus: +3 to +10

Likewise, if we ever have an improvised attack score, it's a safe bet that it will be between +3 and +10. Anything lower is going to be unlikely to hit. Anything higher is likely to hit often. There are some situations where the attack is lower or higher than this but this range is likely for most situations. When you have an improvised attack, choose a bonus based on the severity of the attack.

Example: The Icebolt's Attack

Going back to our example from before, let's look again our icebolt trap. If a character fails to detect it or disarm it, it fires an icebolt at the one who triggered the trap with a +6 to attack.

6 (1d10) Damage Per Challenge Level

If you need to throw in some improvised damage, 6 damage per challenge level is a good rule of thumb. You can roll 1d10 per challenge level if you prefer dice. This challenge rating isn't necessarily based on the level of the PCs but instead the level of the challenge they face. It's roughly the challenge faced by four characters so a challenge 6 is the equivalent of four level 6 characters. If this damage would affect more than one creature, you might want to reduce it to 3 (1d6) challenge level. Like the other number ranges, this isn't perfect science, but it will get you close to what you want.

Example: The Icebolt's Damage

Returning to our icebolt trap example, we'll have to decide how dangerous this icebolt really is and choose 6 damage per challenge level. You can always use the characters' level if you don't feel like doing any work but you're better off choosing the level of the villain who put the trap in place. Was it a challenge 2 evil goblin wizard? Let's do 12 (2d10) damage. Was it Xathron the challenge 16 Lich Lord? Let's try 90 (16d10) damage. The power of the villain will give you the idea how much damage to dish out.

20 Hit Points Per Level

If you need to improvise some hit points for an object, 20 hit points per challenge level of the object is about right. This won't match up perfectly to the hit points of monsters in the Monster Manual or the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating chart on page 274 of the Dungeon Master's Guide, but it will get you close and requires very little work.

Example: Xathron's Icy Automaton

Let's say the PCs have invaded Xathron the Lich Lord's treasure vault and inside is Xathron's Icy Automaton. This isn't Xathron's best guardian, but it's pretty solid. We'll consider it a level 5 challenge.

The PCs fail to notice the Automaton's danger (failed on a DC 15 perception) and it begins to fire icebolts at random PCs (two attacks, +7 to attack, 15 damage). The PCs can't seem to get it disarmed (failed on three potential DC 15 Arcana or Athletics checks) and now they want to bash it down (AC 15, 100 hps). After inflicting 100 damage to it, the automaton falls apart.

Not for Monster Building

Looking at these number ranges, you may be tempted to use them to build a monster. Instead, consider reskinning an existing monster from the Monster Manual rather than use these numbers to build one from scratch. While you might be able to build a reasonable monster with these scores, the asymmetrical nature of the stats in the Monster Manual makes creatures much more fun to fight than a static box of perfectly aligned scores.

Encounter Building: Monster CR = 1/3 Character Level

This one is a little complicated and I wish to the gods I could make it simpler but I can't. I've tried all sorts of zany attempts to create simpler encounter building guidelines and this is about as simple as I can make it. Building encounters requires two steps:

Step 1: Choose the right monster or monsters to fit the story.

Step 2: Determine the number of monsters for the encounter:

• If the monster has a challenge rating of roughly 1/3 the characters' level, use one monster per character.

• If the monster has a challenge rating of roughly 1/4 the characters' level or less, use two monsters per character.

• If the monster has a challenge rating of roughly 2/3 the characters' level, use one monster per two characters.

• If the monster has a challenge rating equal to or up to two higher than the characters' level, use one monster per four characters.

To keep the number in your head, just remember the rule of 1/3. If a monsters' challenge rating is roughly 1/3 the characters' level, use one monster per character. If it's higher than that, use less monsters. If it's lower than that, use fewer monsters. That's pretty much it. The 1/3 rule is a good rule of thumb to help you determine if a monster is roughly balanced to a single character.

Of course, keep in mind that many other variables will determine the challenge of an encounter such as the number of characters, the skill and experience of the players, the environmental terrain, how long the characters have gone without a short rest, and many other variables. The rule of 1/3 is a loose guideline at best.

A Quick Summary

In summary, here are some numbers to keep in your head:

• DC / AC / Save DC: 10 to 20
• Attacks, Trained Skills, Primary Saves: +3 to +10
• Single Target Damage: 6 (1d10) per Challenge Rating
• Multi-Target Damage: 3 (1d6) per Challenge Rating
• Hit Points: 20 per Challenge Rating
• Building Encounters: Monster CR = 1/3 Character Level

With those numbers in mind, you have a simple toolbox for running all sorts of challenges for your D&D 5e group.

There is no wrong way to play Dungeons & Dragons. If you and your players are having fun, you're playing D&D the right way. Every article, every idea, every tip, and every tool here at Sly Flourish is written to help you make your own game better. I make no statements that these ideas are the "right way".

If you're like most DMs who run combat on a five-foot-per-square grid, listening to what I'm about to say may sound a lot like I'm saying that you're playing D&D wrong. I'm not. That said, I am going to make a statement that may shock and anger you. Ready? Here it comes.

Five foot squares are boring as shit.

I have two intentions for this article. First, I want to make my case for the advantages of narrative "theater of the mind" combat over combat on a five-foot-per-square grid or battle map. Second, I want to convince you to try running combat in the theater of the mind and add that style of combat to your DM's toolbox.

I do not expect that you, or any DM, will throw out two thousand miniatures, scores of battle maps, and a truckload of Dwarven Forge. I certainly don't plan to. I don't expect you to quit your job and join a hippie commune where you smoke weed and describe the battle of five armies all in colorful prose.

I do hope, however, that some DMs will take a break from the battle map once in a while and run a small battle, maybe a bigger battle, and maybe a great big battle, without worrying about what exact distance a fireball can travel.

This article isn't about how to run combat in the theater of the mind. For that, we have Sly Flourish's Guide to Narrative "Theater of the Mind" Combat and the one-page printable summary. This article is about why we want to run narrative combat.

Let's begin by looking at some of the advantages of running combat in the theater of the mind.

Five Foot Squares are Boring As Shit

I'll return to my shocking statement first. When we're playing D&D, we're playing a game of high fantasy. We're building stories of magic and monsters and adventure. We're imagining epic battles between gods and demons. What part of the shared storytelling of high fantasy includes arguing about whether a corner of stone blocks off a goblin from a thunder wave? What part of high fantasy storytelling has a dwarf run just five feet short of a viscious demon-worshipping gnoll and unable to swing her warhammer at the gnoll's head because she started one square too far away?

High fantasy isn't pulling out a bent wire coathanger and seeing how many goblins you can squeeze into a fireball if you cast it just right. High fantasy is yelling out "I cast fireball!" and the DM saying "Your fireball explodes, sending the bodyparts of nine goblins splashing against the stone walls!"

This is a game of high adventure and fantastic storytelling. Pulling out a gridded battlemap takes those stories of high adventure and turns them into a board game.

The Grid Costs Money—Maybe a Lot of Money

Gridded combat doesn't have to cost much more than the $12 for a fantastic Pathfinder Flip Mat but this starts a slippery slope. Next thing you know we might have dropped $120 on a set of flat plastic miniatures but maybe you want some 3d miniatures instead so you get in on one of those great Reaper Kickstarters. That normal battlemap isn't so bad but wouldn't a few pre-drawn battlemaps be cooler? What about some of that awesome Dwarven Forge terrain?

Wait a minute, did we just spend the price of a car on 3d terrain? I thought this hobby was supposed to be cheap!

Running combat in the theater of the mind gives us an unlimited special effects budget for zero dollars. Whatever we can describe, we can run. We don't need to have a collection of two thousand miniatures and a storage container full of Dwarven Forge. We can just grab our book, some pencils and paper, and some dice and run some high adventure.

We can describe entire scarred cities floating on earthmotes over the molten core of an alien world. We can describe battles taking place on a ship collapsing over the side of a thousand-foot-high waterfall.

And all of this is free.

The Grid Slows Things Down

Putting out a battle map, setting out all the minis, and drawing out the room all takes time. Moving miniatures around, watching other people move miniatures around, and getting involved in lengthy conversations about whether someone is behind half cover or three quarters cover when standing at the corner of a wall; all of that takes time. Taking time is fine when it adds to the enjoyment of the game but not everyone might enjoy the time it takes a wizard to figure out how to get all four fire giants into the blast radius of his cone of cold.

Running combat on a grid will often take more time than running combat vocally. In narrative combat, the DM describes the situation, the player describes their actions, the dice determine the results. It can't get much faster than that.

The Grid Interrupts the Narrative

Switching from exploration and interaction to combat is usually a jarring experience. When that battle mat hits the table and the minis start marching across, we know what's supposed to happen. Discussions between characters and NPCs usually ceases. Trickery and subterfuge to try to avoid the fight usually ends.

When using narrative combat, we run combat the same way we run conversations with NPCs or exploring old ruins; we describe it verbally. This means we can have a perfectly smooth conversation between interaction, exploration, combat, and back again without breaking the flow and pace of the story to pull out a big-ass battle map and sort through plastic boxes full of miniatures.

The Grid Increases Preparation Time

According to the 2016 D&D DM Survey, 49% of DMs spend between 30 minutes and an hour designing combat encounters per session. In one such example, Merric Blackman of Merric's Musings made the following statement in his article On Collecting Minis:

It did make me wonder about my use of miniatures in D&D. The fact is that I own a lot of miniatures somewhere upwards of 3,000 and if I want to field an orc army for the player characters to face, I can do that. Theres just a basic problem with that: it requires me to find that orc army first. Once you have so many miniatures (and Ive been buying the plastic D&D ones since 2003), you need to find the ones you need. It takes time. For me to get the minis out for a 4-hour session can easily take an hour or more.

Getting maps and miniatures ready for a game takes time. In some cases it can take the most amount of time of any preparation activity. That time might be better spent on other parts of the game, such as integrating in the backgrounds of the characters, preparing some secrets, thinking through the eyes of our villains, or actually reading that adventure we bought cover to cover.

The Grid Leads to Railroading

When we spend the time to set up a big battle map and pick out all those miniatures that Merric was talking about above, we now have an investment in that battle. We want to run it. We don't want to have wasted all that time setting up a big battle only to have the characters avoid it with a few lucky stealth checks.

In addition, we're not very likely to let the story get away from us if our expectation is to plop down miniatures and draw out a map for every fight. Sometimes fights take place in some weird location we weren't ready for. Sometimes half the group is in a fight while the other half is still dining with the king.

When we run narrative combat, we don't need to worry about setting up some huge battle map every time the characters get into a scrape. Regardless of where they are or what happens to be going on, we can easily rotate right into a fight if the story calls for it.

Because we have no initial preparation investment and no worry about the time it takes to draw out and set up a big fight, we're a lot less likely to worry when things go off the rails and into interesting and uncharted territory.

The Grid Limits the Scope and Scale of Epic Combat

How do you run a gridded battle on an airship that's breaking in half and falling down to earth? How do you draw out a map of a battle taking place hanging from vines on the edge of a thousand-foot-high waterfall? Not every battle takes place in a nice easy-to-draw flat 2d plane with perfectly aligned five foot squares. Running narrative combat lets us run battles in any environment and in any situation we, and our players, can imagine. We're no longer shackled to whatever we can describe in nicely aligned five foot blocks. Now we can describe battles on top of ancient crumbling war machines or floating on magical disks above the city of Sharn.

The Grid Turns the DM from Facilitator into Adversary

When we pull out that big gridded battle map and start getting all tactical, the DM often ceases to be a facilitator for fantastic stories and becomes an opponent of the players. This completely changes the dynamics of the game. Instead of working together to build a story, we have opponents at the table; not just on the table. Players may begin to feel like the DM is working against them. Combat becomes a competition between players and DMs instead of a scene. For DM's this is, most of the time, a losing battle. If it feels like a competition, we're the ones who get stomped in nearly every fight. That can break us down after a while.

DMs are also more likely to worry about ensuring that the battle is a challenge if we're running on the grid, because what's the point of a grid if the characters are just going to stomp through the bad guys. But sometimes that stomping is great fun and a solid piece of the story.

When we run combat in the theater of the mind, we're not adversaries anymore. We're still telling a story and the adversaries are just characters whose eyes we sometimes look through. We're not competing because we're building the whole world, not just moving miniatures around on a board.

An Elegant Weapon for a more Civilized Age

There's a freedom that we find when we're able to just grab our core books, an adventure, some notes, and our dice and run a full D&D game without worrying at all about whether we drew out the right map or have the right miniatures for a game. We worry less about the unexpected. We care less when the story gets away from us. We're back to letting D&D carry us away instead of locking us down into a mesh of 1 inch spaces.

I don't expect that the D&D community will toss aside thirty years of maps, miniatures, and terrain and all start exploding with colorful narrative battles. I hope, however, that you might give it a try and see how it feels. If you're new to the game, this is a great way to keep your D&D investment low and still bring the awe and wonder of this limitless game to you and your players.

If I've convinced you to give combat in the theater of the mind a try, check out Sly Flourish's Guide to Narrative "Theater of the Mind" Combat and download and print out the one-page guide to share and discuss with your players.

Note, this guide has been updated since the original written in October 2015.

This guide aims to help Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition DMs run narrative "theater of the mind" style combat. This style of combat doesn't require a battle map or miniatures. Instead DMs and players describe their actions in combat either completely vocally or with rough sketches and other visual aids.

To learn more about why we want to run combat in the theater of the mind, please read the Tyranny of the Grid.

You can download, print, and discuss the core concepts of this style of combat with your players using this One-Page Guide to D&D 5e Narrative Combat.

A Summary of the Guidelines

The following is a quick summary for running narrative "theater of the mind" combat in D&D 5e.

• The DM describes the scene, situation, location, and features.
• The player describes their intent and action.
• If needed, the DM adjudicates and clarifies the situation.
• Dice are rolled.
• The DM and player together describe the results.

Guidelines for Dungeon Masters

• Describe locations, distances, and fantastic features.
• Each turn, describe the character's circumstances.
• Offer options to help players meet their intent.
• Use skill checks to apply risk to crazy ideas.
• Be generous. Give players the benefit of the doubt.

Guidelines for Players

• Describe what you want to do.
• Think beyond the character sheet. Use fantastic terrain.
• Don't worry about specific distances. Focus on intent.
• Come up with awesome ideas based on the situation.
• Describe actions and results within the story.

How To Run Narrative Combat

For those used to running D&D games using a gridded battle map and miniatures, running narrative "theater of the mind" combat can feel both terribly strange and strangely familiar. If we're used to running combat on a 5 foot per square grid, the switch to combat in the theater of the mind can easily make us feel like something is missing. How can we really know what's going on in combat if we can't see it?

The answer lies in the other two pillars of our D&D game—exploration and interaction. We don't set up battle maps and lay out miniatures when our characters have a discussion with an NPC. We likely don't set up a big map and start counting off squares when the characters explore an ancient ruin. We don't have visual queues when we're describing how a thief narrowly avoids a poisoned pin while attempting to disarm a lock. Outside of combat, all of the rest of our D&D game runs on the premise that a DM describes the situation, the players describe their actions, and dice are rolled. Combat doesn't have to be any different.

Even knowing this, actually running narrative combat can feel strange to us if we're used to the map and minis.

A Focus On Intent: "What Do You Want To Do?"

There is one fundamental rule to running combat in the theater of the mind:

The player tells a DM what they want to do and the DM tells them how they can do it.

This is basically the same as the core mechanics for D&D as described on page 6 of the Player's Handbook:

• The DM describes the environment.
• The player describes what they want to do.
• The DM narrarates the results of the adventurers' actions.

We can almost boil down the guidelines for narrative combat into three simple words:

Focus On Intent

When players describe their intent and dungeon masters adjudicate the situation based on that desired intent, combat runs fast and furious.

In order for this to work, the player must trust the DM to adjudicate fairly and the DM must maintain that trust by doing so. In general a DM should steer in the PC's favor when handling edge cases as long as it is within reason (for a fantasty action game) and is fair to the capabilities of the other characters.

Different situations will call for different rulings. Sometimes a fireball may take out only four kobolds while another time it will take out twenty. A lot of variables can change these guidelines and these changes should be made clear before PCs commit to any given action.

If players feel screwed out of their turn because the DM decided their action isn't as effective as they thought, that player won't trust the DM's judgement. They'll feel like they got screwed because they couldn't play it out on a grid. In general, when running combat in the theater of the mind, players should have the option of changing their minds if their results aren't likely to meet their intent.

To get a better understanding of how combat in the theater of the mind works, we can dig into the details a bit more:

1. The DM describes the situation and highlights any notable features of the location. This includes describing where monsters are, what they're doing, and any other information that will aid the player in understanding what actions they can take.
2. We roll initiative just like normal.
3. Players describe their intent. "I want to run up to the lead orc and smash him in the face with my war maul."
4. Sometimes DMs need to clarify the situation. "There is a long flaming crack in the ground between you and the head orc." Most of the time, we say "sure, awesome!"
5. Dice are rolled. Both the DM and the players can describe the results of their actions. "Your maul cracks into the orc! How does he die?" "My maul hits with a sickening crack and the orc falls back into the flaming crack!"
6. On each characters' turn, the DM clarifies their circumstances "Asharon, it's your turn. Thargon just smashed an orc in the head but two of the orc's friends are still on the other side of the crack firing arrows at you. An ogre also rushed in, lept over the flaming crack, and is nearly on top of you. What do you do?"
7. On the DM's turn, the DM describes what the monsters do, who they attack, and how. "Thargon, both orcs fire arrows at you after seeing you slay their friend. Asharon, the ogre rushes forward and attempts to smash you to pulp with his huge club!"
8. The battle continues.

Movement in Narrative Combat

While each character race has a different movement speed, we can abstract this movement out without losing much of the high fantasy feeling of D&D. In general, when a dungeon master describes a situation, they can describe how many moves it will take to reach something. Many times this will be one move (who really wants to spend three rounds moving up to the bad guy?). Whether it's a dwarf or an elf, it can still be one move.

Certain classes have clearly superior movement speeds, like monks and rogues. In this case, that character can clearly move further than others. If it would normally take two moves to get up to a back-line enemy, for example, a monk can do it in one. Since we're describing entire battles using in-game action-packed narrative, we can describe how quickly the monk darted through the enemy's lines in comparison to the dwarf's rushing charge.

As we run combat in the theater of the mind, we give preferences and liberties to characters who move quickly when compared to those who move slowly.

Melee Combat and Opportunity Attacks

When characters engage in melee combat, we can make the assumption that they are within five feet and risk opportunity attacks if they try to move to another enemy or somewhere else. If a character wants to get within five feet of more than one enemy, the player can state that intent and the DM can adjudicate how many enemies that character might engage. Most likely this is two.

Likewise, when the DM runs monsters, they will describe who the monster gets close to so the player will recognize that their character will take an opportunity attack if they try to move away.

This is one area where miniatures can help out quite a bit. Even though we aren't concerned with specific distances, we can show the relative position of monsters and characters with miniatures on the table so everyone can see. It's not required but it can certainly help.

Range in Narrative Combat

All ranged attacks have a fixed distance described in the Player's Handbook. Like much of the rest of our methods for running combat in the theater of the mind, we abstract these ranges. Most of the time any ranged attack can hit an enemy. Only if the DM has clearly described that a particular enemy is really far away (more than fifty feet or so) can we make the assumption that shorter ranged attacks won't hit.

Like fast movement, players may have spells, weapons, or abilities that can hit from very far away. Many times we can make these long ranges part of the story we tell.

Areas of Effect in Narrative Combat

Page 247 of the Dungeon Master's Guide includes guidelines for determining the number of creatures for areas of effect. These guidelines work well but require a bit of math during play which can slow things down and overcomplicate things. Instead, we can abstract the number of targets by the size of the areas of effect with the following list:

• Small areas: 2 creatures (thunder wave, burning hands).
• Large areas: 4 creatures (cone of cold, fireball, darkness).
• Huge areas: Everyone (earthquake, circle of death).
• Short lines: 2 creatures (Wall of fire).
• Long lines 3 creatures (lightning bolt, blade barrier).

Players and DMs should use these numbers as the baseline expectation for how many creatures they are likely to hit with a spell of this size.

Different situtations might allow an area to hit more targets than the above numbers. In particular, players might negotiate with the DM to see how they can hit more than this number if the situation is right and if they are willing to take a risk. For example, while a mage may position a fireball to hit four orcs, they might be able to add two more if they are willing to put the barbarian ally within the blast.

Abilities like "shape spell" might let a caster hit more targets without such a risk.

Cover and Line of Sight

The features of a location described by the DM might act as cover or block line of sight between characters and monsters. In general, players should expect that half cover is easy to get but three quarters or total cover is harder to get in the middle of a battle.

Watch Examples of Narrative Combat

One of the best ways to see narrative "theater of the mind" combat work in play is to watch videos of DMs running narrative combat on Youtube or Twitch. Chris Perkins often uses theater of the mind combat when running his Acquisitions Incorporated games. Even with the huge set-piece battles he runs, he still abstracts distance and movements to focus on the high adventure of a battle.

Will Jones from Encounter Roleplay uses narrative combat exclusively in his Twitch games. Matt Mercer, during his Force Gray games, uses a mixture of maps and theater of the mind when running combat. All of these can help you get comfortable with the concepts of focusing on the high fantasy and adventure of D&D while not worrying about the minutia of the 5 foot square.

Table Aids for Narrative Combat and the Abstract Map

It is possible to run combat in the theater of the mind with no physical aids at all. Table aids, however, can help everyone understand what is going on. This might be everything from a quick sketch on a piece of paper to an elaborate arrangement of 3d terrain and miniatures. Even if we do end up with a beautiful map, we can still abstract the distances and describe actions using in-story descriptions.

Pathfinder Flip Mats by Paizo are one of the best aids for running D&D games. Though gridded by design, it is easy to ignore the grids and use the surface of the poster map to write out all sorts of information such as the names and characteristics of enemies, current damage on those enemies, enemy AC once it's clear the characters know it, and all sorts of other information. The blank dry-erase poster map is an incredibly useful and versatile tool for running D&D and a great investment.

As mentioned earlier, miniatures for the characters can help everyone keep track of what monsters are in the fight, who might be within 5 feet, and who is in the back row of a fight.

When using a dry-erase poster map like this, its important to clarify to your players, before battle begins, that there is no fixed distance on the map. As mentioned before, players should tell the DM what they want to do and the DM should tell them how they can do it. Focus on intent.

Using Random Numbers

Because we're running an abstract battle, it's important that we avoid taking advantage of the lack of specificity by letting our monsters gang up on the characters. Good narrative combat will only work in a group if there is trust between players and DMs.

We can build up this trust and avoid favoritism by randomly selecting who gets attacked by our enemies unless there's a good clear reason why one monster would attack one particular character. If not, choose the character a monster attacks randomly by rolling a die as close to your number of character as possible and have the monster attack that character. When you roll this way, roll it in the open so all of the players can see why one character got attacked over another. Sometimes this might mean one character gets ganged up on, but everyone at the table will know why.

Monsters aren't idiots though. If it's clear to both you and the players that a monster would attack a particular character, such a concentrating wizard, the monster will clearly do that. Many intelligent monsters will know to take out enemy spellcasters and healers as quickly as possible. When this happens, we can describe why that monster chose that character, helping players understand why one particular character was attacked over another. If it doesn't make sense to them, they might feel picked on and begin to lose the trust that is so vital for running combat in the theater of the mind.

Ask Players to Describe Physical Traits to Identify Enemies

It's hard to identifying particular enemies in the theater of the mind if you can't tell one from another. One effective way to identify particular enemies is to ask your players to describe the physical characteristics of the enemy they're targeting. This has many advantages. First, you're opening up the player's imagination and getting it away from simple game mechanics. Second, you're removing the burden from your own shoulders. We DMs have enough to worry about. Third, it helps everyone at the table identify particular enemies without stepping outside of the story. Fourth, it's very easy to do. Just ask your players to describe interesting physical characteristics of the monsters they hit.

When they give you a physical trait, write it down on a 3x5 notecard or on your dry-erase flip mat so everyone can keep track of this newly identified enemy.

Go Big With Descriptions

Narrative combat gives you great freedom to go big with your descriptions of the environment and the battle. These descriptions are also vital to keep the battle interesting when we remove maps and miniatures from the table. Take the time to jot down the most interesting and fantastic features of your combat area. Here are some examples:

• A round hill that is actually a huge iron demon skull half buried in the ground.
• Jagged cliffs on the side of a mile-high waterfall lost deep in the fey woods.
• The edge of a chasm that pierces from our world into the depths of hell.
• The shattered deck of an airship mysteriously buried in the middle of a mountain.
• The remains of a sunken cyclopean temple shaped like a long-dead god.
• A block of dwarven iron floating in the molten center of a volcano.
• High above the city on the back of angry griffins and screeching vrocks.

During the fight, take time to describe the actions monsters take. Ask players for their own descriptions of their actions. Go with the famous "describe your killing blow" to move players from mechanics into storytelling.

Rich and evocative descriptions are the key to making a narrative battle feel as fun and interesting as one with detailed maps, terrain, and miniatures. Give these descriptions the attention they deserve before and during the game.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

These guidelines for combat in the theater of the mind are just one tool you can use to increase the enjoyment of your D&D game. If you find them useful, use this one page reference for narrative combat and hand it out to your players.

You don't need to use them all the time. Instead, use these guidelines to give yourself options for running fast combat described using in-fiction language to build fun, dynamic, and action packed stories.

This month, on the DM's Deep Dive, I spent an hour devouring the intellect of Teos Abadia. Teos has more than 10,000 hours of time spent running D&D organized play games including games for Living Greyhawk, Ashes of Athas, and now the D&D Adventurer's League. Teos and I have spent years discussing DMing and working on projects together including Vault of the Dracolich with Scott Fitzgerald Gray. You can find Teos's writings on the web at Alphastream.org.

You can watch the Youtube video for the show below or subscribe to the DM Deep Dive Podcast using your favorite podcast app.

Teos and I discuss what DMs can learn from organized play and what tips organized play DMs can pass along to DMs who primarily run home games.

We started off by discussing Teos's three big takeaways from running organized play over the years. These included:

• Running organized play means being able to work with many DMs and many players. We rarely get to see so many DMs running so many different games than we do in organized play.

• When DMs work together on an organized play campaign, they can build a really strong community. Teos brings up the Living Greyhawk and Ashes of Athas communities as examples.

• Seeing how players can develop a schtick for a character that other players feed off of. One character had a "tiny god" in a bag around his neck that he continually spoke to to make decisions. All of the rest of the party played off of this 13th Age style "one unique thing".

Here are a bunch of other interesting notes from the conversation.

Learning from running multiple iterations of the same adventure is an experience we don't often have at home games. Not only does it refine what we run but the differences between groups can be really interesting. When we have dozens of DMs all running Caves of Chaos, as an example we discuss in the show, different DMs can work together to come up with really interesting ideas that they can implement in the game. In my own experiences, running Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Curse of Strahd, and Storm King's Thunder for multiple groups let me refine it as I ran it.

The shared experience is another big advantage to running published adventures. So many DMs are running these same adventures that, even if you can't discuss it with other DMs directly, we can feed off of the experiences that other DMs have had running these adventures. If we're running Storm King's Thunder for example, we can use both the Power Score Storm King's Thunder guide and Tom Lommell's Storm King's Thunder Disorganized Play video series to see how other games worked out.

Most of the time, our players are happy for anyone to be running the game. As Teos puts it, even if you're a half-warm body who shows up to run the game, people are happy. This was a big takeaway for me from the show, similar to Enrique's big take-away from our last show that no one gives a shit about your big fantastic world. We all want our games to be amazing storytelling experiences but the bar is actually pretty low. Trying to be the best DM we can be is a noble goal but we shouldn't let that desire paralyze us from running a game, organized or not.

If you have the chance to play an adventure before you run it, you can learn a lot about how you would run it. Convention "slot zero" sessions are one such way. If you can't do this, you can watch people play the adventures you're going to run on YouTube. For example, if you're going to run Lost Mines of Phandelver from the D&D Starter Set, you can watch Greg Bilsland run it before you run it yourself.

One of the questions we received talks about how to handle situations in which one PC attacks another PC in the same party and what to do with it. Teos mentions the excellent rule from the Adventurer's League that requires that no PC can damage another PC without that player's permission. This is a good rule to keep in mind at a home game as well. You can only drop a fireball on your friends if your friends agree with it.

When conflict between two characters does occur, Teos offers some great suggestions. This includes running the combat off-screen, resolving it with a small number of die rolls, or mentioning to the players involved that the players not involved might not want to spend a lot of time watching two characters fight each other.

Other links from the show:

• DM's Deep Dive Episode 1: New Dungeon Masters with Enrique Bertran
• Lauren Blanko's Articles on the D&D Adventurer's League
• What's in Mike's DM Walk-Away Kit?
• Teos's Easy Initiative Card System
• Mike's D&D DM's Campaign Worksheet article and Worksheet PDF

I want to thank Teos again for spending the time to chat with us and squeeze out his experiences so we can all benefit from the. Stay tuned for future episodes of the DM's Deep Dive on the Don't Split the Podcast Network each month!

5e D&D DM Tools

A curated list of tools for running fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons games. Bookmark this list to keep it on hand.

5e Campaign Worksheet: A single-page worksheet with rules summaries, random names, and a focus on your characters and their backgrounds.

Kobold Fight Club: The most popular D&D 5e encounter building tool. Useful for random encounters and as a general monster index.

Name Generator: One of a thousand name generators. Useful for bars and inns as well as people.

Ancient Monuments: Random ancient monuments including interesting random environmental effects.

Relics: Single-use Magic Items: Single-use magic items based on interesting combinations of physical objects.

Random Traps: A trap generator that mixes magical and physical effects with two connected traps.

Monsters by Challenge Rating: The official list of Monster Manual monsters by challenge rating.

Random Spell Tables. A set of charts for determining a random spell. You can also just roll up treasure and hope for a spell.

donjon.bin.sh 5e Tools: A fantastic selection of 5e tools including an encounter size calculator; spell, monster, and magic item indexes; a great random treasure tool; and even a magic item shop generator.

Guide to Narrative Combat with one-page guidelines PDF: Guidelines for running non-gridded combat either in full narrative "theater of the mind" or with an abstract map.

Encounter Building Guidelines with one-page guidelines PDF: Sly Flourish's guide to simple encounter building. The UA Encounter Building Tables are likewise useful.

Character Sheets and Pregenerated Characters: A large set of official blank character sheets as well as pregenerated characters for many classes from levels 1 to 10. Includes the excellent starter set character sheets.

Tables of the Dungeon Master's Guide: An index of the tables in the DMG, including the most valuable tables.

Roll 20: Play Dungeons & Dragons online! Includes official WOTC published adventures such as Storm King's Thunder and Lost Mines of Phandelver.

Note, we'll keep updating this as we become more aware of great and useful 5e D&D tools. Let us know!

We here at Sly Flourish focus almost exclusively on helping dungeon masters run better D&D games. It's been my charge for eight years. Today we're going to take a slightly different approach. We're going to give one dungeon master's opinion, offered to players, on how to build great D&D characters.

A Focus on Fun

Our intent with this article is to help players build characters that bring the most fun to the player, the other players at the table, and the dungeon master. This sounds obvious but we'd all probably be surprised by the number of character builds that don't seem built around this idea. They're built for other reasons including uniqueness, combat power, or to break the boundaries of the game. These things don't preclude building a fun character but sometimes these ideals steer the generation of that character away from the things that make this game enjoyable. This article doesn't describe how to build the most powerful character or the most unique character. Instead, we look at how to build one that brings out the most fun of the game.

The Character as an API

In computer nerd speak, there is a term known as the "application programming interface" or API. This is how one computer program can speak to another or how a large system (like Twitter) can speak to the rest of the world programmatically.

Likewise, we can consider that Dungeons & Dragons itself has an API of sorts. D&D has a way we players interact with the game, a way characters interface with it. When we better understand that API, we can begin to see how certain characters will work better tha n others.

We can break down the interface of D&D into three big parts as outlined in the core rules: combat, interaction, and exploration. These are the three big components that build a D&D game. When we're thinking about our character, we want to think about how they will handle each of these three types of scenes, not just one of them. If we focus too heavily on one of these scenes, we might find ourselves bored and frustrated when the other scenes come up.

As an example, we might consider building the ultimate badass fighter. This fighter, armed with great weapon fighting and great weapon mastery, can hit like a Tarrasque when it comes to smashing stuff with a sword. Interaction? Yeah, not so much. Our Tarrasque hunter has a charisma of 8 and no training in conversational skills because who wants to boost up a -1 attribute bonus. Exploration? Also not so great, with a Wisdom of 10 and no skills there either. Sure, this fighter can lift and smash stuff but that's not always so useful when negotiating with the king's viceroy or exploring the trapped halls of the Temple of Xvim.

This character might be awesome in combat but its player may get pretty bored when scenes focusing on interaction and exploration take place.

Choose Skills for Each Type of Scene

One simple way to build a well-rounded character is to look at our skill list and ensure we have a good mix. When we think about the interface of D&D, the skill list is a big part of that interface. Here's a list of the skills broken out by the three main types of scenes:

Combat Skills: Athletics, Stealth, Intimidation, Animal Handling.

Exploration Skills: Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, Religion, Insight, Medicine, Perception, Survival.

Interaction Skills: Slight of Hand, Investigation, Religion, Deception, Intimidation, Performance, Persuasion.

It's likely worth being proficient in at least one or two skills for each of these categories, particularly exploration and interaction. Skills in combat aren't nearly as important since characters have a whole other pile of abilities for combat.

Thus, when we start building our character we might start by saying "what will this character do in combat, exploration, and roleplaying scenes?"

Choose Well-Rounded Combat Skills

You don't need to be the best badass fighter, but it's worth knowing how you're going to handle combat. What will you do when you face a pack of gnolls, a horde of skeletons, or a young red dragon? What will you do if you're stuck with a web spell or can't reach that spell-wielding mage high up on the cliff?

It's not enough to have one big awesome move you plan to pull out all the time, like the power-attacking great-sword wielding fighter or the fireball-enhanced sorcerer. What will that character do when they're stuck trudging through a swamp getting shot at by troglodites hiding up in the trees?

Even in combat skills, we should look for well-rounded character abilities.

Don't Get Too Creative

Some players love choosing to build characters that break the mold of D&D. The pacifist cleric build or the noble bourgeois fop might be examples. These characters seem custom built to avoid the very things D&D is about. They might hate combat, have poor social skills, and care more about keeping their nails clean than figuring out what the forty thousand year old runes on the wall of the ancient crypt mean.

These creative characters don't fit the D&D interface. Sure, we're telling an open ended story full of creativity but the core of D&D is built around going on adventures, getting into fights, and having heated interesting conversations with people. Some of us might hate the idea that the game can be broken down to such a low level, but when it comes down to it, that's it. If we try to break that mold too much, we're going to suck at everything.

Why does your character want to go off on adventures and fight monsters? If it doesn't, leave that one in the noble-district of Baldur's Gate and roll up a character who does.

Characters Built for a Party

As a DM, my favorite characters are the characters built to be part of a party. Even better is when they already are part of the party. Being the isolationist loner character might seem like a good idea but if you don't have a good reason to be in the group, it's going to be a pain in the ass for everyone to integrate yourself into it. Instead of choosing a background or history that makes it hard to be in a group, find a history or background that draws you into the party or connects you with the group to begin with.

There are fewer more boring storylines in D&D than those who go out of their way to get five people together into a group to finally start having adventures. Far nicer is when the whole group can hit the ground running as a single coherent team. As a player, help your DM out by figuring this out ahead of time.

When you're building a character, consider how your background ties you to your party.

Aiding Another

Tying into the group doesn't have to start or end with a character's background either. How about, instead of picking that cool spell, feat, or power that boosts your own attacks, you pick an ability that helps your fellow characters? How about, instead of picking counterspell to make the DM's life miserable you choose haste to make your fellow companions love you?

Sly Flourish's Quick Summary to Make Awesome Characters

Let's take a quick review and build a checklist for making characters awesome. The next time you're building a character, consider the following questions:

• What options does this character have in combat, exploration, and roleplaying scenes? What benefits does it provide in each of these types of scenes?
• Does my character have a wide range of options in combat?
• Does this character fit well into the general themes of D&D? Does it clearly fit into a story of going on adventures, exploring old dungeons, and fighting monsters?
• What drives our character to want to join an adventuring party? Which other character am I bound to?
• What direct benefits does this character provide to the other characters in the group?

A Different Look at Character Creation

The intent of this article is to steer us away from focusing our characters on pure power or uniqueness. Instead, we can think about how to build well rounded characters that fit the themes of D&D and bring the most joy to us and the rest of the group. Let's give it a try.

Last year, thanks to nearly 800 of you fine folks, we were able to put together and release the book Sly Flourish's Fantastic Locations. This year we're digging one level deeper with Sly Flourish's Fantastic Adventures. This book will contain ten short adventures for characters of levels 2 to 5 of the fifth edition of the world's most popular roleplaying game. The unique design of these adventures fits the philosophies of the Lazy Dungeon Master making it as easy as possible for you to pick them up, customize them for your own campaign, and run them for your group.

The funding we recive through Kickstarter will help fund the editing, design, artwork, and maps for this book. The more we receive, the better product we'll be able to put together. I've spent nearly a year working on the adventures in Fantastic Adventures and can't wait to get them onto your table.

If you are a fan of this site and want to give back, please consider backing the Kickstarter for Sly Flourish's Fantastic Adventures.

Thank you!

Mike Shea

In 1974 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt built a set of cards designed to help people break out of conventional thought called Oblique Strategies. This deck of cards each contained an odd phrase such as "look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them" and "use filters". These phrases were designed to help spark one's mind, break out of a rut, and fire up some new creative ideas.

It's a bit new-age, but we can do the same thing with our collections of random tables, charts, and tools for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Random tables, like those found in the Dungeon Master's Guide, our own Ancient Monuments, and the excellent donjon random encounter generator can break us out of our own conventional thought and steer us into new creative directions. Even a decent random name generator can help us break past finding a good name for an NPC, a bar, or a band of mercenary hobgoblins.

A Key Activity During Game Preparation

We might be tempted to use random tables during gameplay but even better is using them during game preparation. We can spend more time with these random tables and their results ot help us break away from conventional thought while preparing our game ahead of time. Rolling on random tables during game preparation gives us a good chance to throw out bad ideas and refine the good ones into something wonderful.

Any particular encounter we run is likely built on layers such as a general environment, a fantastic feature, and some monsters. This might look like it's only for combat encounters but it can work for scenes of exploration and roleplaying as well. Many times our combat encounters end up as exploration and roleplaying encounters anyway if our players get creative about how they approach it.

Typically we know what environment our scene is going to take place. Maybe its a city, maybe its a frozen tundra, or maybe its a swamp. We often don't need any sort of random table to figure this out. Unless the characters are about to step through a misty portal to an unknown world, we know roughly what the environment will be like.

With the general environment in mind we can try to think up a fantastic feature for the location. What makes this place unique and memorable? We can use a random ancient monument to fire up some ideas. Not all of these randomly generated monuments are going to make sense but we might see something that sparks our imaginations.

We probably want to add some monsters to our encounter, even if it's not always going to end up in combat. Donjon's random encounter generator is a great way to choose some random monsters at a particular level and based in a particular environment. If you don't like what comes up, run the generator again. Lower or raise the level if you want to try out a different environment.

Random Tables of the Dungeon Master's Guide

If online tools aren't your bag, the Dungeon Master's Guide is packed with great random charts to fire off your imagination. Chapters 3, 5, and Appendix A contain excellent random tables to give you ideas during your game preparation. Spending time with the DMG rolling on these tables and putting together some ideas is a great way to play some D&D by yourself. Give them a roll and see what fires your imagination.

Fleeing From the Familiar

Random tables help us break our thoughts away from the stereotypes we might fall back on when we're pressed to come up with an interesting location or encounter in our D&D game. Under the stress of running the game, our minds return to the familiar. When we roll on random tables as part of our preparation activity, it helps push our minds into new and uncharted waters. Roll some dice and let chaos guide our ideas.

Travel scenes in D&D can be tricky to run. We want travel to be meaningful. If the characters are going to hike it from Nightstone to Bryn Shander, they should feel like they've actually gone five hundred miles instead of just suddenly teleporting there. Yet when it comes to the pace of our game at the table, travel scenes can end up boring us if we don't handle them right.

Today we're going to look at three tricks for making the journey between places fun.

The Player-Described Travel Montage

I stole this one out of 13th Age, although, to my knowledge, it isn't part of the core rules but something that came out of their organized play campaigns. Wherever it came from, it's a great trick. Here's how it works.

When it comes time for a travel scene, the DM describes the general circumstances of the journey. Are they traveling across a scorching desert, a fetid swamp, or the icy peaks of the Spine of the World? It's important to give out enough detail to spark the imaginations of the players listening to you. With the general circumstances out in the open, it's time for some improv at the table.

Ask if someone wants to describe a challenge the group faced while on their journey. Try to steer them away from descriptions of what their character is doing, which is their instinct given that they spend most of their time at the table in the mind of their character. Ask them to step outside of their own character and just describe a the challenge.

When a player describes a scene, try really hard not to shut down their idea. Maybe they're not as steeped into the lore of the Forgotten Realms but that's no reason to cut down their idea of running into an abandoned fortress of giants in the middle of the Mere of Dead Men even though we know that the Mere is full of draconic ruins, not giant ruins. Try to build off of their idea, using the improvisation technique of "yes, and".

When they have described a situation and challenge, ask what other player would like to describe how the party, together, overcame the challenge. Again, they might start with what their own character does, so ask them questions like "who helped you with that?" or "who else got involved?". Let the other players jump in if they have something to add.

You might be tempted to call on people in particular but its perfectly acceptable if a player doesn't really want to leap in. Not all of us are good at thinking on our feet and not all of us should be forced to play in our hippy bullshit here. Some are just happy to hear the tale.

That said, you will want to make sure that players feel comfortable jumping in with their ideas even if another player is faster on the draw. As you use this technique, make sure to give quiet players a chance to jump in if they want to but don't force them. Give them a chance and a way out without shame.

The player-driven travel montage is a fantastic way to expand the boundaries of the story beyond the DM's head and can lead to some wonderful stories you never would have thought of otherwise.

Not-So-Random Encounters

Many of the hardcover D&D adventures like Curse of Strahd, Out of the Abyss, and Storm King's Thunder have excellent detailed random encounter tables on them. We might be tempted to be really lazy and roll them up right at the table. This isn't the best way to use these encounters, however. Instead we can read though these encounters and either choose a few we really like or roll them randomly when we're preparing for our game. This gives us a chance to fire up our imaginations with random ideas rather than forcing ourselves to just use the first one that comes up. When we have a few we like, we can use those to break up long travel sequences.

We can also spend some time tying these encounters to the backgrounds of the characters. Players will pay a lot more attenton to an encounter with a clear tie to their character. We can still work from the random encounter list but insert a thread or seed that ties back to one of the characters.

These encounters don't have to be combat encounters either. The characters might discover three stone giants still as statues kneeling around a floating geode. The characters might avoid awakening the giants from their sleep or might simply get into a conversation with them if they awaken. Many DMs tend to focus on combat encounters but we can place a lot of interesting exploration and roleplaying encounters out in the wilds as well.

Some Fantastic Locations

Pardon the shameless plug. Whether we're working with a random encounter or building our own encounter around a character's background, every encounter deserves a fantastic location of sorts. The setting matters. We can start with an ancient monument to get our creative juices going and maybe fill it out with some monsters relevant to the location or the setting. We can load up this location with some secrets and clues so it's not just filler. This way our travel scenes can really mean something. They're important, not just filler.

We might even fill this out into a mini-dungeon of sorts. Maybe it's not just a single scene or encounter but a deeper location the characters can dig into. They don't have to go into the strange catacombs they discover beneath the elemental monolith but they might find something pretty cool if they do.

This, of course, elongates our travel scene. For more relaxed campaigns, this might be fine. If speed is important and the story overall will be better if the characters get to their destination quickly, probably best to avoid sticking a bunch of dungeons in the way.

Different Options for your Travel Scenes

These options are just three of many you might choose to fill in scenes of travel as your characters move around the world. Use each of them as they make sense for the story and for the pace of the game.