D&D 5E Let's Have A Thread of Veteran GM Advice

[SteveC]

If your players are having trouble figuring out what to do next, it's usually as simple as dropping and NPC on them with suggestions. If they don't want to take suggestions, you likely need to talk about that outside of the game.

 

[gorice]

The idea that a pre-written adventure involves following a script implies you have never played one. Not even Dragonlance does that!

And if the players prefer to have a clear objective, so they can feel like heroes, rather than money-grubbing mercenaries, who are you to tell them they are wrong?

I think we have differing assumptions here. I have no problem with a clear objective or constrained environment, so long as everyone is on the same page and can exercise agency within those bounds. Dungeon crawls are a prime example of this.

IME, though, a lot of adventures are written in the style of 'x happens, then y happens. If the PCs don't go to the location for y, have z appear and prompt them to go there.' Sometimes it's a bit more subtle than that, but railroading is very much a thing.

This is why I suggested upthread that being explicit about what is variable and what is fixed in a scenario might be helpful in cases like this (or not, it doesn't always work). Players who have been trained to wait for the next breadcrumb sometimes do weird stuff when there isn't one. That said, wanting a constrained environment, or a clear objective to get things rolling, is a perfectly real and reasonable preference. That's why I think it often comes down to the cliched 'talk to your players'.

Something that has also worked for me, both for breaking bad habits and understanding other styles of play, is to play different games. Go crazy and drop something like Apocalypse World, and see how people react. Could be great, could be terrible.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

IME, though, a lot of adventures are written in the style of 'x happens, then y happens. If the PCs don't go to the location for y, have z appear and prompt them to go there.' Sometimes it's a bit more subtle than that, but railroading is very much a thing

Some do that, some don’t. And there is nothing wrong with it. If the players want clear direction give them clear direction. If they want to save the world from a moustache twirling villain then have a moustache twirling villain try and destroy the world. If the players don’t want to make a map don’t make them make a map. If your players aren’t interested in pretend gold don’t make it the only reward on offer. You, as DM, will have a lot more fun if your players are enjoying doing what they want to do than if you try to make them do what you think they should be doing.

 

[Parmandur]

Never spit in the wind
Never tug on Superman's cape
And never mess with bad, bad Leeeeoreeeey Jeeeeeenkiiiiins

 

[Lanefan]

This I figured out long ago: players do not need to map the dungeon. This is actually a hint in the original version of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. It's not realistic that the characters could produce an accurate map anyway, unless they are dragging surveyors tools around with them, have the appropriate proficiency, and lots of time.

A piece of non-stretchy string or rope accurately marked in 5' increments is all you need for the basics of on-site mapping. In older editions, movement while exploring a dungeon was assumed to be very slow; the time taken to map is part of why.

And talking of proficiency, not everyone can learn to draw on a grid. I mentioned the other day that the age when D&D players where all maths geeks has passed.

That education ain't what it once was isn't the game's fault.

I mean, can't learn to draw on a grid? Really?

And then there is the realism issue. Isn't it weird that your dungeon is exactly aligned to a 5 foot grid? How thick is the wall between the two rooms you have drawn?

I draw them as 10' passages on the board but I try to remember to mention now and then that they're often more like 8' wide, to account for the thickness of the walls.

The only thing that needs to be drawn are the battlemaps, and then only if you are not using theatre of the mind. And really, it needs to be the DM who preps them, ideally in advance, so the can mark on all the exploding barrels and other interesting terrain features.

The problem I always have with pre-drawn battlemaps is that they inevitably show the players things and-or areas the PCs haven't seen yet.

 

[Lanefan]

What purpose does forcing the players to draw the map serve? Does it ever actually matter in the game?

Yes. If nothing else, having a decent map sometimes points out areas that are suspiciously un-mapped and thus might have a secret or hidden way in.

Having their own map also serves to remind them what's where, as they can make their own notes on it. And it means I-as-DM don't get to tell them they're lost, in a big dungeon.

I would stop having the players draw the maps. I see no upside to doing it this way and a whole lot of downsides. If nothing else, draw the map yourself and reveal it as the PCs move through it. And/or give them a copy of the map after they've cleared the level, if they need the map for some reason.

The bolded assumes there's no secret or hidden areas that the PCs may or may not ever find. Boring.

 

[MNblockhead]

I've been gaming for over 30 years now and still struggle with how to run dungeon crawls, especially mega-dungeons, in the most fun way possible. Specifically, navigating the labyrinth, resource management, and encounter balance (since consequences of death in RPGs is so high).

Video Games knock this out of the park thanks to being able to visually move around the maze with "fog of war" and tracking inventory with fancy User Interfaces. Both of these are designed so "fun", they're practically games in themselves. Oh, and PC death is never an issue, since you can just revert to an older save and try again. This gives the designers a lot more wiggle room in balancing encounters.

How am I suppose to compete!?

Closest I've come to "perfect" with navigation is:

• Complete dungeon drawn out ahead of time that's slowly revealed as the party explorers.
  • I've used 5ft squares with individual PC minis, but that takes up a lot of space. I've found 10ft squares with one "party" miniature easier to manage.
• Printing the dungeon out on standard sized paper and cutting out all the individual rooms. When the players explorer, I just hand them the room they just walked in and let them use glue sticks to "map" it.

With resource management:

• Just ignoring it unless obvious encumbrance issues arise.
• Periodic dice rolls to "test" resource depletion.
• A mixture of Shadowdark's approach of losing a torch every hour of real-time and losing food whenever a rest is taken.

With PC death:

• Roll up a new character at (or close to) party's level.
• Take control of a befriended NPC (Baulder's Gate like).
• New PC at Level 1, but hey, at least the party can share some better gear to give them a chance to survive long enough to "catch up".

Curious to hear what others have done!

I completed a 5 year mega-dungeon campaign (Rappan Athuk) in December last year. I used VTT tools. We started in person and I had a horizontal display that I would display the map with FOG of war and remove it as they explored. We used miniatures on top of the digital display. When I had to start running games online, I used Foundry. I never make players map. Instead, if a character has cartography skills, it let the revealed areas stay revealed after they move through the area.

Resource management, again, is simple if using a VTT. Weight, ammo, encumbrance is all tracked by the digital character sheet.

Lighting, vision, etc. also handled by the VTT.

I know many will feel that this makes D&D play too much like a video game. But not from my perspective. Instead of spending time on mapping, manually tracking resources, and figuring how far characters can see, the players can instead focus on planning, solving puzzles, social interactions, combat, etc. It keeps the game moving and avoids a lot of the grind involved with playing through a megadungeon with pen and paper.

It does take away from some of the mystery and fear involved in running a dungeon TotM. I love running small dungeons TotM where they are just one location in a larger campaign setting. But with a megadungeon, TotM gets old quick and frustrating for most players. Besides, even with VTT tools, a megadungeon like Rappan Athuk is so huge that there is still much unknown and trying to understand how everything fits together still provides a puzzle for the players and one more interesting than mapping room by room with pen and pencil.

For PC death, I started the campaign with a funnel. Most players had at least 2 surviving characters. Most played the same character exclusively, but some would play with both, swapping them depending on what the group's goals for a session were. The inactive PCs would be back at the stronghold, taking care of things there in the background. If not played and gathering XP, if they needed to come into the game because the primary character died, or they wanted to play the backup character, the backup character would be leveled up to one level below the lowest level character in the group. When we had a guest player join a session, they would just roll up a character before the session and level it up to one level below the lowest level main group member's PC.

Part of what made a 5 year campaign that took place almost entirely in one megadungeon work (for our group) was slower leveling using GP for XP, with occasional milestone leveling. We also used MCDM's Strongholds and Followers rules for the party to build and improve strongholds, and hire troops to protect it and secure areas they've cleared. I also used a homebrew fame/infamy/reputation systems with patrons and factions (based heavily on an article published in EN5ider). This tied the parties goals and activities to the larger world and sopped up gold.

Lastly, I made sure that if the players tired of the megadungeon, they were not locked into it, so that we wouldn't have to just end the campaign and start a new one if they lost interest. Rappan Athuk is part of Frog God Game's Lost Lands setting and I have a LOT of material for it. Also, there are lots of hooks to other areas throughout Rappan Athuk and I added further hooks. Even with that, we played for 5 years almost entirely within Rappan Athuk with only the rare side quest or trip to other areas.

 

[Hex08]

I mean, can't learn to draw on a grid? Really?

I had no problems learning to draw on a grid when I first started playing but as an adult I couldn't do it very well if I needed to. I have essential tremors so my writing is often a mess, I can't paint miniatures very well anymore and mapping a dungeon, even on a grid, would be a pain in the butt. Mine isn't too bad but some days are worse than others and I have known other people with tremors who could barely write or draw a straight line. It's no big deal but sometimes things people take for granted aren't easy for others.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A piece of non-stretchy string or rope accurately marked in 5' increments is all you need for the basics of on-site mapping. In older editions, movement while exploring a dungeon was assumed to be very slow; the time taken to map is part of why.

Only if the structure is exactly aligned to a right-angled grid without changes in elevation. Which is frankly ridiculous. You really think that would work in a natural cave network?!!!

And where is the fantasy? When did Conan, or Gandalf, do any surveying? Not even Indiana Jones did much of that, and it’s something archaeologists do (using much more advanced apparatus than a knotted rope). He uses a theodolite in Raiders, but that was just to find the entrance.

That education ain't what it once was isn't the game's fault.

I mean, can't learn to draw on a grid? Really?

Maths education is better than it ever was, but, as someone who has taught both top set and bottom set, the range of ability is enormous.

What’s changed is D&D has become more inclusive and less gatekeeperish, so people who are not in the top set are allowed to join in.

 

[Jahydin]

@MNblockhead
Thanks for the amazing response.

That sounds pretty close to what I want to start doing actually. Over the years I've amassed hundreds of miniatures though, so thinking of using a digital map case to get the best of both worlds: