Game Masters, When Running Army Men, Avoid White Rooming At All Costs

Since my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic recently dropped (and I'm hard at work on supplemental material for it) I've had it on my brain quite a lot recently. Which is why for this week's Crunch post I wanted to highlight something for the Game Masters who are planning on running a campaign (or even just a handful of missions) with this game.

Namely that under no circumstances should you be running your encounters in open, white rooms that are utterly disconnected from one another, with perfect lighting and fire lines. Because dynamic combat and strategy are the name of the game.

That's initiative! Go! Go!

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"Tactical" is in The Title, After All

When you sit down to design a game, you build in certain assumptions of play. For example, if you make a high fantasy game where magic is commonly available, then part of the challenge rating of your encounters assumes that players will have access to spellcasting, magic items, and so on. If a Game Master decides to then restrict the availability of magic, that's going to throw off the game's balance and challenge because players are now being forced to participate with one hand tied behind their backs in a way that the designer never intended.

The same thing will happen if you try to run Army Men in an open field where two lines of enemies line up, and keep rolling dice until one side or the other is dead.

Cover! Where is my damn cover!?

When I sat down to create Army Men, I wanted to make a version of the DND 5E ruleset that had more options when it came to combat tactics. From a morale system, to expanded rules for cover, to a wider variety of weapons, there's a lot of stuff in here... but one of the assumptions that I made was that Game Masters would create dynamic encounters that put a lot of different battlefield conditions into play in order to get the most out of the game. It's why there are so many rules for all of these different aspects.

And it's why I would strongly recommend that Game Masters use those rules! Because tactics and strategy is a big part of the challenge your squad will have to face, so remember to consider:

- Lighting Conditions: None of the resinous peoples have darkvision without the aid of gear.

- Cover: A huge concern, everything from trenches and sandbags to trees and chest-high walls.

- Height: Higher ground has always been desirable.

- Ammunition: From the Hollywood Guns rules where you don't bother with ammo tracking at all, to low-ammunition situations where every round is valuable, this is a big deal for challenge

- Time: When a mission is time sensitive, you can't spend days raiding, retreating, and resting.

- Alerting The Enemy: Gunfire travels, and if your squad opens up that's going to attract more threats to their position.

And in addition to all of those reminders, Army Men's first supplement Threat Assessments recently dropped, which is full of additional enemy types with their own, unique abilities that can cause serious problems for your squad (in case you needed more tools to do so).

It Helps To Think Big Picture

When designing encounters in most games, but particularly for Army Men, it's important for a Game Master to look down at the full map, and ask what might go right or wrong when determining challenge for their squad. Because too often we just end up looking at a creature's CR, and plopping them down on the map without utilizing their full breadth of abilities and stretegies that makes up that challenge.

Which is why so often your encounters end up feeling too easy, or you have to bulk up enemy hit points or numbers just to challenge your players. Because this time it's the monsters who have one hand (or other miscellaneous limb) tied behind their backs.

What do you MEAN it's still up?!

As an example, many of the vespoids (the huge, insectoid creatures that are one of the prime antagonists in Army Men) have a hive mind feature. This means that whenever your squad attacks, that information is immediately conveyed to the hive, and it can make decisions based on its available data. That might mean that your squad has 1d6 rounds before more enemies show up. Even if they manage to ambush these bugs and kill them before they know what's going on, their deaths will still be registered to the hive mind... they just won't know the precise nature of the threat.

That feature is a large part of what makes these specific kinds of vespoid such a threat to a squad, because if you fight one of these creatures, you're fighting all of them. There is no way to take out an individual cluster of drones or soldiers without putting all of the others on high alert unless it's done at a range where they're not connected to the rest of the hive. They can act in perfect coordination, and even worse for a squad, hive minds are often immune to fear... which means that the squad has to struggle with Morale effects, while their enemy does not.

Consider, if you will...

It helps to picture a mission from a bird's eye view, and to see all of these separate encounters not as disparate, unconnected events, but as parts of a whole. What a squad does, and how well they succeed or fail, should organically effect the rest of their mission in important ways.

For example, say your squad was tasked with dealing with a criminal syndicate who has been stealing ordnance from the military, and trafficking those arms. If your squad poses as corruptible members of the military, and makes the right overtures to sell additional weapons, they might get in close with the customers. If they pass all the social checks, they might even be able to get everyone drunk enough at a post-sale celebration that they pass out, or are severely hampered. This puts the enemy at an extreme disadvantage when the squad starts cuffing the criminals to hand over for prosecution.

Strategy carried the day in this example, without a shot being fired.

However, say your squad instead snapped up a criminal contact and squeezed them for the information about who was buying guns. Yes, they might get the information about who is behind these crimes, where they are, etc., but that contact going missing could put the gun runners on high alert. And if the squad chooses to go after the war profiteers with their fingers on their triggers, now they're facing a group of people who are ready for a fight, and who have prepared themselves accordingly with a booby trapped and reinforced warehouse where they store their merchandise, body armor, heavy weapons, and other threats that put the squad at a dangerous disadvantage. This version is much more difficult as far as challenge goes, but that challenge is a direct result of actions taken (or not taken) up to this point.

The enemies in question didn't change in both scenarios. All the NPCs you had at the beginning are still there, as are all the weapons, armor, traps, etc., that could have been brought to bear agaisnt your squad. But what options the players chose, the strategy they used, and how well their dice rolled (as they would have a serious fight on their hands if their cover was blown while they were in the middle of enemy territory, and the gang had to get rid of them) all play a part in how events go down.

This is the sort of mindset a Game Master should adopt in order to make their games feel more organic, and to give as much power to their players as possible. Think of the mission as a clock. You choose the pieces, you fit them together, and you set it in motion... from that point onward, you're just watching what your players do, and making sure that all the moving pieces act in accordance to the abilities and strategy they bring to bear. Everything should be connected, because that's what's going to lead to an overall better game.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Crunch post. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Onion Plots, An Alternative to Linear Narratives For Game Masters

Every game master knows the pain of players wandering off into the weeds, and away from the plot they had ready. The challenge in this instance is respecting your players' autonomy to go where they want and to explore the world in their own way, while also trying to get them to actually go toward the destination and story you have prepared for them. And no matter how artfully you push, players can feel like they're being railroaded and just driven along the preset path without any choice when you start manipulating things from behind the scenes.

Something that can often help in this instance is to think of your plot not in terms of a line between A and B, but rather as if it were layers of an onion. It doesn't matter where your players start peeling at the onion, because any point of entry can progress them closer to the goal.

Ogres are optional.

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What is an Onion Plot, And How Does It Work?

When most of us think of plot in an RPG, we tend to think in terms of straight lines. The party fights goblins in encounter A, this leads them to go up road B to the caverns, and then to go into cave C to slay the leader and rescue the hostages. If they deviate from this path (the party ignores the goblins and keeps moving, they save the town but elect not to go up to the caverns, or to go a different route than the one you prepared, etc.) it can throw you for a loop as a GM.

Instead of thinking of the game in branching paths, like you get in video games and other linear narratives, you need to think of your game in terms of layers instead.

It's just one mask atop another mask.

So, let's take the following campaign premise. The central thrust of this arc is the goblin war chief is raiding surrounding towns. However, the chief is doing this at the behest of a local nobleman in order to justify a clamp down from the duke who wants to expand his military presence. The goblins provide destruction, take hostages, steal things, etc., and this gives the duke the political leverage to recruit, train, and deploy more of his own men across the region. An action that, in other circumstances, would be highly suspicious. Once the duke has an iron fist across the region his plan is to consolidate power, and to draw more allies to him. He then plans to repeat this success with other monstrous allies, growing his forces exponentially until his personal army rivals the king's, allowing him to seize power.

That's the whole onion, and your players are going to start on the outermost rim of it. The actions they take, or don't take, is what determines how they get to the next layer.

Say they defend the town from goblin attack, because they're in the town and it was at least partially self-defense. If they track the goblins back and kill the warchief in the caverns, so much the better, that will end the threat entirely. If they don't do that, word will spread back to the chief about the stiff resistance from one particular village. So now goblin forces will need to be drawn away from other towns and raids, bringing the fight to the party. This will eventually force the party to fight for their lives, as even escaping may be impossible. In either case, the goblin threat will be dealt with, and the party will have thrown a spanner into the duke's plans.

Now you've entered the second layer. The duke wants to expand control over the area, but with his goblin allies defeated he has to now take another tack. Perhaps he approaches the party to try to recruit them to his army. If the party agrees, you now have the ability to send them out to "problem" areas that aren't in the duke's hair, hoping they are killed so his plans can continue. Perhaps the "rebellion" they are putting down informs them of the knights who came, executing dissidents and hanging so-called traitors without authority, thus showing the duke's hand early. Perhaps young men were being press-ganged into the army, and the townsfolk are resisting what is basically the kidnapping of their young men. If the party refuses the duke's offer, then the nobleman can send his own men disguised as bandits to try to assassinate the party and eliminate them that way. Either way, the party faces danger, and in the end will become a much larger thorn in the duke's side.

And so on, and so forth.

Focus on The Goals Instead of The Methods

This is something I've said before, but it bears serious repeating. Focus on what you want the party to do, rather than how you want them to do it. If you create the scenario, just roll with what actions the PCs take, keeping the big picture in mind.

Trust me, it's ALL connected!

The major advantage of thinking of your plot in terms of layers, rather than in terms of lines, is that it stops you from getting overly hung up on how you want the PCs to accomplish their goals. If they want to fight the mercenary band of orc raiders, cool, throw down in a field and call it a day! If they want to wage a campaign of assassination and poisoning, taking the orcs out one by one, that gets the job done, too. Maybe they want to negotiate with the orc leaders and become their new paymasters, giving them a fair wage and benefits to staff the abandoned fortress the party recently acquired. If that's within the sensible nature of the leaders of the band, there's no reason that couldn't work... and if you want to throw in a complication like the mercenaries' mates and children are being held hostage by a cult forcing them to fight, now the party can save the children, defeat the cult that was going to be the next big enemy early, and make a slew of new allies in the process!

If you think of your plot in terms of layers of complication that are fluid, and able to respond and change to fit what your party does, it allows you to give players that freedom and agency, while also maintaining some kind of structure for the story you're trying to run. Because you may not know how the party is going to defeat a given challenge, but whatever they do is going to cause ripples, and that will peel back the layers as they go.

Additional Reading

I didn't have any organic way to work in some links for my other articles and projects, but folks who liked this article should definitely check out the following.

- The Onion of Secrets (A Character Concept With Layers): This unusual character concept piece is the one that indirectly inspired this Monday's post. As such, I figured those who want to make characters who keep a lot of different secrets going might enjoy it... applicable to PCs and NPCs alike!

- Critical Hits: The Curse of Sapphire Lake: With the spooky season upon us, I thought I'd share this module of mine for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. It's been struggling to get over that Copper metal status, so check it out... especially since it offers your players multiple endings depending on the actions they take!

- 100 Encounters in a Fey Forest: A system-neutral list of potential incidents, this is always a good one to keep up your sleeve if you want your players to stay on their toes while they're traveling through fey territory.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my cat noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Nobody Likes a "Gotcha" Game Master

The rule of a good mystery story is that all of the puzzle pieces need to be in front of the reader the whole time. If they're clever, perceptive, or just gain a moment of insight, then the reader might even manage to figure out who committed the crime before the protagonist does. However, a good sign of a subpar mystery is that the author keeps important details behind the scenes so the reader couldn't possibly figure out what's happening no matter how attentive they are. Or worse, in the conclusion of the story they pull a Scooby Doo and introduce a character the audience has never met and couldn't possibly suspect as the culprit of what's happening. It preserves the mystery, yes, but it's cheap, and sucks out most of the satisfaction a reader could have gotten from the story.

What does this have to do with being a game master? Everything, because there is no surer way to irritate your table than to try to pull a "gotcha" moment to make them feel stupid, or to show how clever you are.

There's a lot to unpack here, but don't worry, we'll get into it.

As usual, if you haven't signed up for my weekly newsletter, do that today to make sure you don't miss anything! Now then, let's get into the meat of this, shall we?

What Is (And Isn't) a "Gotcha" in Gaming?

Since I can already hear throats clearing, let's make this clear right up-front. I'm not saying that game masters should abandon subtlety and guile. I'm not saying you shouldn't hold some things back for the purposes of keeping a little mystery in the plot, nor am I saying that if players miss something (or choose not to investigate) that you need to lead them back to it by the nose.

What I'm saying is that, as a GM, you shouldn't specifically engineer scenarios that exist only to screw the PCs. Nor should you refuse to divulge information when the dice say it's something the PCs should know, have seen, etc. because it might mean the players get a peek behind the curtain.

Let's discuss the most traditional example, shall we?

Perhaps the most tedious example of a "Gotcha" move is when a GM consistently attempts to force paladin characters into situations where no matter what they do they will violate their oaths, and thus lose their powers. To be clear, this isn't a situation where the moral choice is merely difficult, or where the requirements of an oath make things harder for the paladin, or when the player stumbles into a situation all on their own; it's when the GM has done something specifically to force the player's hand to undercut the character.

As a very stupid example, say the paladin is forced by a villain to murder a helpless hostage, or the villain will in turn murder two of them. It's a cartoonish situation on its face, but if the GM makes it clear there's no way around this (the paladin can't tackle the enemy, can't fake the murder attempt, can't use diplomacy, intimidation, or any of their powers to affect the situation, can't sacrifice themselves to save the hostages), then it's a pointless scene. They kill the innocent, they violate their oath. Through inaction they allow the innocent to be harmed when they could have stopped it, they violate their oath. Either way, the player gets screwed.

You can replace the paladin with a cleric, a monk, a druid, and you can alter the situation to suit the oaths and alignments of the character in question... but the point remains the same. If you put a road block in front of the players that exists for no reason other than to screw someone, and there is no way to avoid it or accomplish their goals without metaphorically cutting off a finger, that's a "gotcha" moment.

The close cousin of the born-to-lose scenario is when the GM plays cagey with the rules of a given encounter. If a player who is standing toe-to-toe with a huge, roaring troll asks the GM if the creature has the reach to threaten the square they're standing in, the GM should say yes, or no, because that's something easily observable. Just shrugging and saying something like, "You think you're out of range," then waiting for the player to begin casting a spell to just take the troll's attack of opportunity and splat the wizard is bad form. Play it straight with your players if you expect them to trust anything that comes out of your mouth.

What about that other thing you were talking about?

The second most common "Gotcha" I've seen from game masters is when they out-and-out refuse to provide the puzzle pieces to the players (even when the dice say they should have them) because they want to preserve the mystery around a big twist. As an example, say the GM wants the PCs to investigate a murder, and the big twist is that the victim was poisoned at dinner, but the body was grievously stabbed afterward to throw off suspicion. If someone with a high score in the Heal skill rolls well, this is not the time for the GM to just flap their hands and say there's too much blood, or they can't tell what happened. The player did good, give them a cookie. The same holds true if someone casts detect poison and finds remnants of it in the body, or the necromancer casts speak with dead and we find out the ghost has no knowledge of any sort of violence because it happened post-mortem.

If the players did the thing, let them have their victory. Even if it means the Wizard of Oz mis-stepped, and they caught sight of the man behind the curtain that you were saving for an act three twist reveal.

Set Your Players Up To Win

I've said it before, but I'll remind folks that If You Don't Want Players To Win, Get Out of The DM Chair! Your whole job is to facilitate challenge, and to make sure people have a fun time... the best way to do that is to give your players as much freedom as you can, and to let them win when they've earned it.

Even (and I would say especially) when they do it unexpectedly.

Not what I had in mind, but go for it!

And for all the folks out there who are arguing that letting something slip too early, or allowing the players to drive the narrative too completely, I'd counter that if you remove the linear nature of a situation you take a lot of the work off your hands, and put the power back in your player's court.

What do I mean by that?

Let's go back to the murder mystery. A linear plan would have the party investigate, and find the horribly brutalized body. If you plot out where you want them to go from that point on (they follow the false trail to the gang of assassins who use a particular kind of blade, the assassins inform them they refused the contract, the lord's maid comes forward and claims she saw something, PCs then follow this tip to a potions dealer, potions dealer rats out the duchess, duchess was acting on orders from a secret cult, etc., etc.).

Instead, take a step back. Lay out the entire situation as it happened before the PCs showed up. A cult dedicated to an evil god had one of its members, the duchess, poison her husband because he was proving to be a problem. To cover her tracks and throw off suspicion, she tried to mutilate the body, and then hired mercenaries to exact "revenge" on the hired killers whose style of murder she'd imitated. The idea is that this whole thing is because the cult is trying to further its own goals, while staying in the shadows.

Once the party is on the scene, take your hands off and let them run around to see what they do.

Maybe, upon seeing the body, the rogue connects the weapon to the assassins associated with it, and the party follows the path you originally envisioned. But maybe the cleric finds out there was poison, or the ranger points out the wounds were inflicted post mortem, leading them to the conclusion that the wounds were a cover-up for a poisoning that happened the evening before. If the duchess is in the room, she now knows that the PCs are onto the truth of what happened. She knows cutting them loose would make her look guilty, so she tells the cult they've become a problem, and the cult attempts to eliminate them. The PCs track the cult back, and uncover the plot that way.

If you stonewall the spells, skill checks, etc. during the scene where the PCs investigate the body because you want them to go to the assassins rather than figure things out too fast, you're just going to frustrate your players. If you let the players discover things organically, following where they lead instead of trying to control their direction, they're going to enjoy the game a whole lot more. And by getting a top-down, full story view of the whole plot, the players can't step off the path. There is no path; just where they are, and where you want them to be. How they get there is up to them!

This also helps ensure that if they wind up in a scene where they are forced to break their oaths, violate their faith, etc. that they wound up in that situation because of actions they took rather than you pushing them into the trap.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my cat noir thriller Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Dungeon Masters, If Your Players Focus on Something, Make it Matter

It's a story as old as time. The dungeon master has carefully constructed an epic magic item meant to take the center stage of the dragon's treasure hoard, but no sooner are they through with the description of the legendary Seven-Body Blade than everyone in the party wants to ask about that weird jade figurine of the bird-headed woman the DM included just for atmosphere. Or when they walk into the tavern, and there's clearly a Mysterious Stranger with the words Quest Giver practically floating over their head, but the PCs would rather make small talk with the bartender, or dice with the shady-looking NPCs in the corner with the lip rings and strange accents.

"So, Boblin, what's up with the smoking man there? And what the hell is he drinking, eh?"

A lot of dungeon masters get frustrated when this happens, because they put a lot of work into major NPCs and set pieces, and having them ignored can feel like all your effort went to waste. When you compound that with the side of frustration you can sometimes get when throwaway items or set-dressing NPCs have now become the focus on your party, it can feel like a double slap.

However, instead of trying to push your players back onto the course you had planned for them, you'll get better results by just finding a way to get them where you want them to be using this new thing that's caught their attention. Or, at the very least, throw them a bone to show that interacting with the world (even in unexpected ways) garners results.

How, Exactly, Does This Work?

All right, let's start with the infamous tavern scene. As a dungeon master, you've put one figure in the bar who is clearly marked as an important NPC. Maybe it's the hulking man in the ragged cloak with his hood up, attended by three floating eyes of fire as he drinks from a skull that isn't the bar's standard cup. Perhaps it's the woman in the plain cape that keeps slipping, not-so-subtly revealing her badge of office, or the tattoo that marks her as a member of an infamous assassin's guild. Whoever it is, they may as well have a big, glowing sign over their head that they are the person the party is meant to interact with.

All right... but who ELSE is at the bar?

Instead of going and interacting with the NPC whose name, backstory, and prepared dialogue you've got ready, though, the party asks about who else is in the tavern. And you don't want to say, "No one, just go talk to the NPC you're clearly here to meet," so you toss out a few other random characters. There's the ogre-blooded bouncer leaning against the support post in the corner, the gnome waiter, the long-limbed bartender with her one eye, and a handful of other patrons. And for some reason the party just fixates on one of these other NPCs. Maybe it's that you made up something really cool and flashy on the spot, or there's something endearing about them, but now they're focused on the wrong thing.

Or are they?

As I said in Avoiding Railroading (More Than One Way To Skin A Cat), you get a lot more mileage out of deciding what goals need to be met instead of how the party needs to meet them. So instead of trying to figure out a way to get your players to focus on what you think of as the proper way to move forward, ask instead how you can progress from the direction they're currently facing.

It's all connected!

For example, say your party is at the bar so they can meet with the local thieves' guild rep to get some information. You already put together the dual-dagger wielding, slick-talking thief with the badass facial scar and black cloak, but the party decided they wanted to spend their time talking to Shengo the blue-haired gnome waiter instead. If the party doesn't actually know who the guild rep is, the easy thing to do is just to make it Shengo instead. Now you can take most of the information you were going to put into that guy in the corner booth that everyone's ignoring, and give it to your party via their new friend. This makes you look smart as a DM, and it lets your players feel rewarded for interacting with the scene you set up.

Another option you have is to connect this random thing the party has focused on to what you want them to pay attention to, making them part and parcel of the same overall scene.

Let's go back to that treasure chamber for a moment. There's this super-epic sword of legend in the middle of the room, but for some reason the party is focused on the jade statuette. Instead of just telling them, "Look, it's a normal statue, it's barely even worth gold at the level you're at, stop paying attention to it," add some flavor that connects it to the item you want them paying attention to.

For example, have your party make a check for the item's history, realizing that this statue was connected to the last-known wielder of that blade. A funerary statue, it was meant to contain her soul, and to keep it safe when she finally laid aside her weapon. Alternatively, you could put a legend into the back of the statue, the words declaring the origin and powers of the Seven-Body Blade. Now the party feels smart because they got to sidestep the check to know the weapon's history, and you still brought their attention back onto the item you want them looking at. You could even give them a cryptic warning about how once the sword is hefted, it cannot be put down until death, alluding to how it bonds to one wielder at a time.

Everything in Service of The Overall Goal (When You Can)

By focusing on the general goals of your game, rather than on the specific characters the party needs to interact with or the particular paths they have to take, you add an air of flexibility that allows you to respond more quickly with creative solutions to the actions your players take, and the things they show an interest in.

You just need to get into the habit of asking, "How do I point them toward the end goal?" rather than, "How do I get them back on track?"

Subtlety is your friend, here.

Admittedly there will be times where you can't come up with some way to tie this particular thread your players get stuck on into your overall plan. The scarf-seller on the corner isn't an undercover agent of the crown, and that beggar sitting in the shadow of the alley doesn't have some dire secret that the PCs need, they're just background that the players are zeroing in on. Sometimes that bauble they found in the dungeon really is just a bauble, plain and simple.

If your players are willing to put in the effort to interact with your world, though, give them a reward for doing so. Maybe let them buy a headscarf that doubles as a star char to help with navigation, or let them make a friend out of the beggar, who can come back later when he's in trouble and needs the PC's help. If they are fixated on finding the origin of a random ivory cat statue and its secret meaning, then give them something. It doesn't have to be big or important, but make it a unique item carved by a noted sculptor, or maybe it allows them to talk to cats as long as it's been dipped in milk that day.

Rewards, even minor ones, will get players more interested in the setting, and encourage them to explore. Which is more than worth the cost of shuffling around a few NPCs, and taking the long way to get to certain plot points.

Some Additional Advice

The first thing I would recommend for all the DMs out there is to not put passive situations in your game if you want the PCs to do something specific. If they really need to talk to the guard captain, or they have to get this piece of information from the duchess's chambermaid, then don't wait for them to figure it out and go looking. Have the NPCs approach the party, and get the interaction started. It immediately takes the guesswork out of the situation, no one gets frustrated, and no one will try to use creative (or "creative") solutions to figure out what will move the story forward.

But... but I had the molotovs prepped and ready to go!

Another thing I'd recommend is that, if you want to give the PCs freedom to mingle, put as few "strictly background" NPCs in the scene as possible. That way no matter who they approach, you can keep the scene moving forward in some way, shape or form. If you're looking for useful characters to add into the mix, I've put together 100 NPCs You Might Meet at The Tavern, along with 100 Merchants to Encounter and 100 Nobles to Encounter, all of which are filled with PCs that can provide rumors, give helpful information, and generally assist you in moving your plot forward.

Make sure you never fold your arms and wait for the PCs to hit a certain DC in order to go forward. I covered this more in my recent post Dungeon Masters, Embrace The Concept of Failing Forward, but if your PCs fail to disable a lock, or make a high enough Diplomacy check, don't just say, "nothing happens," and wait. Succeed or fail, if the situation was important enough to warrant a test, then something needs to happen whichever result turns up.

Lastly, remember the characters that are actually at your table. Who knows them, who are their friends, who are they related to, and what enemies do they have? These aspects can often help you come up with appropriate ways to tie things together in your game to keep everyone moving forward. You'll find more detailed advice along these lines in The Small Legend: Character Reputation in RPGs, as well as in my other recent post Who is in Your Character's Rogues' Gallery?

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. Hopefully you enjoyed, and if you've used this tactic successfully in your games why not leave a comment below?

For more of my work, check out my Vocal and Gamers archives, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

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More Than One Way To Skin A Cat (Avoiding Railroading At Your Table)

It's not easy being a DM. You have to keep track of an entire cast of characters, run a world, balance how much time every player gets dedicated to them, keep track of combats, and craft a tackle box worth of adventure hooks to get the PCs out of bed, the tavern, or the brothel. With all of that going on, DMs should be given a little slack if they get sort of myopic when it comes to how the party is supposed to get from A to B. However, if you find yourself constantly setting up plot points where there is one und only one way to solve the challenge you've put forth, you might need to back up a little.

And pull those ties up behind you on your way out.

Some doors only have one key, that's true. But you shouldn't be overly picky with how your group chooses to acquire the key, if you see what I mean?

Set The Stage, And See What The PCs Do

As a for-instance, let's say the first arc of your campaign is about a company of orcs raiding a small town for food, supplies, and treasure. Your goal is to have the PCs scuffle with the Red Hand, win a couple of smaller fights, and then move on the main force to roust them. Pretty basic, but there's nothing wrong with a setup if it works.

And it doesn't TPK the party right out of the gate.

However, what do you do if your players want to take an alternative course of action? For example, say that the halfling rogue wants to sneak into the Red Hand's camp during the night, and assassinate the commanders in their beds (perhaps while making it look like they were killed by a rival group)? How about if the bard and the paladin want to negotiate with the Red Hand, and see if they could be hired as mercenaries to protect the town and patrol the region (the logic being that these orcs are sentient beings, and thus they would see that being paid to do nothing but keep the peace is preferable to risking life and limb in raids)? What if the half-orc in the party wants to "defect" to the Red Hands, poisoning their cook pots and utensils so the soldiers are incapacitated?

What if, what if, what if.

Now, a good DM will look at the course of action proposed, and decide whether it is technically possible to achieve. For example, sneaking into the camp and killing the leaders in their sleep is doable, if difficult, provided the party all make the necessary stealth checks, and perform all the right actions. On the other hand, defeating a champion in single combat may be a notion that the Red Hands find childishly quaint. If they win, they'll insist on your side agreeing to terms, but there's nothing in their culture or code that says losing one duel means you have to pack up and go home. It's also possible that they're already being paid, and thus you'd need to outbid their current masters... that might not be possible, but it would mean the PCs' strategy failed for a logical reason.

A bad DM will just say no, none of those alternative ways will work because you have to do it this way.

It doesn't matter how high your Stealth check is, you won't be able to sneak into the camp, much less into the commander's tent. Even if you're invisible. No, the Red Hand will not talk or change their course of action, because they are not here for sensible reasons that could be discussed during the course of diplomacy; they exist only for the PCs to fight and kill them in order to gain XP and level up. Unless your solution is some form of, "We assault their camp," it will not work.

Tell The Players What To Do, Not How To Do It

There's an old piece of wisdom I once heard associated with the military. Captains give the orders, it's the sergeants' job to figure out how to fulfill them. Just as commanding officers are concerned more with results than with methods, so too a good DM should be more involved with the end goals the party is trying to achieve, rather than the specific methods for how they achieve them.

Because sure, you might need to acquire the Four Sacred Keys of The Great Winds to unlock the Gate of Aeons in order to stop some huge, encroaching threat. That's perfectly sensible. So the first goal is to get the four keys, cool. Don't micromanage how the party does that. Do they raid the temple Indiana Jones style? Do they pass the traditional test to prove themselves worthy? Do they pull a Mission Impossible and come down from the ceiling to steal the key from under the noses of the monks guarding it, sight unseen?

Who cares how they do it? As long as they make the rolls and their strategy follows the rules of the game world in terms of possibility, then let it ride. It will maintain the players' agency, and give you a lot more unique approaches in terms of how your players try to solve the problems you put forth.

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday installment. Hopefully some folks out there find it interesting, and if you've got questions (or DM horror stories to share), leave them in the comments below. For more work by yours truly, consider checking out my Vocal archive (or just going straight to my Gamers page), and stopping in on the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I help out from time to time. To keep up on all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support Improved Initiative, you could make a one-time donation by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or give me a little every month by becoming a patron over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. Either way, there's free stuff in it for you!