Game Formats: Theater of the Imagination vs Grided Combat

In this age of the internet, there are many ways to run a game. And the format you choose has a big impact on how the game will run. Each format has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and today I'm going to go over what I believe they are.

Theater of the Imagination

Theater of the imagination is a type of game the eschews any sort of battle map for Dungeon Master description. 

Strengths:

• Everything is in the imagination, so there's no need to invest in battlemaps, tokens, or anything else to keep track of things. All you need is a pad of paper, a pencil, and a Dungeon Master that is happy to describe things in gritty detail.
• Because everything is in the imagination, you get to picture everything in your mind. Distances don't matter as much, and it's easier to apply the 'rule of cool.'
• Because there's nothing to keep track of, it's easy to play a game anywhere you can find room to roll some dice.
• It stream lines combat by taking away all the time that players spend carefully plotting out movements on the map. They can simply ask, "am I within 30 ft of the kobold with the four forked tongue?" and the DM can say yes or no.

Weaknesses:

• It is much harder to track detailed combats. This makes it easier to run simple combats, but once you start dealing with eight or nine different monsters, it can be nearly impossible to keep things ordered.
• Players don't always understand things the way the DM intends. If the player and DM get on a different page, it can slow the game down while everyone gets back to the same mental map.
• The Dungeon Master will often have to describe the same thing multiple times, and will have to answer many questions about distances and available options.
• Players that have relied on maps in the past may feel helpless without a map to help them visualize things.

Should I use it?

If you are planning on running simple combats, and want to focus more on the cinematic action rather than the nitty gritty, this format is for you. Be prepared to hand hold players while they get used to picturing things in their head. 

Tactical Grid

A tactical grid is where you pull out a map on either graph or hex paper, and use it to track movement. Many online table top solutions like Roll20 or Table Top Simulator have a grid worked into their program. 

Strengths:

• Having a map on a grid makes tracking things super easy. No one has to wonder if they are within range to cast a spell or not. They can simply measure their distance and answer the question for themselves.
• Having a grid makes determining tactical situations easier. Instead of mentally trying to figure out who is flanking the twin headed drider, you can simply look and see.
• Having a grid makes things like movement speed much more important. With theater of the mind, movements and ranges are often lost in the action. On a grid it's very clear exactly where and where not your character can get to.
• Having a grid helps everyone stay on the same page. The Dungeon Master doesn't have to describe the same thing over and over, and can instead focus on describing the flow of combat.

Weaknesses:

• Using a grid often slows combat down. Players spend longer on their turn planning their actions, because they want to measure distances down to the inch. 
• Many people want to have tokens and miniatures to represent characters and monsters on a grid. This can get very expensive very fast.
• Playing on a grid can move a battle from a more cinematic scene to a slow slog without a good Dungeon Master to keep things moving, and to keep things fast paced.

Confused World: Syl, The City of Steam

Yesterday I had my first even livestream, where I spent some time going over the brainstorming steps of a brand new world. You can find a link to the recording below, but I also wanted to share a more finished product with everyone.

Here is a link to the story and description of Syl, The City of Steam. It's almost ready to be dropped into any campaign, all it really needs is a good improv sheet!

The Advantage of Friends

I do a lot of game preparation. It's not usually about finding maps, and coming up with monster statistics. It's not usually about trying to predict my player's every move and plan carefully detailed plots. Most of the time I'm thinking about character motivations and interactions, feeling out how my players interactions have changed the web formed by conflicting NPCs that want different things.

Most of the time it's preparing to improv.

However, every once in awhile I come to a place that I know needs a specific scene. The Trials of Mind, Might, and Heart was a scene like that. Preparing a dungeon when you know your players are about to come across it is like that. And my next session is like that too. A lot of things have been building in the background, and tonight it's all coming to a head.

I wanted to be ready, to have a set of iconic scenes prepared and ready to go.

But I was struggling. Like, really struggling. I had a vague idea of how the scenes might play out, but every time I tried to grab hold of one, the idea floated out of reach.

So I called a friend. And she helped me prepare, and now I am feeling super prepared.

Which is the advantage of having a friend that isn't in your game to talk to. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation that just isn't clicking in your head for some reason. You know that there's something good beneath the surface, but when you try to dig it out of the sand, all you find is more sand.

Having a friend to bounce ideas off of can help you find the sweet pearl of player despair under all the dirt.

Your friend doesn't even have to be a dungeon master, although I do find that other DMs can have some very clever insights about things going on in a game. But all you really need is someone that is willing to listen to your ideas, someone to help you brainstorm, and someone who will help shape the urge you feel as a dungeon master to complicate character's lives.

So find a friend and try it some time. I highly recommend it.

DM Tool: 101 Traps, Puzzles, and Challenges

Sometimes I really like lists and random generators. I rarely roll on them, but they can be great inspiration for encounters. While brainstorming the Trials of Heart, Mind, and Might yesterday, I did some googling, and found a great list of suggestions that really inspired me.

In the end my encounters looked nothing like the suggestions, but the list gave me the jumping off place I needed to create some trials that I think are fairly unique, and will be lots of fun (or terrifying when my players fail).

I will put in a reminder though. Whenever you are dealing with traps, puzzles, and challenges, reward your players for their creativity and ingenuity. Even if you have a solution written down in front of you, don't get into the mind set that the solution is the only way to deal with the situation. Be open to player ideas... often what they come up with is better than anything you did. And if you play it off right, they'll think you made that the solution all along.

Curse of Strahd as a Sandbox

So, if you've been following me for any decent amount of time, you will have scene by several rants about the Curse of Strahd book. I've complained that Death House as a dungeon didn't have encounters that reinforced the theme of the adventure. I've complained that the Village of Barovia is portrayed as a boring place with nothing interesting going on. But then I had a conversation with someone (I don't remember who, my friend Julia maybe?) about my frustrations, and she was all, "it's a sandbox, Lexi."

That made me take a step back. I've been treating the adventure path like a sandbox. I added a really fun story arc in the Village of Barovia with Ireena. Since she refused to leave before her father was buried, I added in this scene at the church. It was being assaulted by dire wolves as the father worked to dig a grave for Ireena's father. But the deadline for her father's soul to escape Ravenloft was midnight (I've come up with lore that if you aren't buried within three days after dying, your soul belongs to Strahd).

The priest was burying Ireena's father... only, Strahd had made a deal with him. Make sure that soul gets to me, and I will fix your son. So Father Danovich was digging the grave slowly, buying as much time as he had.

Eventually the characters realized what was going on, and has thousands of ravens swarmed in the skies above (raven swarms), they forced him to complete the burial ritual. Then the characters escaped the church and fled from the town as the ravens bit and scratched them to bloody pieces.

But finally they escaped into the fog. Only to come face to face with Strahd himself, and through the vampire lord experience just how horrific Ravenloft is.

It was a super fun adventure, full of tension, intrigue, and suspense. And at the end of it, I was angry that the book hadn't provided something interesting for the players to do like that.

Only, if Curse of Strahd is a sandbox, it sort of did. I didn't make up Ireena, or Father Danovich, or even Danovich's son locked in the basement slowly turning into a vampire. I did add the Direwolves in, but in other chapters of the book it's mentioned that Strahd uses them. The only thing I really added to the setting was some lore about the importance of burial rituals, and that they can only be performed by priests that Strahd has given the duty to. Everything else was there.

I just played with it, twisted it to my own ends, and came out with a really fun couple of sessions.

When the characters escaped Strahd, they badly wanted a town to rest in that wasn't the Village of Barovia. In my mind I thought that Vallaki was much closer to the town than it is on the map, so I introduced it as a place of refuge. And it's themes are perfect. Barovia is a hopeless place of the downtrodden, but on the surface Vallaki is a place of happiness and freedom! I'm so glad that I introduced this town early, because the juxtaposition between the two towns is amazing.

But when I started preparing for Vallaki, I approached it differently. Instead of expecting to find an adventure to run, I just noted down major NPCs. I noted what their motivations were, how much power they had on a scale from 1-3, and what their reputation was with the players. I came up with this:

The list below is a list of factions, a summary of power (rated 1-5), and it's reputation with the players (starting at 0 and progressing from -3 to +3).

Urwin. Innkeeper of the Blue Water Inn. Holding Tomb of Strahd. Quest: Retrieve the wine (award: treasure chest. 140 gp, 70 pp. 2 elixers of health, 3 potions of healing, and 1 grey bag of tricks). Power: 2. Reputation: -1.

Wolf Hunters: Szoldar Szoldarovich and Yevgeni Krushkin. Hunt dire wolves and sell meat and skins for a living. Will work for money. Excellent guides, some information. Know that people are shipped off to Castle Ravenloft, only tell if they are paid 100 gold. Power: 1. Reputation: 0

Rictavio: A half-Avariel bard. Aerie's son, and worshiper of the Gnome God Wildwanderer. His real name is Elaroth, but he has adopted Rictavio after the legendary vampire hunter "Rudolph van Richten." He has heard of the Keepers of the Feather and is trying to get in contact with them. He is also gathering information on the Vistani camped to the north west. They are working for Strahd (taking villagers from the Burgomeister and taking them to Castle Ravenloft). Once he finds out, he plans on attacking them with his saber-toothed tiger. Power: 1. Reputation: 2 (because of Ariane).
Rictavio's Journal: In his room, open on his desk, is a journal Rictavio writes to keep up the illusion that he is an entertainer in search of new acts for his traveling carnival. He makes frequent mention of conversations with Drusilla (his horse, although the journal fails to mention that). He also writes about various oddities he has seen in his travels, including:

• A "werehare" child (a boy who transforms into a rabbit on the full moon)
• A half-orc woman named Gorabacha who could chew through iron chains
• A giant, man-eating plant that has the most beautiful singing voice he's ever heard
• A pair of conjoined goblins
• A small man with no legs named Filmore Stunk who could drink whole casks of wine without getting drunk.

The Valakovich Family: Power 3, Reputation 0

• Baron Vargas Vallakovich: Ruthless. Unhappy. Bent on keeping the city free of Strahd. Festivals to provide hope. Publically the hope "Keeps Strahd at bay," but in reality, when people die of hope, he has their bodies shipped to Castle Ravenloft. Catchphrase: "All will be well" Secrets: Bodies, Almost 200 years old by virtue of Strahd's blood. Always accompanied by two huge mastiffs.
• Izek Strazni: The Baron's servant, and "Hand of the Baron." He is supposed to be in charge of the government's economic well being, but in reality he is the person that the Baron uses to disappear people. All the mimes on the street corners report to Strazni, and are willing to take out whoever he orders.
• Baroness Lydia Petrovna: Vargas' wife. She has desperately picked up her husband's insistence that "all will be well" but at the cost of her sanity, for she does not believe it. She hosts daily high tea ceremonies at the mansion, which is mostly attended by the poor because all the nobles have been put off by her strangeness caused by her desperation. She is the younger sister of Father Lucian Petrovich, who is the leader of the Church of Pelor.
• Baronet Victor Vallakovich: Miserable and depressed, wants nothing but to get away from the city. He is adamantly opposed to the "Tyranny of Happiness" that his father governs with. He found a spell book in the attic, and is trying to build a teleportation circle to escape (give players hope of escaping Ravenloft?)

Watcher Family: Power 2, Reputation 0

• Lady Fiona Watcher: Leader of the Watcher House. She craves to rule the city, and makes no secret of her loyalty to Lord von Zarovich (Strahd's official title). She is the High Priestess at the Temple of Shar, and is allowed some actual divine power by Strahd for her loyalty. However, at most she can cast 2nd level spells, and then only clumsily (all concentration checks made at a disadvantage). However, more than Shar, she is a member of the Cult of Awakening, who believe that the Eternal Sleeper will awaken from his slumber, and the world that is his dream will be destroyed. She has a book of summoning rituals in her private chambers, with the same snake symbol as that at the Death House.
• Nikolai and Karl: Brash Drunkards, always looking for trouble. They don't like talking about their mother, but they would be overjoyed to join a revolution.They love listening to character's tales of adventure, the more harrowing the better. Power: 0. Reputation: 0.
• Ernst Larnak: Fiona's spy. He is a super greedy person who would love to get job with the Baron, however Fiona has seen to it that he would never be welcome there. He knows Fiona's secrets, and would love to sell them to someone who would free him from her power.

Gadolf Blinsky: The toymaker of Vallaki, "Is no fun, without Blinsky!" Used to be a mime in the employee of the Baron's spy. He still feels a great debt to Izek for getting him the store, and makes free dolls for the man every month. The dolls are supposed to represent Ireena, and they are shipped to Strahd along with the shipment of bodies. He adamantly believes in the Baron's "all will be well" slogan, and he has a collection of super weird and creepy toys. Power: 0, Reputation 0, Contacts 2. 

Ivankov Valerianovich - Baker in town. No one leave Ivankov place sad! Power: 0, Reputation 1, Contacts 0

Manqoba's Fashion: Manqoba is a Shadar' Kai fashion maker who was banished from the tribe after trying to challenge for the throne. He somehow maintained his life, but he ran from the city, and the leader would love to have him killed. Luckily it is incredibly rare for Shadar' Kai to leave their village. His status as a tailor for the well to do gives him tons of information, and he is incredibly good at playing the game of intrigue. Power: 1, Reputation: 0, Contacts 4

I love this! If I was publishing it, I'd clean it up some. But it's just a list of NPCs that I can look at in the moment and decide what's going on. For example, the Baron is already pretty upset with two of my players for being unhappy on the streets. He has invited them to dinner at his mansion where he plans on doing away with them.

However, my players don't know that, and are just excited to go to the Baron's. They wanted to shop for proper outfits, and so I introduced Manqoba's Fashions. When Manqoba heard about the invitation he knew what was up, but he knows the game of intrigue. And so just as the players are about to leave, he says, "Oh, wait, I just thought of a perfect thing to go with that dress," and he pulls out an elegant silver Ouroboros (snake eating it's own tail) on a thin chain. It goes great with the dress, but the players have no idea it's the symbol for Lady Marks, and that by wearing it they are showing that they have her backing.

All of this to protect the players, and they don't even know it's happening yet. And although I've added in Manqoba, all the other players in this little intrigue are in the book. I'm just using them.

So, to sum up, I still have some problems with the actual book. But I also think I owe an apology to the book as well. It has some really fantastic situations, NPCs, and events. It's just up to the DM to pull that together. And in the end, as a fan of improvisational Dungeon Mastering, that's all I really want to do anyway.

Sending Players out of the Room

This is a topic that came up in the Curse of Strahd game that I'm running. One of my players decided to split from the rest of the party and go investigate a temple to the Raven Queen by himself. He worships her, and it was a private moment of reflection for him. He was surprised by the fact that I didn't pull him into a different room and do the scene in private.

I've run scenes in private before, but this scene didn't really feel right for that, which led me to think about the different tone and attitudes you create around the table by deciding what to keep private, and what to keep transparent. This is the theory that I came up with:

When you take a player aside to do a private scene, you add a sense of mystery and intrigue to the game. No one else at the table knows what that person is doing (obviously), and that can lead to people wondering, "just what is the rogue across the table up to?"

When you run a private scene with everyone at the table, it creates a sense of transparency. But I think it also creates a sense of teamwork, a consensus that the players are "all in this together." Nothing is hidden from them, so they don't have to worry that the chaotic neutral sorcerer is about to betray them to the big bad.

So why did I decide to run this scene at the table? After all, Curse of Strahd is a adventure of gothic horror, it would make sense to keep things secret, hidden, in the dark. It would add tension to the table, and create a greater feeling that anything could happen.

And I might get there later in the adventure. But right now the characters are still new to Ravenloft. They've faced some truly horrific events, events that have left a few of them questioning their ability to accomplish anything in the dark land. And that's the feeling I'm trying to push right now. Ravenloft isn't just dangerous. It's horrific. Even when you set out to do bad, things turn against you. I want them to feel like any way they turn could be a step in the wrong direction, but also build the tension so high that they have no choice but to take a step.

And through it all, I'm trying to make the characters feel like they can only rely on each other. They are the outsiders in Ravenloft, the only ones untouched by the shadow of Strahd, and the only trustworthy people in the entire realm.

And so I decided to run this scene at the table. I don't want players to be looking at each other side eyed right now, I want them pulling together against the darkness.

But this is early days, when the corruption that seeps through Strahd's realm hasn't truly affected them yet. Later in the game I will want the players to start questioning each other. Has someone made an agreement with the vampire so that they can return to their normal lives? Is someone giving away party plans to the spymaster of Vallaki for a handful of coin, and a promise of sanctuary in the city? Later I'll want that tension at the table.

But not yet. And when I look up from my notes and meet my players eyes, then say, "Everyone but Vaclav, I need you to leave the room," for the first time the change will leave them wondering what's going on even more.

So, I suggest that you think carefully about sending players out of the room. Normal dungeon masters have a set policy, but great dungeon masters deliberate over questions like these, and use these moments to craft the mood they want.