I don’t have a great deal of experience with Dungeons & Dragons outside of playing a few one-shots, playing in a short campaign in The Lost Mine of Phandelver, and of course DM-ing the campaign my friends and I are currently going through.  But I’d like to focus in on that short campaign in The Lost Mine of Phandelver, and talk about the time one of our players decided to take up the mantle of expert accountant at the cost of his literacy.

We had a particularly greedy dwarf barbarian in our party who was always quick to gather as much loot as he could possibly carry on his mostly naked body.  It was a funny bit that worked well with the rest of us because our goals were a bit more altruistic and personal in nature.  But not for our enterprising dwarf.  No, he was motivated purely by shiny things.

I imagine this is what our dwarf looked like

It’s when we came across a chest of gold pieces that Gravy-Train (his name was a play on the Pokemon, Graveler, but I refused to call him that) found and decided that here in this enemy infested cave was the best place to count it all.  Worried that we would all be caught off guard while Gravy was counting his pennies, he flippantly posited that his character was a money-whiz, and could count a vast amount of coins in mere seconds.  I think our DM was willing to concede that point, but Gravy followed it up by saying that he didn’t know how to read, but could count really well.

Me being the scamp I was demanded that this was canon and he had to commit to it.  I experienced no push back from anyone, and from there on, Gravy was illiterate but could count really well.

We ended up in a library packed with books that our now illiterate dwarf could not read.  While I had hoped for some sort of Twilight Zone styled Sisyphean curse where he’d lament at the vast amounts of knowledge he could no longer consume, but Gravy-Train was unphased and went ahead and told us how many books were on the shelves as if that was some great piece of intelligence he had just dumped on us.

That run down mound of garbage on the far right?  That’s Gravy-Train’s Bar

Later in the campaign, Gravy-Train began to split from the party in an effort to make some deals with the town banker or something.  He wanted to buy the entirety of the town if memory serves, and started by buying out the old and run down tavern on the hill.  The guy couldn’t read, but had already set his plan of owning an entire city into motion.  It was an amazing moment when he finally revealed that to us.

It’s the little bits of character building that I’ve come to appreciate in my time with D&D.  This story may seem fairly benign in the grand scheme of things, but it made his character more tangible and real, despite being hilarious.  It’s because of this that I think I’ve been so taken with D&D.  I want to have more of those moments in the game, both the funny and serious alike.  After destroying their world, I was presented with the unique opportunity of putting my players into a setting where they can re-contextualize everything about themselves, and maybe put them in more situations that can bring out these character moments.  That’s my hope at least.

But I do wonder if we would’ve ever taught him to read again though.  I’m guessing we wouldn’t.  It’s funnier if he never could read again.

Every month I step in here to tell you a little anecdote about my D&D adventures and the various mishaps that inevitably took place.  Last time I told you all about a fairly simple puzzle the absolutely flummoxed my players.  This time I’d like to tell you about when I destroyed the world.  But before I can tell you that, I need to tell you about the circumstances that led up to the eventual destruction of everything they came to know and love.

I’ve been running a campaign for a few months now with my players, and since I embarked on this journey, I’ve kind of found a groove in how I like to run a game.  I’m very fast and loose with the rules, I actively try to encourage my players to think outside the box, and above all, I want them to feel like they have full agency over the world they’re in.  Simple enough, right?

When I started, I bought a module through Roll20, the app in which we use to play our wonderful fantasy adventure.  I purchased, Waterdeep: The Dragon Heist, a module which looks like it could be a lot of fun in the hands of an experienced DM who has an understanding about the lore of the world.  I am not that person.  So when this module didn’t have answers to the questions my players were asking that were lore based, I decided instead of do research, I’d just write my own campaign.

What followed was a continued effort to carve out my own narrative and characters in the map of Waterdeep that was included with my purchase.  This map ultimately came to represent the thing keeping my players from feeling agency.  Most of my players never felt any attachment to the city itself, because there really weren’t many opportunities to explore it or uncover cool stuff in it.  This undoubtedly falls on my shoulders for not properly getting them hooked on the city, but I had already mentally moved past Waterdeep, leading all of us to treat the map more like a screensaver until I moved them somewhere actually interesting.

So after months of planning and writing, I pulled the trigger.  They were sucked through a portal and transported to a land of my own creation.  A place that they thought was just a pocket dimension, but turned out to be their first stop on the upcoming grand journey they’d have.

I built the simple island with three goals in mind.  First, I wanted them to be in an unfamiliar place, with its own lore and history.  Second, I wanted to craft a place with its own politics, factions and problems.  And lastly, I wanted them to feel invested in this world and approach it as an opportunity for a fresh start.  The first two I think I managed pretty well.  That third one though, didn’t play out how I had hoped.

See, the entire time they were there, I was juggling two story lines I wanted to pursue.  Either this would be a pocket dimension they’d return from, or they were trapped here.  I played coy and didn’t give them much insight into what the truth was, but since they were convinced this was just a vacation till they eventually returned home, they weren’t as invested as I would’ve liked.

Finally I made a decision on their fate after receiving a few compliments along with grievances from a few of my players.  They liked the concept of this new world, but felt that there was nothing to do in it aside from leave.  A fair point, I did kind of only write this section as a single path with three branching paths that eventually led to the same place.  But it was one particular comment that pushed me over the edge.  I was told that Waterdeep, the actual map of it, was imposing and kept them at a distance.  They never felt compelled to pursue their own character motivated quests because they had no idea where to start.

That’s when I decided.  Fuck Waterdeep, you’re done.  I tantalized them with an orb that would surely bring them home, only for it to be just a crystal ball that shows you stuff.  Guess what I showed them?  I blew up that map in front of them, killed off every person they knew, and hurdled them 1000 years into the future.  I basically wrote a short story that equates to, “And everything exploded.”

The reaction I got was kind of… not what I expected.  In game, nobody said anything.  It was just silence.  After sitting there for what was the longest minute ever, I just kind of pressed forward with the session, not giving them much time to comprehend what just happened.  That was my bad.

I gave them a boat, and sent them to the northeast to this massive new world I made for them.  I’d put that picture in here, but as I’m writing this, I don’t know if we’ve made it there yet.

Which leads me to where we stand now.  What awaits my players is a massive open world that has several settlements of varying sizes, with creature politics and behaviors that differ from what D&D lore might normally decree.  These places have their individual quests ranging in severity and importance.  Quests will take them from city to city.  They’ll have tough choices to make, and they’ll have city faction reputations to deal with.  They have bespoke story lines and quests I’ve generated for their specific characters, along with a main quest that might shed some light on why Waterdeep went kaput (aside from what I’ve just told you), and what happens now.

Outside of all of this, what I’ve actually done is give myself a massive amount of anxiety and intense deadlines to write quests that have longevity and are interesting along with make maps.  Also I run this website, work, and have other hobbies.  So what I’m saying is, don’t do what I’ve done and make your first time being a DM something worthy of an intervention.

Puzzles are hard.  Or at least they can be.  This is story of one particular puzzle that I made for my players that absolutely flummoxed them for way longer than it should have.  It’s this experience that has led me to make sure that my puzzles going forward, are no harder than those children’s toys where you put the right shape in the right hole.

The party was on the trail of a werewolf that had been terrorizing the outskirts of the city, wreaking havoc on local farms as well as businesses in the city by destroying their shipments.

The party had some leads which led them to a local police force that was able to give them some information on a mostly uncharted area of the wilderness.  With this information, the party headed to a clearing that led to the entrance of a collapsed mine.  Above the mine was a large flat piece of land that they surmised might have an entrance to the cave below.

This is where things got tricky.  See, there was a small cottage up there, something they were very hesitant to investigate.  Inside of the cottage were a few things.  In front of them was a series of 5 large levers jutting out from the wall, all in the bottom position.  There was also, and I quote “a tall dresser, a bed, a coat rack, and a long coffee table in the room, but no sign of any life.”  The “puzzle” as it were, was that from left to right, the position of the levers corresponded to the height of items in the room.

It took these fools 30 minutes to figure this out.  One of my players basically checked out during it, admitting defeat to my very complex word games.  It was astounding to me.  Once they figured it out, the door locked and the floor opened up.  They were now in the mine and ready to continue their pursuit of the werewolf.

What I came away with, is that even the simplest puzzle, can flabbergast anyone.  So much for my next brilliant puzzle idea where one person tells the truth and the other always lies.

In the past, I’ve written once or twice about Dungeons & Dragons and how what once was something I’d never touch, has quickly become one of my favorite activities.  All of that still holds true, it’s just that in the past few months, I’ve gone from just playing the game, to running it.  It took a while to find the rhythm and understand my players, their needs and play styles, but I think I’ve got the hang of it… mostly.

Let me start by saying that I’m having a blast running a campaign for my friends.  They’re receptive to my ideas, they challenge me both in game and conceptually, and the whole thing has become an excuse to write more, which I will never turn down.  There have definitely been some stumbles and screw-ups along the way, but how else are you gonna learn unless you get messy?

I wont go into every aspect of what I’ve been doing, instead I’ll quickly touch upon my weekly routine.  First, I’ll look over the notes I’ve taken from a previous session and see how their actions have impacted the story thus far.  Turns out, you can write all the scripts you want, but your players can totally bypass any of it.  I’ve had pages of written dialogue and plot development that were just trivialized and passed thanks to an enterprising player of mine.  It isn’t a bad thing, it just taught me to loosen the grip on my story, and not get so precious about the details.

Then, I’ll write up a summary of the previous session to post for my players when they inevitably don’t remember a thing from the last session.

After that, I go into planning mode.  I look at where the players are in the story, what main quest they can do as well as what side quests are open to them.  If the players are in between quests, I have to think of a way to introduce them to the stuff that’s available to them.

Unfortunately, because of how I started our campaign, I’m kind of locked into some things from the adventure module that I don’t really like.  For context, I started by using the module, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, which was a little overwhelming for me as a first time DM.  So after about three of four sessions of trying to pronounce names of NPCs and learning their history and motivations, all while trying to keep things moving briskly while being fun, I said “fuck it” and decided to go off book.

At this point, I’ve written about 200 pages worth of main and side stories, character bios, store inventories, and concepts that need to be fleshed out.  Maybe in the grand scheme that isn’t a lot, but it feels hefty to me.  More to the point though, because I used the Waterdeep book, now I’m stuck with the incomprehensibly poorly named gangs in the city, as well as a city map that’s way too gigantic and intimidating for my players.

After all of the writing and planning, now I have to do my least favorite part of making the maps.  We use Roll20, a pretty awesome tool for people to play tabletop games online, but terrible for assholes like me who decide they want to craft bespoke maps for any and every interesting place my players might visit.  But I do it, because it makes my players get a sense of place and scale while immersing them in my tapestry of words.

Lastly, on the day of the session, I panic all day, hoping that everything is in order and ready to go.  I have to remember the voices of the NPCs they might see which is a fun vocal exercise, but in reality they all end up sounding vaguely the same anyway.

If I had my way, which I guess technically as DM I do, I’d level the entirety of Waterdeep and introduce them to a smaller, more well defined and manageable map to play in.  I bit off more than I could chew at the beginning, and now I’m stuck with some of the bullshit from the book.

All things considered, I’m glad I went off book.  Making my own characters and knowing them and their origins helps me have more valuable conversations with players.  No longer do I have to worry if I gave something away or said something that character doesn’t really know.  No longer do I have to feel bad for not knowing the long lineage of the Neverwinter family.  Why?  Cause they don’t fucking exist in my world anymore.  They all died when a pack of gorillas rampaged through their home and ate them.

Going this route has been a lot of extra work, but it’s work that I love.  I’ve never felt so creatively satisfied until I started writing and brainstorming for this campaign.  I also get to play fast and loose with the rules that just makes the game more enjoyable for everyone.  I’m not gonna make someone collect the core ingredients they need for a spell, cause that sounds super boring.  I’m here to tell a tale of whimsy and adventure, not to orate a session of Rust.