The most important part of this discussion is whether you are talking about player strategy or character strategy. The Player Strategy Guide blurs the line between the two and players who follow its guidance may miss out on a prime chance to role-play their character, as well as an opportunity to have a memorable encounter. Those of you who have played a while, please think back. Are the most memorable encounters the ones where everyone fulfilled their role in the team and the party displayed textbook battle tactics, or are they the ones where someone demonstrated an atypical strategy that fit their character and maybe one where you didn’t even win? In every instance for me, the most memorable encounters have been the ones where character has been at the forefront.

So how should you approach a fight and what tactics should you use? How can you bring your character to life through combat tactics? The answer depends on what sort of player you are, where your party’s interests lie, and your character’s stats.

The role of the player

If you are the sort of player who wants to beat the game and has spent hours tuning your character sheet, and that’s a perfectly reasonable approach to the game, then I’m surprised you’ve read this far in a post about tactics in the first place. Given that you have, the Player Strategy Guide is for you. It will be your Art of War and your Bible and along with the perfect stats that you’ve rolled or chosen you will truly be the paragon of your class.

If, however, you’re the sort of player who wants to weave a tale and has chosen your powers based on a well-constructed background story, you will want to carefully decide how much to lean on the Strategy Guide and how much to ignore it or even deliberately go against it. The next couple of sections should help you figure that out.

The role of the party

Whatever type of player you are, if the rest of the party is made up of people who play differently to you, there is a chance you will either be frustrated or bored in every encounter. If you play their way, you won’t be having fun, and if you play your way, you may feel alienated.

I have left groups before when it became clear that our styles weren’t matched, and I’ve been fortunate to be able to find new groups that match my style better. When everyone is looking for the same thing from the game, not only does it become more fun and interesting, it becomes easier to play.

The role of the character

Neither the 3.5 or 4th edition Dungeon’s and Dragons Player Handbooks state it categorically, but I have always considered a combination of Intelligence and Wisdom to be a fair measure of how well a character handles themselves in regards to strategic planning. The absent-minded Wizard with a high Intelligence but a low Wisdom may come up with a brilliant plan on the battlefield, but might miss one small but crucial detail (see the wooden rabbit scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for example). Similarly, the Cleric who leads the party may insist that he knows where everyone should be and what they should be doing, but with a low Intelligence he might apply the same tactic to every battle instead of learning from his mistakes.

Then there’s the background of the character to take into account. You might have a character who has grown up on the streets as an urchin relying on their wits for survival. Once you enter a pitched fight with your party around them, you may be completely out of your depth and will refuse to fight at all; finding a safe corner to hide in until the fighting is over would be a perfectly reasonable tactic for you to use, though your party may not thank you for it. In this case it might be that you have a high Wisdom and Intelligence but your self-preservation instinct is stronger than any party affiliation. The wonderful thing about this is that after combat you will be able to have a stirring discussion regarding your behaviour with the other members of your party. In character, of course.

As with all things in table-top role-playing games, there’s a wide spectrum of options to choose from in how much tactics play a part in your game. I would caution against blindly following the textbook in case you miss out on the prospect of a memorable encounter and the chance to develop a character further.

The open-endedness of it can be quite daunting. While it is possible to relate most actions under the human domain to one of the six core D&D attributes, it is not always as simple as a skill check. The very nature of the game allows for the players to roleplay as they see fit. But nothing irks beginning DMs more than a story not going according to plan.

And for good reason. Campaigns require planning. Dungeons are created, story plots are threaded together, and clues and puzzles are set for the players to solve and find. A finely tuned campaign where the players find a loophole the DM did not think of can fall apart fast. In the end, if the DM cannot think on his feet, the event will railroad into something not very fun for everyone involved.

More advanced Dungeon Masters learn to approach it in a different light: it is NOT their story. It is the players’ story to craft as they see fit. The DM, while the alpha and omega of rules and mechanics, only has that role to facilitate the imagination of the players. It is keeping this in mind that will keep a dungeon fun for everyone involved.

One of the initial problems faced by new campaigns is the quest proposition. While some players can get behind the whole “Bad things are happening; we must fix them!” methodology of joining an epic quest, more like the opportunity to roleplay their way through it. One player wants to make sure there is a monetary reward, while another has a mystic past that compels them to join the party for some unknown reason. It is important that the DM, when possible, speak with the players out-of-character, bluntly asking “How do YOU want to play?” Creating a compelling reason that the player can get into their quest from the beginning will give them a backdrop to roleplay from, and make it that much less likely that they will get bored later. It will also prevent that inevitable rogue who points out that he was only here for the treasure to begin with, and he’s leaving if there is none to claim. The DM, having known from the start the motives of the characters, will be able to adjust the story to keep their main thirst quenched.

Another issue DMs contend with is the simple fact that they cannot possibly account for everything. The players will, time and time again, come up with a solution or method for handling an encounter such as a puzzle or skill challenge that the DM did not expect. Rules do need to be consistent, and conveniently coming up with sudden restrictions that prevent a player from using certain skills, abilities, or items at the last moment feels forced and flimsy for the entire party.

Instead, the important rule of DMhood should be remembered: translate the actions of the players, whatever they may be, into the game mechanics. A puzzle is simply a means to a goal. If they accomplish the goal in another method, then go with it. Award the same awards and spoils as would have been received if they had done it your way. (An especially crafty DM will declare that it was the only way the puzzle really could have been solved anyways, and that the “real” solution was simply a guise to throw them off.) This will usually mean making changes on the fly.

Example: Party enters a dungeon, where your intention is an epic boss fight against an old Red Dragon, after which the spoils are the dragon’s treasure horde and bountiful XP. However, they hatch an ingenious plan to sneak in using certain spells and potions and steal the treasure right out from under the sleeping dragon’s nose. As this takes place, the DM has to come up with several options. A DM could force the battle by ensuring the dragon wins one of the checks to wake up. The downside is that once enough of the party’s “ingenious” plans do not work, the party tends to realize that some of the rolls are stacked against them. Instead, the DM could choose to allow the action to take place, remembering the end goal is the treasure, not the destruction of the dragon. And, not waking up the dragon could very well be one method of achieving said goal.

This brings me to the next rule of DMing: there is always something else bad around the corner. The party, for nearly the entire game, play in a constant state of “What’s next?” There is never a way to tell if the next encounter was truly planned, or a fight thrown in at the last second because they managed to tiptoe successfully past your well-planned boss fight. (In the example above, the party successfully escaped the dungeon with their loads of treasure. They were quite proud of themselves. Until, that is, they made it outside again, where the dragon’s mate was just returning home. Not just a coincidence? You can’t prove that.)

The bottom line there is to let the party do as they please. Remember what the goals of the dungeon truly are, and if the party performs a feat as impressive as the preplanned activity, reward them as if that were the plan all along. If they still need another encounter, well, that just happened to be coming next anyways, right?

These rules also can apply to another common problem: irreversible plot damage. Or, more simply put, when the party completely screws up the story so badly, there is no easy way to tweak it back. I learned this the hard way when a small accident concerning a Rogue, a Paladin’s goldpurse, and Alchemist’s Fire caused the death of an NPC that not only was important to the story I had worked hard to plan, but was involved in it for some time to come, and was such a loved and influential character that nearly every player at the table uttered obscenities at the offending parties when I read off the damage numbers.

It was a case I was not prepared for, and the level at which the story was thrown off was in the area of “rewriting brand new campaigns.” The rule to remember here is that it was not my story. It was theirs. So, I stopped the game temporarily, and explained to the players the extent of damage that had just occurred. In situations such as this where a major story change has occurred, and the DM has not enough time to plan during that session what the consequences of the action, the choice should go to the players. They can continue from this point, understanding that the game dynamic will be vastly different, or, they can choose to back up several moments of gametime and replay the scene, this time choosing a different course of action.

I can hear hardcore DMs growling at me for my previous statement, but no matter what, it is the DMs job to keep the game entertaining for the players. Those of you on the hardcore roleplay side of things will probably have players of the same caliber, and therefore replaying a scene is simply not an option. Other players will appreciate the opportunity to not let one silly mistake derail them halfway through the story they were enjoying.

Of course, that’s one extreme. A game as open-ended as this has many different ways events can play out, but as long as everyone enjoys the game, is that not the point?

But, regardless, player frustrations can still flare, especially when you have a group who regularly outthink the DM. Either the DM cannot keep up, and runs out of ways to adjust the story so the same goals are met, or ends up having to limit the actions of the party to stick to the story.

Limit is a very bad word. While the DM is the final say on the rules, any rule that is implemented because either “I said so,” or “because I want them to do this instead” will not only be frowned upon, but frustrate players who will feel as if their actions are being decided for them.

In these cases, I rely on an old sales tactic: Either/Or. Take the case of a man entering a car dealership to buy a new vehicle. After deciding on basic features, the salesman has three ways to respond. The first (and worst way to sell a car) method involves asking the customer outright “So, do you want to buy a car?” Here, the customer will think about the circumstances surrounding the purchase, and will respond with either a “yes” or “no” accordingly. Let’s say, on average, that results in a 50/50 chance of yes’s to no’s. That’s a high ratio of no sale, and that is before you count the fact that once a customer overcomes the natural fear of confrontation to say “No,” there is very little to save the sale at that point. This is the equivalent of forcing a player down a single path, leaving them no choice. They either need to take your choice, or trainwreck the entire game if they decide they do not want to cooperate.

The second option for our salesman is to go through the parking lot and, instead of asking yes or no, point out the 30 or so vehicles that match the customer’s request, and ask them to make a choice. The choice will be so overwhelming for the customer, that the odds of making a choice you can positively control will be small. They might choose a car that the salesman will make little profit (and therefore little commission) on, or they may decide they need time to think through all the options, and decide not to commit to a purchase at a time. This is similar to separating the party from safety by a huge river of molten lava, and without any guidance whatsoever saying “now, go!” Even if the players come together enough to come up with a plan of their own, the odds of it fitting whatever you were hoping they would do is slim to none at best.

Let’s take option C, Either/Or. Using this method, our salesman continues gathering details until he is able to narrow the selection down for the customer. In the end, our salesman finds that by weeding out every car that has even one unwanted feature, we end up with two cars left. The salesman says, “Which one do you want more, this one, or that one.” Proven in psychology, the effect will be that the customer will spend more time deciding which one he wants more, easily weighing the options of A vs B, even if he did not intend to purchase in the first place. This will make him a more likely purchaser, deciding between the two items than to choose not to purchase at all. This works because whereas “no” is difficult enough to say to a stranger, choosing “no” when there is no “no” to choose is even more difficult.

This method works wonders in controlling party actions, guiding them along the path of the story without ever seeming to limit them in anyway. In our river of lava example, who knows what actions a party could take that a DM would have to plan for, but, using seemingly indifferent requests for spot and perception checks, the DM points out that the Rogue notices several chains laced throughout the ceilings that would be easily used as a swing if knocked free with a well-placed crossbow bolt. Then, following the Arcana check asked of the casters, the DM points out that the Wizard notices that a blast placed just so would partially cave in the ceiling, creating a path for the party to walk on.

I guarantee you the party will argue back and forth the merit of both plans, which will unconsciously obligate them to pick one or the other. The odds that the party will do something in line with your plans as the DM suddenly raised a large percentage.

An expert DM handles his party without them even knowing, giving them options to choose from that keep the feeling of that freedom to choose. By considering the goals and missions of each length of the party’s journey, side trips and unintended consequences can easily be substituted for the main encounters. Additional exercise can be added if necessary to force a story plot point. But no matter what, the game where the party feels that they are truly in control of their fate from the beginning and at all points throughout, and risks taken are often rewarded, will be more likely to follow along the planned story as more time is invested into it.

After all, it’s their story. They’re in it.

However, other aspects of the role-playing genre, notably computer role-playing games, have struggled with this aspect. The first game to truly crack this nut will attract the attention of role-playing fans, but would it also capture the attention of gamers in general? Why haven’t computer role-playing games been able to tell stories in the same way that table-top gamers do every week? What will be lost from the genre if they do?The first, most obvious, issue is that with a table-top game, no matter how structured the games-master’s plans might be, the players will do something unexpected. This might be a minor insult to a noble they’re meant to be financed by, or outright killing of a major character in the plot; either way, the games-master must adapt and quickly. The way the other characters respond, and the way the world flexes around this, is a key factor in how involved players are in a game.

Compare this to a computer game where, for the most part, the plots and characters are inflexible. Either the player has boundaries that are obvious (like being unable to attack certain characters) or the world rebounds to maintain the status quo (as when a major character respawns after being killed). World of Warcraft, while incredibly popular, is probably the most glaring example of this failing. There is a very rich world and culture in the game, but everything from the character builder to the quest system is inflexible and predetermined.

Is it possible to tell a compelling story without giving the player flexibility? Of course it is. Examples include Ico, Zelda, and Bioshock. However, is the player involved in telling the story and thus as committed to the world as if they felt they were creating the story? Of course not. While those games are great fun to play through, it is rare for a player to feel truly immersed in the game. Bioshock is perhaps the notable exception as the art, audio and first-person vantage point all combine to make a potent player experience.

Can a game give the player the illusion of flexibility and the ability to change the world around them? Of course it can. Great examples are  The Elder Scrolls series of games and the Fable series. There is a question of whether freedom is the same as flexibility, however. I can choose to go off and fish in the corner, buy a house, sit in the tavern all day and completely ignore the main quest, but this is merely freedom. At no point do I feel that I have a way to grow with the world and to really change it as I can in a traditional role-playing game.

So how can a developer bring that feeling to a computer game? One fairly simple option (for me to write about, possibly not for the development team) is to allow multiple routes to the various plot points. This can give rise to emergent gameplay: The player finding a way to play the game in a way not originally intended by the game designer. A lovely example of this that is due to be released later this year is Scribblenauts, a game for the Nintendo DS that encourages the player to think of imaginative solutions to puzzles. The game developers claim that the player’s imagination is the only limit.

Similarly, the MMO EVE Online has seen a great deal of emergent gameplay as players have formed corporations, bands of pirates, and even seen embezzlement of real funds from an in-game bank. However, in both these cases the games have sacrificed something for this: Neither has a strong story. EVE Online has a strong back-story with the races and history of the universe fleshed out to a staggering degree, however this is akin to a campaign setting for a table-top game. It is still up to the players to find the story from that basis. I’m sure there must be some players who have been able to create a story for themselves and act it out, however my experience of the game was one that didn’t allow me to truly live the character and interact with others to see a story develop. Unless that story was of a seriously jaded, lonely and taciturn asteroid miner.

There is a new contender on the horizon for the first MMO RPG with a story-telling root and that is Star Wars: The Old Republic. In this news post, they claim to be developing with story at the centre of the game, alongside progression, exploration and combat. It will be very interesting to see if they can pull it off without taking freedom away from the player.

First of all, let’s dig in a little deeper to see what an archetype actually is and some examples of them. Carl Jung popularised the term when he published his work describing repeating patterns of thought and action that re-appear time and again across cultures and continents. His main archetypes are aspects of our psyche that we all carry within us: The Shadow, the Anima, the Animus and the Self¹.

However, he extended these archetypes to describe characters and events that all people appear to recognize independent of their background. His story archetypes are those that I will focus on here as they’re most relevant to writing and game development.

Hero

The champion of good. The defeater of evil dragons and monsters and often dumb as a stump. Jung’s explanation is that the Hero battles the Shadow in all of us but is unconscious of the collective unconscious. The hero acts purely out of the need to do good. Notable heroes are Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter.

Maiden

Representing purity, innocence and naivete, the Maiden is often the character the Hero is out to rescue. Notable maidens are Princess Peach in the Mario games and Leia (at least in Star Wars: A New Hope).

Wise old man

The wise old man guides the Hero and through him the Hero gains access to the collective unconscious. Notable wise old men include Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda from Star Wars and Professor Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series.

Magician

While there can be both white and black magicians representing both sides of the alignment spectrum, they have in common that they are seeking out fundamental laws of reality to understand how to influence people, make visions into realities, and transform situations.

Earth mother

Symbolizing nature and the nurturing of our selves, the Earth mother is familiar to anyone who has been into or walked past a new-age boutique. In amongst the candles, wind chimes and incense sticks one might find a carved statue of a well-endowed female figure similar to those found amongst ancient settlements.

Witch or sorceress

The classic crone from fairy tales, the witch is familiar to many as the hag with the apple from Snow White or the witch in Rapunzel who is so terrifying that Rapunzel’s father gives up his daughter to her.

Trickster

The trickster generally hampers the Hero’s progress and generally make trouble. The most notable example of the trickster is that of the demi-god Loki in Norse mythology whose pranks were often the source of the Norse gods’ adventures. Another great example is that of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear. While on the surface he appears as a clown, he is endowed with great wisdom which he obfuscates with riddles and puzzles.

If you play role-playing games or read fantasy novels I’m sure you recognized some of the characters from that list. Even many of the Dungeons & Dragons core classes can be recast in light of these with Fighters and Paladins standing in for the Hero, Druids taking on the Earth mother role and the Rogue comfortably filling the Trickster seat.

I’ve mentioned the Monomyth or Hero’s Journey before here and that simple framework contains many of the archetypes described by Jung.

It’s clear that these archetypes can be used to give a sense of familiarity to a player or reader and give them anchors by which they can become grounded in a world and in an adventure. In my article on clichés, I suggested that the GM or writer might play with the cliché and use them to lead a reader or player to a conclusion that is wrong. In contrast, these archetypes are so fundamental to our psyche that people encountering them are unlikely to believe any twist that might be introduced. For example, even if a hag is revealed to be a helpful character with good intentions, most readers and players will continue to suspect her and never fully trust the revelation.

Used carefully and sparingly, archetypes can be an enormous boon. However, unlike the cliché, one must be careful not to play around too much with the archetype. As such, it is much easier to overuse them. If you’re careful, the addition of the archetype to your writing arsenal should be a powerful one.

Further reading:
Jung, C.G. & Franz, M.-L. v. (1964). Man and His Symbols, New York; Doubleday and Company, Inc.
Jung, C. G. (1970). Four Archetypes; Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. (contained in Collected Works Vol. 9 part 1)

Random trivia:
I helped run a BBS dedicated to the Archimedes computer system called Archetype in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

In this part, we instead look at the combat encounter itself.  It is important that combat, usually taking up a large percentage of a campaign’s time, be just as varied and interesting as the rest of your campaign.  We are speaking much more than switching up the monsters, however.

That being said, the first challenge of a combat encounter is survival.  Combat is usually is presented in a "us versus them" format that includes the clear goal of destroying the enemies to move forward.  This is, by no means, a bad or boring way to handle combat encounters.  In fact, sometimes the best and most enjoyable way for player characters to test out their mettle and newest skills is to hand them a throw-down brawl.  ("Brawl" in the magic and swords sense of the term, of course.)

But go beyond that.  Keeping your players on their toes is your job.  And characters who go through the same battle setup over and over will find a strategy and stick to it, not thinking outside the box.  The way I find best to do this, is to provide missions during combat.  Battle is only a path towards a goal, never the purpose itself.  When the players have something at stake, they will change up strategy, take daring risks, and challenge themselves.  Here, I list general categories to keep in mind when planning encounters, to keep their strategy mixed up.

• Kill Enemies – This is your standard run-of-the-mill encounter where you setup the grid and keep track of the specific locations of enemies and allies.  The goal is simply that, to kill everything.
• Protection – An NPC of some kind, sometimes an accompanied guest, sometimes a random passerby, needs to be protected from danger during an encounter.  Players will need to advance to the NPC’s location on the grid (starting them right next to the NPC would just be too easy!) before the enemies make it there, and keep the NPC from dying.  This usually still entails the "Kill Enemies" aspect, but with a twist.  And, of course, crafty DM’s ensure that the NPC does not just sit around and take orders, forcing the players to adjust themselves to their charge.  Who knows: a friendly saved NPC could come back two or three sessions from now and be a helpful force in a future situation!
• Target – Target combats are those where the battle cannot end until a particular target is dispatched.  This is not always revealed as the case to begin with, and may take the players some time to realize what is going on.  A hydra whose heads keep splitting as you kill it, or a dark necromancer who keeps raising the bones from the ground as the players fell them are good examples of this.  The players work together to first realize the situation, and then start aiming at their target.
• Covert – Covert combats are very much like Skill Challenges, except the grid is laid out, and everyone takes initiative and rounds as if in battle.  It is usually imperative that players remain as quiet as possible until their target is reached, whether it be a location or a certain enemy.  Players need to use the skills available to them to traverse the terrain quietly on their turns, using the actions available during combat to do so.  Should someone raise an alarm, nearby enemies may need to be dealt with, and extreme cases can be met with utter failure.
• Tread Lightly – These are my favorite!  Tread Lightly combats change some rule to make battle more difficult.  I usually pull the "I’m the DM" rule in these cases.  Heavy fog rolls in, hampering sight beyond so many squares.  The ground all around has dangerous footing, and all attacks require an Acrobatics check to remain standing afterwards.  A magical rain saps HP every round (or for a fun one, Strength!).  A fierce wind makes all skills with the Fire keyword useless.  Whatever you can think of, it makes the players think twice about what they’re doing, and force them to use different strategies.
• Puzzle – Puzzle combats are a combination of the Puzzle and Combat encounters.  There may or may not be enemies to begin with, but a grid is laid out and initiative rolled.  The characters begin solving the presented puzzle (see the previous article on Puzzle encounters), but several actions could result in traps or enemies appearing.  The best example of this is a puzzle where certain aspects of it require several rounds of work (moving heavy objects, concentrating on spells, and the like), and when disaster strikes, is up to the players to protect one another, allowing whomever is working on the puzzle to complete their work in the alloted number of rounds.

Each of these can be used to help focus or balance out players.  Find them relying too much on certain skills or abilities?  Change it up so they’re forced to think out of the box.  It will also retain the interest and confirm their investment into the campaign and their character, as they watch themselves fight their way through all kinds of daring scenarios.

In the most recent session of my regular game, we did exactly that. The first action we all made was to roll a D20 and get into combat. It really did focus us on the game, and the entire session felt more focused and more tense.

This should not be much of a surprise as the technique has been used in films ¹, video games ², literature ³ and plays ⁴ for exactly the same effect: It gets the audience focused on the subject matter and engages them immediately.

While some video games are already using this technique, mostly to engage the player in a narrative without requiring an expositional cut-scene, MMOs and MUDs actively avoid it. In most multiplayer games, there are timing restrictions on logging out of the game. This is to avoid harassment or cheating where players can just log out to avoid a battle that is going badly for them. In fact, most games (including World of Warcraft and EVE: Online) encourage players to get back to a home base or an inn before leaving the game. In World of Warcraft, players are even given an experience bonus for doing so. While this is definitely a great solution for cheaters, griefers and other player problems, it also means that players log in to a safe city with no action. Imagine the increased level of engagement a player would experience if they logged in to a city under siege, or an attack on the space station you’re docked in!

The implementation would require a little care. The character would need to gain some form of protection for the first few seconds after entering the game to avoid instant death, and to give the player time to orient themselves. Similarly, the action might need to be just a little way off, but with enough cues that the player feels the pressure without necessarily being right in the middle, just in case a rogue cannon or ogre’s club happens to land where the character appears.

Level-appropriateness of enemies is also an important consideration. In general, cities or bases in these games can be assigned a level range; the range of levels that you expect characters staying there to have. At the very least, you can expect a minimum level cap. It is important that characters can get out of the city if they choose to, whether that’s through a city-to-city transit system, or just running through the waves of enemies laying siege.

I also don’t think that having this happen for every login would work as you would lose the tension that you’re trying to build, however for games like World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online, where the narrative has set up that regions and cities are being fought over by opposing sides, it would be an extra level of engagement to know that when your character wakes in the inn they stayed in for the night they might find themselves in a burning city with enemies storming the streets.

It has long been the case that narratives use in medias res to engage and stimulate their audience, and it is clear that it works for table-top games and single-player (narrative-led) video games. So far, I don’t know of an MMO or MUD that uses this technique, but I believe it would create a much-needed break for character of all levels from the dreaded grind and would engage players in a way that no game yet does.

Further reading: 5 Great Examples of in medias res, in medias res (Wikipedia)

Active puzzles are presented in the "this is a puzzle and you must solve it" format.  It is immediately obvious that there is an obstruction to the player’s progression, and it is alluded to that there is some way to remove the obstruction and continue.  Or, the DM hints at the existence of something "more" about an object or person, purposely piquing the interest of the party to investigate.  The Dungeon Master’s Guide gives plenty of examples for active puzzles: Word searches, logic puzzles, and mazes for the players to navigate are a few that it suggests. 

Active puzzles have an immediate solution available, meaning they are meant to solve it in the duration of the session.  There is usually a risk or hardship involved should they fail to solve the puzzle, such as imminent danger of attack, or having to take the long way around, or failing to complete their objective.  The story will bend around the players’ ability to solve the puzzle.

For example, the DM describes a room where the only exit has been sealed shut behind the players.  The only thing in this room is a single statue, a woman pointing to the sky above.  As the players puzzle out how to find their way out, they ask questions and attempt to understand the meaning behind the room.  There may be a skill check now and again to see if they notice something in particular about the statue, and maybe receive a clue for it, but in the end, it will be on the players’ own wit to ask the appropriate questions and put the clues together.  (By the way, the party in the example followed the line pointed out by the woman and found a phrase written on the wall: "Out of sight, walk away."  They eventually found a hidden door in the wall opposite the way the woman was pointing.)

Rewards for active puzzles are two-fold: the goal, and the encounter reward.  The goal is what the party was working for solving the puzzle, such as the way out of a sealed room, or the treasure in a treasure box.  The encounter reward is the experience and loot the DM deems equivalent for the difficulty level of the encounter.  Together, they represent the total reward for the Puzzle Encounter.  Experience is appropriate for all puzzles, and should be given to the players.  If the goal includes treasure in the story, then that is part of the reward.  If it does not, and the DM deems it appropriate, treasure can be found incidentally along with the successful solving of the puzzle. 

Passive puzzles are puzzles that are solved over the course of a long time and do not require immediate thought or response from players to continue with the story, with clues from different sources that gradually paint a picture or nudge players towards an answer.  By the definitions given in the rules of Dungeons and Dragons, they are not technically encounters, but they contribute well to keeping player interest high and enforcing character balance. 

For example, one of my favorite passive puzzles involve putting a very powerful artifact in the hands of a not-so-powerful party.  I give full details on what it does, but unfortunately, it requires something very specific to trigger it.  (I also purposely never decide what that is until I decide it is time to activate it, so I can honestly say they will never "accidentally" trigger it.  Don’t tell my players that.)  As the story evolves, perhaps over several weeks of gameplay sessions, I let the players guide themselves.  If they ask pertinent questions of people who might know what their artifact does, and try to research their item at given opportunities, I begin to shed light on it.  Eventually, someone might persevere and solve the mystery.

Different skills will come in handy on passive puzzles.  Since they are pieced together over time, Knowledge skills are at the forefront as players try to decide if newly found information relates to their clues.  Bluff and Diplomacy assist in drawing information from NPCs.  And, basic skills such as Perception become important as high enough checks may allow the DM to point out clues to previous passive puzzles on new artifacts.

Passive puzzles still rely on the players themselves to piece the clues together, but since it is over a long period of time, it also relies on the players’ ability to keep their information organized and learn to pursue what is important.  Although they are not encounters, per se, rewards for passive puzzles should be considered by the DM.  Passive puzzles add a certain spice to a campaign, and glues the sessions together when someone has an unsolved mystery at the forefront of their notes that they continue to hack away at every week.  It also makes the DM look rather crafty when a passive puzzle presented at the beginning of the game that apparently looks optional and unrelated to the current quest ends up being key in the story.

I love the approach that Wizards are taking with 4th Edition: They’re really opening the game up to people, the tools they’re creating (including the Encounter Builder and Character Builder) are helping people get into the game easier, and I don’t think that they’re alienating long-time players. If anything, they’re bringing back players who may have stopped playing in the past. Even the recent changes to their approach to D&D Minis, while disappointing to the fans of the skirmish game, are clearly geared towards making it easier for players to get hold of the miniatures they want and will use in a game.

Of course, not everything in 4th Edition is exactly as I’d like it: I prefer the range of skills available in 3rd Edition, for example. What I am praising here is how the company are rolling out and supporting 4th Edition. I’m already looking forward to Free RPG Day in June this year to see what they bring to the table, pun very much intended.

So what could Wizards do better? Personally, I’d love to see cross-platform versions of their tools, and a better interface to the compendium. I already use my laptop at the table, and having the Character Builder tool open live, and having the compendium available for reference while playing, would complete that experience.

This post is my official “Thank you” to Wizards of the Coast for getting me back into D&D and truly updating the game to a new and exciting playing experience.

During a campaign, players are given broad scope in what they can do.  This is made evident by the Skills that Wizards of the Coast have seen fit to have players keep track of: there many situations that a character needs to see if they are able to perform a some kind of feat.

These Skills are meant to be used.  A common mistake a DM makes while designing their campaign is to create too many combat-oriented encounters.  When players choose the skills they are trained in, they base this information on the challenges they may face.  They want bonuses in the skills they are most likely to use.  In 3rd Edition especially, this caused a major imbalance as players did not spend their Skill points in any of the more “useless” skills, instead putting their points in categories that would assist them in the types of encounters their DM would face them against.  In 4th edition, the players choose what skills they wish to be trained in at the beginning, and choose further skills with feats as they progress.

A DM should make sure to provide balanced gameplay.  This allows the player to truly grow their character in a way of their choosing.  In combat-only situations, the number of skills and feats to take are limited, as there is no point in subscribing to a skill training or feat that does not assist you in battle.  The more options a player has, the more unique their character can become.

Skill Challenges

Skill Challenges are just that: encounters where your skill checks are what determine its outcome, instead of battle.  They are a part of the story, with varying degrees of importance; they are situations that require a series of different skill checks to navigate through the obstacles and arrive at their goal.  The DM chooses a number of skills that will be helpful to the situation, and announces those selected skills as the encounter’s primary skill set.  The PCs choose from amongst their skills and try to make successes against the difficulty class (DC) that is kept secret by the DM for each roll.  The situation changes with each success and failure.

For example, to have a party need to successfully infiltrate an enemy fortress and steal a magic item, the DM may choose Stealth for moving quietly without alerting the guards, Thievery for making their way through various locked doors, Athletics for attempting to reach their item suspended in midair, and Insight to see if they can see their way through the various illusory fake walls blocking their path.  As the story progresses, the DM sets the stage, letting the players choose what skill they will use for each situation.  They may choose to pick the lock on a door, or find another way around.  Whatever they decide to do, they check for success, and the DM has to stay on his toes and deliver the next piece of the story dependent on what the players intend to do.

PCs are also welcome to use other skills than the ones chosen by the DM, albeit at a higher DC.  For example, one of the party members will decide to fast-talk a guard instead of sneaking around.  The DM can allow it, letting them use their Bluff skill against a higher DC.  It is a bigger risk: should they be successful, they may find their situation improved greatly, but should they fail, things could become disastrous.

The idea in the Skill Challenge is that they get a certain number of successes before they reach a certain number of failures.  You’ll usually set this number in advance: if they get 6 successes before 3 failures, they win.  Keep the players entertained and strung along with the story, but once they make their final successful check, they win, and win the goal they were seeking.

Skill challenges are fun because the story is more closely crafted by their own actions.  Their successes and their failures determine what will happen next, suspense hinging on the roll of the dice.  And since there are no battle rules in play, they have no idea what to expect from a crafty Dungeon Master.  A tip from the Dungeon Master Guide: do not let failures give the players a “Game Over.”  If they fail, fine.  Let the story continue, but let their failure force them to come up with a much harder way to solve their dilemma.  Example: failure to infiltrate said keep may lead to a separate Skill Challenge involving their escape, and should they pass that challenge, now must siege the fortress to get the item in question.  A whole new session of gameplay awaits!

The Dungeon Master Guide gives several examples of this; there’s an entire section dedicated to it.  Skill Challenges can include simple tasks such as scaling a wall, or getting information from a merchant, to the intricate tasks of tracking deadly assassins through a barren wasteland, and negotiating the release of the Queen’s daughter.  Make sure to utilize it in your campaigns.  This is more than just a “make a check to see if you succeed.”  It is a deliberate focus on utilizing skills only, to stress the importance of keeping in practice with all of their skills throughout your campaign..

Rewards for a Skill Challenge should rival those of a combat encounter.  In my opinion, it should be greater.  The Dungeon Master Guide breaks down the recommended way to reward success in a Skill Challenge.  Myself, I tend to break it down in a way that really shows the value of their skills in the encounter:  I tell them what they would have had to fight if they fought for their goal instead, and the give them the XP and loot for that as if they had fought it, because in the end, they truly beat them, just not in the traditional manner.

All in all, the goal is to keep balance on the character sheet by making the players think carefully about the types of challenges they’ve faced thus far, make them realize that balancing their Skills is just as important (and profitable) as increasing their battle ability, and reduce their tendencies to focus on battle-only skill sets.  They will see that investing their precious level-up choices into various skills and skill-improving feats can pay off with added wealth, experience, and story opportunities.  Most of all, they will feel truly as part of the story, as the campaign shifts around their successes and failures.

Since the first days of DnD the character sheet has been the entry point for the game. This is where you start to see your character form as you roll the dice, make notes, erase mistakes. This is the first thing your older brother/sister/cousin/friend will have put in front of you and taken you through as an introduction. I have a binder full of character sheets from my old games and in some cases the paper has visibly thinned from the amount of erasing and rewriting (mostly around the hit-point area, funnily enough). Just looking at those sheets brings back memories of old campaigns and a nostalgia for those retired, or in some cases deceased, characters. It makes sense, then, that this is where we should start looking for electronic versions.

Wizards of the Coast have just released a Character Builder tool for DnD Insider subscribers. It has its limitations [1, It only runs on Windows, though there are ways around that] but contains within its database all rules, items, feats and powers from every released 4th edition book. In fact, before I could get out to buy the Player’s Handbook 2 on launch day, the Character Builder was already updating with new classes and powers. One of the major limitations that stops this from being the tool of choice for character sheet management is that it is really focused on the building and maintenance of characters. I.e., it’s great for building a character, leveling up, or buying/selling equipment between sessions, but not so great for the minute-to-minute changes necessary at the table.

For these minute-to-minute changes, I have moved away from paper but not yet to an electronic method. I keep my character sheet as a pdf file on screen and use 2d10 for hit-point tracking, 1d12 for healing surges, 1d4 for action points and 1d8 for tracking any temporary hit points. The character sheet is then merely a reference for my powers, skills and defenses.

However, there is a significant benefit to the Character Builder created character sheet which is that the exported sheet contains customized cards, similar to the Power Cards that are available commercially, with my powers on them. The extra little cherry on top is that they specify exactly what dice to roll and what bonuses to add for my character, taking into account stats and feats. Of course, if a stat should change, or if I lose my weapon, I’m back to manual recalculation, but those instances are rare.

So what about the player who wants to go the fully-electronic route? A couple of the players around my table have taken to using spreadsheet-based character sheets. Depending on which one you choose, you get all of the information you need but can also change any stats or skills as necessary. The beauty of this approach is that the spreadsheet format allows for formulae that can keep all of the character’s stats up to date without any game-stalling recalculation. The downside is that leveling up or buying equipment is still very much a manual process.

Of course, there are some players who will continue to roll a character on the floor surrounded by books and dice, and in fact I did exactly that when first starting my current character. Once I had finished that initial creation, however, I moved him over to the Character Builder and continue to use that for maintenance. There are players who have developed effective techniques for managing their character on paper thanks to years of experience and for them a switch to an electronic method would be more jarring. I never felt completely comfortable running my character purely on paper and having my netbook set up with my character sheet, alongside using dice for my more dynamic statistics [2, A trick I picked up from a staunchly paper-based player], has led to me being able to spend more time enjoying the game and less time figuring out how to play.

One possible criticism to the spread of computers at the playing table is that it creates a barrier between the players and the DM. To those who would claim that, I will merely point to the DM screen that has been a significant barrier between the DM and player from the early days of the game and suggest that in fact laptops and netbooks are keeping the table more free of clutter than ever before. Certainly the table that I play at feels more organized and less busy than other games I’ve played in the past.

One thing is clear: As much as technology advances the possibilities of table-top gaming, and no matter how much technology brings to the table, if you’ll pardon the pun, there’s room for both paper and screens at the gaming table. There are many more options for how DnD is played now than ever before, and that can only be a good thing for the game as a whole.

In future articles in this series I’ll look at other opportunities for technology to advance or impose on the world of table-top gaming, including dice-rolling applications and the possibility of driving entire tables through technology. Also, I’ll take a look at playing games with people internationally and what options exist for people without the benefit of local games to join.

I’ll start with the character development that I’ve dealt with the most: Developing a character for a role-playing game, specifically DnD.

There are two directions you can approach character development from in DnD: The top-down approach, where you create the character from a mechanical standpoint, and the bottom-up approach where the concept of the character drives the decisions you make as a player while building the character. I have had most success with the bottom-up approach and I’ll start with that.

The bottom-up approach

The starting point for a character in this instance is a concept; perhaps you’ve been inspired by a character in a novel or a film, or maybe just someone that pops into your head and refuses to be ignored. It doesn’t really matter where it comes from, the next step is to start fleshing out their back story. For example, I was reading about gnomes in 3.5 edition DnD where they’re described as:

Members of this race have a great sense of humor, and while they love puns, jokes , and games, they also relish tricks — the more intricate the better.¹

When I read this, I started to imagine a gnome who was a little different to the others. Perhaps he took things a little more seriously, and when another gnome played a prank on him he was more likely to lose his temper than laugh with the others. And thus a Gnome barbarian was born.

The basics down, you’re ready to start the character building process. As you go through the steps in building the character and are asked to make decisions about skills, powers, feats, or abilities, you can allow your decisions to be guided by your concept. As you do, other ideas may present themselves which will further shape the character.

Whenever I’ve used this approach, I’ve felt comfortable with the character before I roll the first die of the session which has allowed me to get into the game easier.

The top-down approach

Unlike the bottom-up approach, this method starts with you rolling up a character as per the character building rules in your chosen game. As you go through the process, or perhaps once you’ve finished, you’ll start to have a sense of a character in front of you. It’s then up to you to fill in the gaps between the numbers on the page to flesh out the character.

In one game that I played, I was asked to join the party to fill a particular role; a paladin or fighter. I chose the paladin, and reading through the description decided that a Dwarf would make a good fit for me. Once I rolled some dice and started picking some feats, as well as picking the deity that the Dwarf worshipped, I started to see a character revealing itself: Dwarf paladins lead an odd life as they are expected to put the duties of their chosen profession before that of their clan. Also, this particular paladin would worship the Raven Queen, goddess of fate and death. As such, he would be fatalistic, bordering on pessimistic, but also rather more bold given that he is more comfortable with the idea of his mortality than most.

Sadly, on the first session, he did die and was resurrected. This has proved to be somewhat of an embarrassment for him which has further rounded his character.

I’ve been less successful with this approach, but it is a method that provides more guidance if you’re devoid of inspiration. It also lends itself more to a power-gamer mentality as a player is free to pick the feats, powers and skills that will improve their character mechanically.

When I’ve used this approach, it’s taken a few sessions for me to start getting comfortable with the character and I’ve had to work harder to get into the character’s head.

Conclusion

There’s far more to a character in a role-playing game than the numbers on the page and while it’s possible to play and enjoy the game without filling out the back story of your character, it’s the interaction between the characters around the table (or at the various keyboards), more than that of the players, that makes the game fun.

Whichever method you use to come up with the initial character ideas, don’t be afraid to allow the character to change as you interact with other players. People in real life change depending on who they spend time with and their interactions with those people; characters in games should be given the same allowance.

For further reading, I suggest the great resources in the DnD Player’s Handbooks, especially the new Backgrounds section in the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook 2. I also found this guide to character personality and background development and more general character development tips here.

So where did these clichés come from? What makes one idea from fantasy resonate to the extent that it becomes a cliché? And what can a writer or designer do to use those clichés that will work for them while avoiding those that will come across as ham-fisted?

Some of our clichés have been with us for as long as we’ve had literature. The framework of many fantasy adventures follow the greatest cliché of them all: The monomyth, or Hero’s Journey. I won’t dig into that particular subject in this article as it deserves one of its own, and only if I have something more to add to the wealth of words that have been spent on it already by those smarter than I am. However, the core idea of Campbell’s theory is grounded in our shared myths and legends; those tales of gods and monsters, brave heroes and the storytellers that bring their tales to us.

It was these tales, the Norse myths and Old English heroic poems such as Beowulf that inspired early fantasy writers to put pen to paper, and those writers inspired the game designers to put code to compiler and bring us to where we are today. This leads us to the conclusion that there must be some stories and aspects of stories that have not caught on as clichés. What is it, then, that causes these particular ideas to take hold in our collective consciousness to the extent that they become clichés?

I believe it is as simple as repetition: Those portions of stories, those characters from tales, that have been borrowed and reused have become the clichés. If this is true, does that mean that clichés are always to be avoided?

While some authors have tried to escape clichés, the entire genre is clearly grounded in them. It is, in fact, dangerous as avoiding the clichés may lead to a fantasy game or novel that the expected audience fail to connect with. A DM or game designer can use clichés to make players comfortable in the world that they discovering as they play which can leave them open to introduce one or two new ideas without the players feeling out of their depth. They can also reduce the need for extended exposition, relying on our collective knowledge to fill in the gaps. Similarly, a wiley DM, novelist or designer might exploit a cliché to make the players feel comfortable before introducing a twist. That twist will be even more surprising the more well-worn the clichés leading up to it are.

In summary, clichés are clichés for a reason: They have been used again and again because they work. They are an incredibly powerful tool for an author or a game designer and cannot be discarded without consideration.

The images that those names invoke, and that are visualised in modern MMOs, aren’t too far from the descriptions found throughout fantasy literature. So what of the state of writing in fantasy games themselves?

Clearly table-top games live and die through the quality of their writing; a fact held up by the sheer volume of books and campaigns produced by table-top games companies every year. Outside of the purely commercial writers, I’m sure that many of us have played in games where the DM’s ability to bring a world to life have determined the immersion felt, or not felt, by the players. Not much has changed in the last thirty years, other than the rise of more clichés, and the efforts of writers to exploit those clichés.

The early virtual fantasy games, the text adventures from Infocom, et al., also clearly owe their success to the quality of the writing: Even grues have a foundation in literary fiction. Text adventures, or Interactive Fiction as the genre is more correctly known, is still very much alive. In 2005, the Interactive Fiction Competition produced as many games as Infocom developed over ten years.

The natural successors to Interactive Fiction in our recently networked world, the MUDs, MUSHs and MOOs, require a great volume and density of writing to satisfy the player-base. Many of these games source their wizards or creators from the player-base and it is often a challenge to find those who can balance interesting writing with the technical know-how to present a living world to the player. There are many fledgling creators who have abandoned the pursuit of creation as they begin to realise the sheer volume of work ahead of them. It is not enough to build a room with an interesting puzzle; the players can and will attempt to peek at and poke every item that you mention in your descriptions. For instance, a room with the simple description:

This room is relatively bare, with low light emanating from a standard lamp in the corner. On the table in the centre of the room, the only item of furniture, stands a vase of flowers.

Will have players investigating the lamp, perhaps attempting to switch it on and off. Perhaps they’ll inspect the bulb and see if they can remove it. As for the table, they may look under it, and they’ll certainly try to take the vase. Flowers are always a tricky item to deal with as the player will try to take them, smell them, give them to someone else; perhaps even water them should they have some water in their inventory.

Among all of this detail, it is easy for quality writing to be lost. But then, does it matter? What percentage of the player-base are actually going to stop and dig into a room? How many will simply enter and leave, not finding the NPC  they might be looking for? For a successful MUD, it is absolutely necessary to provide the density of writing to satisfy all but the most curious players. There is a time, however, when it is reasonable to quietly inform the player that what they might have tried is, in this case, impossible. They might write a bug about it, or, if you’re a lucky creator, an idea report, for how to extend the functionality of the room or item they’ve encountered, but a MUD is a dynamic environment. Anything can be updated to include more detail if required.

This is far less true of the commercial MMO. Not only is it harder to add more detail to the world, but the player has far more restrictions on them in the first place. Of course, they can move a camera around and peek around, but in general the set of objects that they can interact with is very limited. Similarly, their interactions with items are defined by the item itself, or the quest they’re on, rather than a set of built-in commands that might be expected to work with anything.

Where MMO writing does come to the fore, however (aside from cinematics which I am ignoring for the purposes of this article) is in quest descriptions. It is through quests that the story underlying the MMO is revealed to the player. It is the body of those quests, along with the occasional pay-off moment on completion of the quest, that allows the player to understand their place in the world. No matter that many hundreds or thousands of players have completed that quest before, this time that you bring the Orc skulls to the Goblin wolf-herder, or the 250kg of Pyrite to the trader in the space station, is the only time it really happened. How sad, then, that the expected player model is to click through that text; to just move on and find out what needs to be done, where it needs to be done, and who to return to.

It is a shame that the culmination of many years of fantasy gaming, a genre founded in literature and strong story-telling, should be one in which the writing is secondary to the experience. I’m not promoting a world where we all play text adventures, MUDs and DnD (although that is what I keep coming back to, no matter how many expansions are released for certain popular MMOs), but next time you are asked to retrieve some vials of some creatures blood, or to escort some poor NPC back to their home town, please take the time to enjoy the words on the screen.

See also “The Writer’s Block” from Imaginary Realities, September 1998 and again in November 1998

The separation between player and character is at the core of the role-playing experience which is what separates DnD, MUDs and MMOs from other multiplayer games. By definition, when you’re playing a role it’s assumed that the role is not that of “person playing a role-playing game”. Aside from the physical and sociological differences between the player and character, how is this split realised in the game? And how has the separation between player and character developed from DnD through MUDs and through to MMOs?