One of the things that can be frustrating to players is that they simply get stuff that they don’t need or want for their characters.  Either the magic items simply aren’t useful or they don’t have the right potions or they simply prefer using an axe to a magic sword.  By the same token as a DM it can be really frustrating when the players just don’t have what they need to perform well in the dungeon that you have spent forever planning.

Putting some time into the shops in your world can go a long way towards solving these problems, depending on your players.  If you play with the kind of folks who will kill anything they see that has anything of value then you can more or less ignore this entire article because the players will more than likely just try to steal everything rather than trade for it.

But, assuming that your players are willing to trade - you can add a shop just about anywhere in your game.  This can be as simply as a merchant who has stopped in town for a day to a halfling caravan along the road to an old man found in the woods who happens to have a solution to fire resistance but could really use a healing potion in exchange.

If you’ve been listening to the players’ gripes then you should have a pretty good idea what they want and what they have that they don’t want.  Often they will end up with gear that they don’t want but which they hesitate to sell at PHB prices because of the expense.  Allowing them to trade (sometimes) for an item of equal or lesser value can go a long way towards helping them get the equipment they need and want.

But this sort of thing has to have boundaries or it will get out of hand very fast.

1 - the items available must be specific.  You can’t have a merchant out there traveling around with all magic items levels 6 thru 10.  If there is that much variety available then use the standard pricing system and have the players trade in gold, and it should probably be an established shop with all the regular guards and precautions.

2 - limit the quantities.  Just like the selection the total number of items avaiable should be limited to one or two.  If a wandering druid just happens to have the eight items that the party wants it will seem strange at the very least and most likely the druid will be robbed and/or stabbed in his sleep.

3 - limit the amount of time the items are avaiable in the game.  Once that druid has moved out of sight of the party he should vanish from the game.  This keeps him safe from those characters who will want to circle back and slaughter him for the little gold he still has as well as make him avaialbe for future use.

Finally, I suggest re-using the same “shops” from time to time.  This will make it obvious to the players what you are trying to do without screwing with the suspension of disbelief too much.  If there is a clear signal of “trade with this guy” then the players will be more likely to trade and less likely to do anything else.

If you do include regular magic shops with a large selection of items, allowing the occaisional one for one trade without penalty can also be useful, but the same rules apply.  This should be for specific items in limited quantities and for a limited time.  The shop may be in dire need of a bag of holding and willing to trade that super special sword for it, but only just this once and only because they haven’t been able to sell that sword anyway.  If the players come back tomorrow they may just discover that someone else sold them a bag of holding and they don’t really need theirs so badly so the trade deal is off.

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So the party decided to go off in a completely unexpected direction.  Is this the end of the world?  No.  Is it inconvenient?  Maybe.  Can it be solved easily?  Yes.

Remember that in a game as open ended as Dungeons and Dragons, there is no such thing as the “wrong way.”  There are unexpected directions and events.  There are unplanned and unprepared areas, but there is not a “wrong way.”

Dealing with the unexpected is an art that can really only be learned by doing, but it isn’t that difficult to get the hang of it.  Understanding the elements of an encounter can help.

Encounters have 4 essential components.

-People
-Place
-Thing

So far sounds like the elementary school definition of a noun.  But the fourth element is probably the most important.

-Purpose

Getting the people, places, and things together are the bits that make encounters difficult.  These have to be prepared ahead of time.  It takes too much game time and effort to pull together the statistics of monsters on the fly.  Players can get bored pretty quickly while they are waiting for you to pull together the stats of that big red dragon.

So prepare ahead of time.

There are some things you can prepare ahead of time and some things you can’t.  In the manufacturing world there are things that can be done while the machine is running and things that can’t – this is referred to as internal and external setup for those of you keeping tabs.  The idea is the same in a game situation.  There are things you can prepare ahead of time and some things you can’t.  Doing as much ahead of time as possible will save you headaches later.

So what can you prepare ahead of time?

-Purpose.  This is crucial.  There had better be a purpose to whatever happens, and it is up to the DM to decide this.  So figure it out ahead of time.  Without this you are just playing a mini’s battle game, not an RPG.
-Things.  The stuff that the NPC’s have.  All of the key items – the stuff relating to the purpose should also be prepared ahead of time.  In most cases things won’t alter the people they are with.  Just stick it in a trapped box and the box then can be put in any encounter you want.
-Place.  You don’t get to pick the place.  The players do.  But you do get to pick which choices the players have.  I generally divide my encounters into a couple of categories.  Either they will happen in a dungeon, outdoors, or in a town.  What do I prepare ahead of time?  The dungeon map, a couple of outdoor encounter maps, and the town.  In any given session (even a really long session) it is pretty difficult for a party to visit more than one dungeon or town and do much more than knock on a few doors.

That leaves us with people.  Some people are more key than others.  Random XP fodder can be prepared pretty easily.  Use the monster manual or download monster cards and there you have it.  Make sure that the encounter fits your purpose and you have it.

Some people need more details.  These are the key NPC’s that you spend time crafting and really want the characters to interact with.  Generally when a party goes “the wrong way” it means that they have chosen not to meet the NPC’s you wanted them to meet in the place you wanted them to meet at the time you wanted them to meet.  Get over it.

If you really want the interaction of those NPC’s, then move the people to a different place.  Keep the purpose and the things the same and the players will not know the difference.

The trick here is that the 4 elements of an encounter can all be swapped out at any time.  An encounter’s purpose can be altered simply by the actions of the NPC’s.  The people can be altered by swapping out one stack of stat cards with another.  The things can be swapped out just as easily.

Make sure that all of the elements are prepared individually, without context, and add the context during the game.  The end result will be encounters that do not lack crucial elements and that don’t take extensive time to set up during the game.

If you happen to be lucky enough to have your players right where you want them, then even better.  No changes are necessary and you get to enjoy everything just the way you planned it!

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A table top role playing game is a bit different from an MMORPG or some other activity.  Not all of the parts and pieces may be readily available.  Things like character sheets, minis, dice and so forth are the responsibility of everyone involved.

In addition there are often some responsibilities that need to be dished out as well.  Mapping, treasure division, leadership roles, tracking initiative and any number of other administrative tasks need to be handled.  Often the DM will handle some of these for the players, often she will not.

There are a couple of ways of making these assignments.  Where possible I recommend asking for volunteers.  Someone who wants to do a job is more likely to do a good job at it than someone who doesn’t really want the responsibility.  It is important to remember that these assignments don’t necessarily have to be role played.  The player drawing the map may not be the character drawing the map.  This makes it so that the fighter in the party doesn’t have to be walking around with a piece of paper in his hand rather than a shield.

Helping out with these tasks can take a lot of the burden off of the DM.  This in turn will make the game run more quickly and smoothly.  If the DM is not having to worry about whose turn it is she may be able to put more effort into the witty remarks of the NPC noble.

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Sometimes more gold does not help a party much.  Sometimes even more experience points, magic items, and hordes of gems really aren’t worth very much to characters or to players.

Understanding the importance of these items in relation to the world that the characters live in is important to understanding how treasure and even experience can impact the game.

The easiest example is with magic items.  If an item has no use or very little use to the party then it really adds no value or power to the party.  An example would be a magic wand in a party with no one who can use a magic wand.  On paper the party appears to be at the appropriate power level, but in reality they are a magic item short.  This could be particularly devastating because it highlights a deficiency and exacerbates an existing weakness.

Gold can fall into a very similar situation very quickly if there is no place to spend the gold, or if the players are unwilling to spend the gold or if the characters are unable to haul the loot around.  A huge dragon horde at the bottom of a dungeon with a party that has no bag of holding or time in which to pack the loot out does nobody any good.  If, when they reach the top there is nothing waiting but a village with one general store selling only basic goods from the Player’s Handbook, then they will unlikely be able to find a good way to spend their money.

What about experience?  Can it really be of little or no value?  Most of the time experience is the single most valuable reward that can be given.  It is the only reward that inherently increases the character’s power – regardless of the campaign or situation.  However, in a vacuum it still is not the holy grail.  If there is not a corresponding increase in treasure – particularly useful magic items, then experience points alone can be a bit disappointing.  A wizard who does not have a powerful implement may struggle in situations where other high level wizards do not.

Until next time, have fun!

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Maintaining a healthy game can be difficult under the best of circumstances.  Trying to keep a game healthy and have fun doing it can be nearly impossible.  Power control, done properly, allows players to have a more enjoyable experience as well as keep the DM’s headaches to a minimum.

Power control, for the purposes of this post refers to balancing the abilities of the player characters in relationship to their world.  In other words it can become an unhealthy game if the players are able to do things that the rest of the world, even the most powerful NPC’s, cannot do.  Another, and perhaps even more damaging situation arises when the power levels among different characters is vastly different.  This can mean that one player has few or very limited options while another can essentially do whatever she wants.

Many players will argue against various forms of power control, though I have known few DM’s who suggest that no form of power control should be implemented.  Those few I have met haven’t run more than a few sessions and are not generally regarded as enjoyable to play with.

Power control does not refer to cheating a player.  If as a game master you made the mistake of allowing a player to have an item or to perform an action which severely disrupts the game, the one paramount rule that you cannot break is that you cannot break the core game rules.  This means that if you have, for example, allowed an item which works spectacularly well with a given power or feat into your game that you cannot then turn around and disallow that feat or power.  This immediately causes resentment and bad feelings.

There are emotions tied to the core rules of any game, but Dungeons and Dragons in particular has as sense of canon with regards to the Players Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide.  Think twice or three times before messing with rules the players consider as gospel.

Some better ways to control power levels include following the rules.  This does not mean rules-lawyering every little point with your players.  It means being fair and consistent with your application of the rules.  Encounter balance, treasure guidelines, and experience awards are there for a reason - they keep the power levels consistent so that players feel a level of challenge without feeling cheated.  If your version of power control is to give your NPC’s a high level magic item which they use to decimate the party (until one of them finds a scheme around your uber encounter and someone rolls a lucky crit), and the party ends up with uber item in their possession, then you may wish to consider the consequences.  Either all monsters you throw out now will have to be more powerful or you will have to have the item (and/or the character with the item) disappear.  Option one means that the game balance will skew out of control quickly.  Option two means the players will be pissed at you personally.

One of the biggest complaints about power control is that it feels so arbitrary.  Any game, especially an RPG will have many arbitrary limits and decisions.  The key is to make the arbitrary feel organized.  Again, consistency is a great tool.  If the players know ahead of time that getting control of an item of immense power will cause them problems then the loss of the item (or even the death of the character) at a later date will feel a lot easier to take.  They may even decide to leave the item alone.

Another way to avoid making decisions that feel arbitrary is to make them ahead of time.  Make as many decisions before the game starts as possible.  How much treasure is availalbe?  Write it down.  Which monsters are available?  Write it down.  If you like to use random encounters then get out the random encounter table an hour before the game and roll up the encounters.  Having 5 minutes to review the encounter to do a sanity check can save you having to scale the encounter up or down on the fly later.

On a side note - those of you who read my site regularly will have guessed I’m not a huge fan of random encounters - if you want to make your encounters feel more random to the players (no idea why you would want to) you can always roll the dice behind the screen anyway.  The players won’t know that you made the encounter up yesterday and that you planned for them to face the lizardmen “randomly” before they found the wounded black bear “randomly”.  They probably won’t even notice at the end of the night they got exactly as much XP as they needed and they all have a well balanced treasure sack.  But you can bet they’ll notice 3 weeks later when its time to level up and nobody is a ton more powerful than anyone else and the campaign still makes sense.

Power control is not about limiting options - it is about creating an enjoyable game.  It is about giving as many options to your players as possible and understanding the consequences of those options.  Understanding that giving out 1/2 a level worth of XP to a specific player while ignoring the rest of the party will not only piss everyone off when they find out, but it will limit the ability of the other characters to contribute to the party.  It will also effectively make the affected character 1/2 a level poorer in terms of gold and wealth (unless that is handed out for free as well).  The point is to be careful here.  It may seem like a good idea to arbitrarily reward a best friend, but ultimately the game will probably suffer.

Setting limits to the game is just one more tool for making the game more enjoyable.

Until next time have fun!

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Many Dungeons and Dragons players get caught up in the quest for treasure and level advancement, which is understandable as these are primary goals of the game.  However, there are other ways to gain an edge in the game.

• Min/Maxing.  Careful character building can give you a serious edge over non-optimized characters.  Taking training in the perception skill while maximizing your wisdom score simply makes sense.  If you couple that with a feat that gives you a bonus, then you have effectively freed up an item slot from requiring a perception bonus.  This same principle can be applied to any skill, though it is important to understand your particular group and DM to know which skills will be the most important.
• Understand the direction of the campaign.  Some skills will be used session after session.  Some skills will sit there as unused numbers on your character sheet.  Nearly every dungeon has a secret door or two.  If you are playing a premade module, you can guarantee that there will be a couple of perception checks required.  If you are playing a more role-playing intensive campaign with diplomacy and intrigue, you may want to consider insight.  Similar arguments could be me made for most other skills.
• Play to your strengths.  All too often players will min/max their character, focusing on melee or ranged combat and then spend their time doing the complete opposite.  It doesn’t do you much good to max your insight skill if you don’t engage the NPC’s.  If you’ve maxed your stealth ability but charge into combat every encounter the points you’ve placed won’t do you much good.
• Help your party.  There are some items that can help nearly any character.  Other items are much better only in the hands of specific characters.  If you don’t need an item, don’t horde it.  If that ring could be used by the mage and you only need it as a spare, you may want to pass it along to increase the overall effectiveness of the party.  Sooner or later, in a well-balanced campaign, every party member will need to perform at their peak.
• Take advantage of terrain.  If there is a well in the middle of the room.  Push the bad guys into it.  No reason to face them in a straight fight if you don’t have to.
• Role-Play.  Towns and villages can be much more than just a quick stop for clues and shopping.  Milk every NPC for all the information you can find.  Many times the clues to walking unscathed through the encounter is waiting to be uncovered by talking.  Many times you will be able to convince someone to act as a guide or scout.  Having an NPC helper is worth more, in terms of power, than earning a level.  DM’s enjoy the interaction and will often reward an enjoyable role-playing exchange.

Paying attention to the details of the game outside of the advancement tables and treasure charts can pay big dividends.  Nobody likes to lose a character to an unfortunate combat incident or stray trap.  You can do a lot to avoid these tragedies by playing a smart game and taking advantage of all the resources presented.

As always, have fun!

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