Paldemar and the Bronze Warders

Here we are, two thirds of the way through Thunderspire Labyrinth, and the module's Big Evil has yet to show himself. It's a sad state of affairs - so sad I've barely posted for a week (or at least that's my excuse).

It's time for that to change, though. When players return to the Seven-Pillared Hall after trouncing the Duergar, they learn that they've finally got someone's attention. That someone is Paldemar, master villain of Thunderspire, and he steals a page from Kalarel's book in order to set one of the lamest traps in the history of archvillainy.

I've spoken a little about Paldemar before. He's a Mage of Saruun - one of only two still residing in the Labyrinth - and he's gone rogue. He's dropped out of contact with his colleague Orontor and retired to a hidden structure called the Tower of Mysteries, where he's begun to dabble in the forbidden worship of Vecna, god of secrets and undeath.

Paldemar's plan is pretty straightforward mad sorceror stuff. He plans, firstly, to seize control of the Labyrinth. That's kind of a strange goal, seeing as the Labyrinth isn't exactly a palace of wealth and luxury. For the most part, if Paldemar wants to rule over crumbling minotaur ruins and spiderwebbed tunnels he's welcome to it. Of course, in typical villainous style he won't be content with Thunderspire, and plans to extend his domination to "surrounding lands".

The key to Paldemar's plan are the Bronze Warders. The Warders are giant bronze statues of minotaurs, presumably constructed by the original inhabitants of Saruun Khel and now left scattered throughout Thunderspire's tunnels and chambers. Each Warder is bound to a control amulet; when someone who possesses the right amulet speaks a certain set of mystic words, they become the master of the Warder and can command it to come to life and serve their bidding.

The Mages of Saruun, during their early explorations of the Labyrinth, uncovered several of the control amulets and used their magic to ferret out the control words for them (each amulet requires different words). The Warders now serve as the Mages' elite enforcers, called upon whenever the Mages need a show of overpowering force to keep the rabble in its place.

Paldemar's plan involves the creation of an "infernal machine" which will override the command amulets and bind every Warder everywhere in the Labyrinth to his will. With an army of giant bronze soldiers at his command he aims to wrest the Seven-Pillared Hall from his fellow Mages and rule the area with an iron fist. In a loose attempt to tie Thunderspire in with its eventual sequel, Paldemar's long term goals also include attempting to unlock the power of a vaguely-described "Pyramid of Shadows".

So what does Paldemar have to do with Hobgoblins and Duergar? Really, nothing. The module states that Paldemar has been urging the Bloodreavers on to "new heights of depravity" in an attempt to "sow the seeds of confusion and unrest" within the Labyrinth but exactly how this helps him is unclear. Certainly depravity seems to be business as usual in the Labyrinth. The same Mages who didn't blink at the Duergar running a slave-trading ring out of the Seven-Pillared Hall are unlikely to be worried by a handful of goblinoids getting up to mischief in an old minotaur temple. As for the Duergar, Paldemar doesn't seem to have any connection to them whatsoever.

In any case, despite the fact that the PCs have no dispute with Paldemar, haven't impacted on Paldemar's plans and indeed may not have even heard of Paldemar, Thunderspire's resident Mad Mage eventually decides that they constitute a threat to his plans and forms a half-baked plan to send them to an early grave.

The plan has more in common with a Saturday-morning cartoon than with the genius-level intellect that Paldemar supposedly represents. A kobold named Charrak delivers an unsigned letter to the players offering them some vague and mysterious assistance and asking for a meeting in an out-of-the-way cavern.

It's so obviously a trap that it's more than a little insulting. Paldemar could have at least made the effort to suggest a location that didn't scream "ambush" so loudly, or used a messenger that wasn't of a race famous for its evil and treachery. Plot-wise, it's important that players attend the ambush in order to learn more about Paldemar, so really at this point the module is relying entirely on the players' morbid curiosity to get them turning up for Paldemar's ham-fisted treachery.

Mechanically speaking, the encounter is an introduction to the Bronze Warders. Players who arrive at the meeting site get ambushed by one of the giant metal statues, along with a pair of tieflings who bombard the PCs with ranged attacks from a set of high ledges.

The battle teaches players the key attributes of the Warders - namely, that they have a lot of hit points, they resist damage, and they can knock enemies prone just by moving through their space. Taking one down is an epic process, and the Warders easily win their place as Thunderspire's most powerful and iconic enemies.

The Warder will eventually die, though, and once players mop up the tieflings they'll be treated to the roleplaying cliche of a damning note on their attackers' corpses. The note reveals Paldemar as the instigator of the attack, and goes on to suggest that Paldemar is in league with a group of gnolls who are even now engaged in nefarious business at a part of the Labryinth known as the "Well of Demons". Paldemar, always helpful, provides a map.

Horrifyingly generic ambush aside, the introduction of Paldemar marks the beginning of the "good part" of Thunderspire Labyrinth, so after a quick look tomorrow at the results of the last Eleven Foot Poll we'll get started on the Well and the memorable set-pieces it's home to.

Improvements:

[1] Paldemar may not be introduced until late in the module, but that doesn't mean his plan must be a similar slow-starter. Show off the Bronze Warders early; let the players see Orontor using one to break up a fight, and then highlight more of these giant metal hulks tucked away throughout the Labyrinth - at the entrance to the Chamber of Eyes, for example, or gathering dust in a Duergar storeroom. Paldemar's intention to activate all the Warders should feel epic, and the more of them you've shown off, and the more locations you'e shown them in, the more effective that's going to be when players learn about it - and possibly see it happen.

The Wisdom of 1989

This is incredibly old news to me but it occurred to me that it might be fresh to some of you. It's an article written in 1989 by game developer Ron Gilbert, best known for his work on the original Secret of Monkey Island, about puzzle design and storytelling in adventure games.

"Most good adventure games are broken up into many sub-goals. Letting the player know at least the first sub-goal is essential in hooking them. If the main goal is to rescue the prince, and the player is trapped on an island at the beginning of the game, have another character in the story tell them the first step: get off the island. This is just good storytelling. [...] It's very easy when designing to become blind to what the player doesn't know about your story."
- Ron Gilbert, Why Adventure Games Suck (And What We Can Do About It)

It's a great article for DMs and for interactive storytellers generally and if you've managed to remain ignorant of it for the last two decades then take the time to go read it in full right now.

Foreshadowing At The Minotaur Gate

I've got a lot of nice things to say about this module, but unfortunately it's going to take a while before we get to them. Right now, I've got a problem with foreshadowing. We've barely finished talking about Chekhov's Gun, and Thunderspire Labyrinth is doing it wrong already.

Thunderspire Mountain is, as the name implies, a huge mountain whose tip is constantly swathed in swirling storms. Within the mountain lies the ruins of the abandoned minotaur city of Saruun Khel. The minotaurs apparently once ruled this area, until a civil war broke out between followers of the demon-god Baphomet and cultists of Torog, the King Who Crawls. Now their once-mighty streets are infested with hobgoblins, duergar, and worse.

Players don't necessarily have access to this information up front. However, the module isn't subtle in showing off its flavour. The players approach the undermountain through "a 50-foot-tall stone archway hewn out of the mountainside", on each side of which "a towering minotaur statue stands [...] glowering down at travellers."

This is foreshadowing. This is giant letters writ across the shape of what is yet to come, spelling out "Here Be Minotaurs" in stark red writing. This is telling players that Thunderspire is watched over by ancient guardians, and those guardians have the head of a bull.

Even as your players pass beneath this archway, they'll be sharpening their weapons and patting each other on the back and declaring, "Oh boy! Minotaurs!" Minotaurs are a classic enemy, yet not so overused as to feel cliched. They're a great theme villain for 4th Edition's second outing, and the idea of taking on a tribe of these beasties in the claustrophobic setting of a ruined underound city is enough to get you really excited about what's coming up.

Unfortunately, it's not to be. There's not hide nor hair of a living minotaur to be seen throughout the length of Thunderspire. Again and again, the module serves up minotaur statues, minotaur corpses, minotaur carvings and minotaur loot, but the cow-men themselves are nowhere to be seen. Thunderspire marches proudly through hobgoblins, duergar, gnolls, and a very human master villain without ever firing the gun it spends the entirety of its flavour-text loading.

It's not the last time we're going to see this kind of misguided foreshadowing, either. We're going to see a beholder-themed Chamber of Eyes that's missing a beholder, a Horned Hold devoid of horns, and a Tower With No Doors featuring a very prominent door. There's the mysteriously absent Mages of Saruun whose vanishing is never resolved, no less than five different evil gods to offend who never take their vengeance, and by ironic contrast the final villain comes completely out of left-field with no solid connection to anything that's gone before.

On the plus side, though, we're going to get to see a dragon...

The Hook

Thunderspire Labyrinth starts off with a question that's faced published modules since the dawn of time: how do you get players to travel to the location of their next adventure?

In a way, it's a false dilemma. The correct answer is to not ask them to. In a perfect world, your second adventure would grow organically out of your first. Players of Keep on the Shadowfell would be drawn into the next story by a direct threat to Winterhaven, or by a desire to continue their crusade against the cult of Orcus, or through pursuit of the specific priorities their character has developed over the preceding sessions of play.

Thunderspire isn't having any of that. It wants players to get to its Labyrinth as quickly and efficiently as possible and it's not really concerned how that happens. A charitable view sees the module as wisely focusing on its core content, but there's no real dispute that in skimping on its hooks it's doing itself a disservice.

Thunderspire offers four key hooks to get player characters involved in its story. The first is entitled "Investigate the Bloodreavers". The Bloodreavers, if we remember back to Keep, are an organisation of hobgoblin slavers based out of the distant Thunderspire Mountain. The hook involves the players taking on the role of self-appointed slave police in order to look into the unfocused and fairly nebulous threat presented by this organisation. Those investigations will lead them quite quickly to Thunderspire, which is where our story begins.

If the players aren't quite the zealous vigilantes contemplated by the hook, the module provides for Winterhaven's Lord Padraig to offer up a 1,000 gp reward for the head of the Bloodreavers' chief. There's an unfortunate escalation here; in Keep, Padraig could summon a mere 100 gp to pay for the extermination of kobolds who were directly threatening the village; now he's got access to ten times that to spend on hunting down a group who are, on any fair view of it, Someone Else's Problem.

A more pressing problem with the Bloodreaver hook is that while it gives players a reason to tackle the first of Thunderspire's four mini-dungeons (the Chamber of Eyes), there's no through-line to keep them progressing on to the rest of Thunderspire's content. If your group is characterised by a mercenary nature or merely keen practicality, it's open to declare the adventure over after defeating the Bloodreavers in the story's opening act.

The second of the hooks is worse still. It's called "Trade Mission" and it's what computer gamers refer to as a "fetch quest". Winterhaven shopowner Bairwin asks players to make a delivery for him to the Seven-Pillared Hall, the small bastion of civilisation hidden beneath Thunderspire. Once again, this will occupy players long enough to get them to the adventure location, but then give them no reason to tackle any of the mountain's challenges. Also, the Forgotten Realms conversion for Keep re-cast Bairwin as a secret cultist of Orcus, so for groups that have used that article Bairwin may well be long dead.

A third hook, "Call to Adventure", is so brazen as to be almost deserving of respect. It amounts to little more than Winterhaven sage Valthrun telling players that Thunderspire is kind of an awesome place, in which they will probably find adventures. I quote:

Valthrun doesn't have any additional information, but he longs to convince a party of adventurers to explore the place and bring him back firsthand news. "Such wonders you will see," he keeps on repeating. "Such wonders, I am sure!"

As hooks go, this is on a par with the DM declaring that the next adventure is going to be in Thunderspire and asking if anyone has a reason not to go there.

The last hook is the real meat of Thunderspire Labyrinth and is ultimately so critical to making sense of the module that it should have been highlighted as compulsory. It's called "Slave Rescue".

As we know, Thunderspire plays host to the Bloodreaver Slavers. In "Slave Rescue" the Bloodreavers have recently captured a dozen slaves from a nearby village and absconded with them to the mountain. The players are engaged by a local do-gooder (the module suggests Winterhaven's Sister Linora) to pursue the slavers and rescue their victims.

The reason this works is that the slaves provide the module's much needed through-line. When the players confront the slavers, they find the slaves have already been sold to a nearby duergar faction. Attacking the duergar (located in a second mini-dungeon) results in the liberation of most of the slaves, but also reveals the depressing news that the last two of the captives were on-sold to a gnoll band for use as human sacrifices. A desperate pursuit of the gnolls leads to the third of the module's mini-dungeons, and eventually reveals the identity of Thunderspire's master villain.

There's an opportunity here so obvious that it's amazing the module misses it. What none of these hooks provide is a personal connection between the players and the adventure. As-written, the best-case scenario sees players motivated by a combination of greed and do-good-itude. To make Thunderspire a genuinely compelling game, you need to provide a reason why these problems are the players' problems.

It's as simple as personalising the captured slaves. The faceless villagers abducted by the Bloodreavers can just as easily be the PCs' family, friends, or even the entire named population of Winterhaven. Such a simple change instantly transforms a quest into their quest and gives them a unique and dynamic stake in the outcome of what follows.

In a worst-case scenario, if all you manage to do is coax players into visiting Thunderspire, you can at least be confident that once they get there, they'll find plenty to do.

Keep on the Shadowfell Mop Up

Seeing as someone asked: yes, Keep on the Shadowfell does leave a few pieces unresolved.

The Rift: The module has nothing to say about the eventual fate of the Shadow Rift. The simplest answer is to declare that Kalarel's death ends the ritual and closes the Rift, although that explanation leaves one wondering why a garrison was required in Sir Keegan's day and how things are going to go without one in the future. A better answer, although sadly not within the scope of the module as-written, is to let the players close the Rift forever using some item they've found on their travels (Aecris, the ancient mirror, or one of the various Bahamut relics) and/or have the Keep collapse and bury the Rift for all time.

The Other Monsters: Presuming the players didn't clear every room of the Keep, there are still monsters hiding in the corners somewhere. It's incredibly anti-climactic to follow up Kalarel's defeat with a mop-up session where the players go hunting isolated pockets of low-level trash. Again, there's no help from the module - in fact, it seems to specifically envisage this mop-up in some encounter descriptions - but if you don't go with the "collapsing Keep" scenario described above, another option is to have the Winterhaven militia finally do their job and roust out the remaining baddies. Remember to add any loot your players would have missed onto their end-of-adventure reward or you'll be encouraging exactly the sort of downbeat denouement we're trying to avoid.

Winterhaven: As written, there's no good reason for players to hang around Winterhaven after they've picked up their rewards. The module suggests the village might form a useful base of operations, but contrast that with the fact that on a good day the shops stock some first-level magic items and there's no other significant adventuring locations within two days' walk. Obviously Eleven Foot Pole is going to be moving on to Thunderspire Labyrinth but for players who've really enjoyed Winterhaven and want to continue hanging out with their NPC friends there, there's really not a lot of support.

Chekhov's Gun and a Satisfying Finale

"One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."
- Anton Chekhov

The collected works of Stephen King to the contrary, writing a good ending is not a difficult task.

It's really not. It's easy, and in the context of heroic fantasy it's easier still. The key is this: that you are not merely crafting the ending to a story, but the ending to this story.

It's so easy that even Keep on the Shadowfell almost achieves it.

The principle of Chekhov's Gun suggests that every set-up must have a pay-off. Each dramatic concept introduced in the first two acts must have a part to play in the finale. Every decision the players make, every risk they take, every digression of conscience they choose to undertake will be rewarded or penalised in the story's climax.

Chekhov's Gun suggests that when the players rescue an ageing scholar, his advice will prove invaluable in planning the final assault. Chekov's Gun implies that when the players prevent the villain from acquiring an ancient mirror, they have bought themselves an advantage in the ultimate struggle.

Chekhov's Gun requires that the humble goblin that the players spared will repay the favour in the final hour. Chekhov's Gun calls on the villagers saved from the ravenous undead to buoy their rescuers' spirits when hope seems lost. Chekhov's Gun demands atonement for fallen stalwarts and vengeance for murdered innocents. Chekhov's Gun says that a holy sword bestowed by the ghost of a forgotten hero will always, always strike the decisive blow in the last clash of good and evil.

The final encounter of Keep on the Shadowfell doesn't do any of those things. Not one of the guns the module loads gets fired; instead, a bonus is bestowed on anyone who happens to be carrying one of the dragon statues they can only get from desecrating the altars to Bahamut located in the Skeletal Legion encounter.

The Shadow Rift has another problem, which is Kalarel. By now the DM is quite familiar with Kalarel's particular brand of incompetence, but for the players this is their first encounter with the final villain. It's hard to feel invested in his downfall - they can't hate him; they don't even know him.

Keep seems to know this is a problem, and spends a paragraph exhorting DMs to make him as hate-worthy as possible during this final encounter, apparently entirely by way of some dialogue that the module doesn't see fit to provide. One might be tempted to have him gloat about his evil plan, but that would require having a clear idea of what his evil plan actually is.

Besides, it's a bit late for Kalarel to gloat. This is the players' hero moment. This is their chance to kick ass and chew gum; it's the big musical finale. As DM, you've got approximately six rounds of combat to make your players feel like they well and truly deserve their victory, and any player who doesn't do something heroic is a player who's going to feel cheated when the dust settles.

So what does Keep get right in its last hurrah? The death of the villain.

As I mentioned when I was talking about the mechanics of this fight, when Kalarel hits bloodied HP he teleports to the glowing circle in front of the Shadow Rift. This raises his defences through the roof, but it also puts him only a couple of squares from the Rift itself.

This is the Rift. It's the portal to "Orcus' temple in the Shadowfell" that drove Sir Keegan mad and which Kalarel is attempting to re-open for frustratingly vague reasons. Kalarel has almost completed the re-opening and the portal is now semi-porous. Living beings passing through it will be killed instantly, but that doesn't stop an entity described as "The Thing In The Portal" from reaching its tentacles through to threaten players in the Rift's immediate vicinity.

Keep's been spending the bulk of its mechanical muscle teaching players about positioning through encounter after encounter. They've been pushing enemies down pits, over ledges, into traps and through holes in almost every significant struggle to date, and now at the closing of the day Keep deliberately positions Kalarel only two squares from a guaranteed auto-kill. It's just the right distance to be an achievable push, but just far enough to require your players to co-ordinate to pull it off.

When Kalarel hits the portal, or when players drop him to zero HP, the Thing in the Portal grabs the evil cultist in one of its tentacles and drags him screaming into the Shadowfell to meet his master. It's a great moment, because it's only possible through the combination of Kalarel's arrogance, the madness of his plan, and the prowess and acquired skills of the players. It's a thoroughly satisfying victory and it has the added benefit of having Kalarel conclusively defeated while leaving the door open for his return in later stories.

Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. For all its wonkiness, for all its typographical errors and misfiring encounters, for all its dead ends and narrative buffoonery, Keep delivers a solid conclusion when the chips are down, and it's almost sad to realise that despite all the idiocy your players are going to walk away from the table considering that they've had a good time.

As DM, it's a bittersweet triumph. The module succeeds despite itself, and though Kalarel might be being tortured in the Shadowfell as we speak, the real villains of the piece are the module writers, who emerge from the debris unscathed and ready to produce more of the same under-developed tripe.

Ghoul Warren

I'll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina. Your characters must change, and the change must come from them. Do that, and you'll be fine.
- Robert McKee (Adaptation)

The Ghoul Warren begins Keep on the Shadowfell's final trilogy of encounters. From here it's a downhill run to the climactic showdown with Kalarel. Once the players enter the Warren, they're probably not going to get another chance to rest until it's all over.

This is the game's apex - it's what your players are going to judge the game on. If they have a no-holds-barred thrill ride from here to the end, they'll walk away calling Keep on the Shadowfell a success. But if the final encounters stagger aimlessly from battle to battle like a drunken hobo before falling down in a gutter, they're not going to be coming back for the sequel.

The Ghoul Warrens gets off to a good start. Setting up the Warrens on a battlemap involves deploying no less than 16 separate enemies, which tells your players straight-up that the stakes have been raised. The lead adversary is the titular Ghoul, a flesh-eating undead which moves terrifyingly fast and leaves its victims paralysed. The backup are fourteen assorted zombies, mostly minions, who despite not requiring sustenance have begun to mimic the Ghoul's corpse-devouring behaviour.

Once players have spotted the undead, the safest strategy would appear to be barricading the doorway and picking them off from a distance. However, the sixteenth monster in the room is a Clay Scout, a kind of tiny winged homunculi, who flees to warn the next two rooms if the PCs gain the upper hand.

Intercepting the Clay Scout requires charging into the midst of the room, which will leave the players knee deep in the dead and at the mercy of the Ghoul. It makes for a compellling fight and a reasonably good introduction to the adventure's final act.

The strange aspect of this encounter is the room in the west. It has no doors or stairs, and it's only reachable by a tight crallway. One wonders who would possibly have built it, or why. The ghoul appears to have been using it to dispose of the inedible belongings of its victims, as there is assorted trash in here plus a bag of holding. It's a strange addition to the area and I just can't imagine what it was intended to accomplish.

Improvements:

1] Once my players had met Keegan in his tomb, and Keegan's children in the Corridors of the Cube, they immediately asked, "Where's Keegan's wife?" It's a question the module doesn't answer, so when we reached the Ghoul Warren I made the Ghoul the lady in question. It added personality and significance to a battle that didn't previously have it and helped Keegan's tragedy continue to underpin the dungeon all the way to its end.

[2] The useless room to the west may not feature any real danger, but it's a great set-up. To reach the room, players have to squeeze through a tiny tunnel, in the dark, with no idea what waits when they emerge. DMs who feel their game could use a bit more tension at this point should feel free to lengthen the tunnel, put another undead monster at the end, and possibly have the entrance to the tunnel collapse once at least one PC is already inside it. Alternatively you could replace the physical danger for a character moment by simply playing up how claustrophobic the experience is.

It Looks Like A Nail

This is the front page of the default 4th Edition character sheet, as presented in the Player's Handbook.

There is an adage that says when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In fact, I wrote a post about it over on my videogaming blog.

Players solve problems in terms of the tools that they're presented with. If you started your play session by giving your players a booklet of witty quotations, you're influencing your players to think of your game as one that they should approach through dialogue. If you start play by giving everyone a musical instrument instead of their character sheet, you're going to end up with a musical game.

What tools does 4th Edition give its players?

Here is another view of the 4th Edition character sheet. In this version, I have obscured with red all the portions which wholly or primarily relate to the character's combat effectiveness.

That's more than three quarters of the sheet. We're left with character name, weight, height, alignment, skills, perception, and languages known. The 4th Edition character sheet is very unsubtly telling players that the solution to their problems is combat.

Combat is what 4th Edition does well. There is no shame in having a lot of it, if 4th Edition is what you are playing. But I frequently hear frustration from DMs who find it difficult to get some story in amongst all the initiative rolls and encounter powers.

The answer can be a simple as rearranging the character sheet. The official Character Builder tool allows you to rearrange page elements and spread the sheet over multiple pages. If you want your characters to think just a moment longer before drawing their weapons, try moving their combat powers to the back of the sheet, and moving the "personality traits" and "character background" sections onto the front. There are many homebrew sheet layouts available on the web that make this change.

In summary, if you want your game to stop being just a series of nails, try moving the hammer just a little further out of reach.

The Living Dungeon

Keep on the Shadowfell assumes players will head back to Winterhaven for their extended rests, rather than camp in the dungeon. That's not a well-founded assumption, but at least it's a good intention. Regular trips back to Winterhaven help build it up as a home base, and allow for further interactions with its anaemic residents.

The problem comes, however, from mixing the "home base" philosophy with the idea of the "living dungeon".

The "living dungeon" theory of D&D suggests that dungeons and other monster lairs are not just static environments stocked with loot-bearing fleshsacks. The dungeon residents do not rest eternally in their designated rooms, twiddling their thumbs while waiting for heroes to come and slay them. Rather, they roam naturally throughout the available space, forming a kind of ecosystem, and respond intelligently to incursions into their domain. If players enter a dungeon, and then leave and come back later, they will find the denizens waiting for them and well-prepared.

Living dungeons can be great in a campaign that's tailored for them. This kind of realism can very effectively build immersion. However, 4th Edition is not well built for it, and in Keep on the Shadowfell in particular it would be a mistake to run the game this way.

Keep is presented in the "delve format" first pioneered by Wizards of the Coast late in the lifespan of D&D 3.5. Each encounter is set out over a double-page spread in the adventure booklet, with only the largest and most important encounters getting a third page. Each room is presented as a self-contained encounter, with the monsters for that room set out in full. It's a great format for easy DMing, as everything you need for the encounter is in one place, without requiring you to access the Monster Manual or flip back and forth between multiple pages. On the downside, it means many monsters are reprinted several times in a single adventure and comparitively little space is available for descriptive and roleplaying support.

This means that encounters really are linked to the physical space in which they're intended to take place. The geography of each encounter is as integral to its setting as the creatures which populate it.

Keep recommends that if players engage the goblins on the first level of the keep and then leave without finishing the rest, when they return they'll find the remaining goblins waiting at the stairwell ready to ambush them.

This is terrible advice; you're cheating players out of the much more interesting encounters in the Torture Chamber and Chieftain's Lair, while simultaneously making them replay the Goblin Guard Room, an encounter that they've already beaten once. Plus there's a good chance that "all the goblins at once" is an encounter significantly tougher than they can handle.

4th Edition encounters are, in general, carefully balanced affairs. Moving a group of monsters from one room to another or, worse, combining them with another encounter, is tempting a total party kill, and at best will be a frustrating experience for your players.

Speaking personally, the feeling of "clearing" a dungeon, room by room, is one of the more satisfying aspects of dungeoneering. It may not be realistic, strictly speaking, but when you look at gelatinous cubes sharing space with zombies, and ghouls just down the corridor from hobgoblins, there's already a certain suspension of disbelief necessary in accepting these deadly creatures living harmoniously in close proximity. A further abstraction is a worthwhile sacrifice.

Let the dungeon stay put. Let its malevolent residents twiddle their thumbs as they wait to be slain. It may not be realistic, but - and this is what's important - it's just more fun.

Storytelling

I post this more for archival reasons than for argumentative ones; it's a piece of a conversation I had today on the official D&D forums. Forum argument seems to bring out my best writing, and I like both the flow and phrasing of this piece, so here it is in full. It's in response to the statement that DMs should not interfere in player-created backgrounds, as it's "the only part of the story they truly own".

---

If the backstory is the only part of the story the players own, you're doing something wrong.

Do they not own the NPCs they choose to hang with? I mean, they're hanging with the ones that they showed an instant liking to, right, not being forced to stick with your author insertion characters?

Do they not own their town or home base? I mean, they've bought property there, right, and commissioned statues, and gone up against the local bullies and whatnot, am I correct?

Do they not own their own legend? When they go to new places, they're encouraged to tell the stories of their travels, of their outrageous exploits and cunning plans, surely?

They've got all that. Take the backstory from them and make it yours. Start the game icy cold and kick them down that metaphorical flight of steps. Forget about having them coming up from their faraway kingdoms or wandering into the adventurer's bar for yet another round of drinks.

Hook them. Get that barbed spike of plot embedded deep in their cheek and reel them in for the experience that you have planned. If you have them for the first line you have them for the first hour, and if you have them for the first hour, you have them for the session, and if your first session hits with cannonball fury then your campaign is limited only by your own endurance and the neon-fevered dreams of your players.

Dim the lights. Wait for the conversation to hush. Let that long silence stretch out before them, until it begins to tingle, until it begins to tear, and then begin. A first line, devoid of context, empty of comfort, short and sharp and implying the long and visceral road between the opening of the first act and the final closing of the curtains.

What you've experienced up to now has been gaming. Put that off to one side for the moment, keep in its box until you need it for the combat, and let the other face of the hobby show you its slow and powerful smile. It's called storytelling, and - and this I tell you as a revelation between friends, a quantitative measure of my trust in you - it is, without dispute, awesome.

Good GM Advice: Players As Rockstars

After a lot of trawling the web, I have finally found some DM advice I can wholeheartedly endorse, thanks to a fellow named Jeff Rients:

"Your players are rock stars and they're here to rock your house. [...] Your job is to be the roady and the manager and all the other people who make the concert possible."

This is one reliable way to run an excellent game, and it is a great starting point for every other way. Your role as DM is to make your players yell, "Oh, hell, yes!" Your role is to get your players high-fiving after every dice roll. You are here to carefully list the names your players are taking and the arses they are kicking.

That's not the full spectrum of possible games that are fun, but before you start getting arty with the other ones you should make sure you can run this one, because it's the foundation on which all the others are built.

You can read Jeff's full article here.

Roleplaying Is Not An Excuse

The monthly "Save My Game" column in D&D Insider is just about the only sensible thing Wizards of the Coast have to say on the topic of being a DM. I sadly can't link to it, as WOTC are pretty firm on charging you money to learn how to play their game.

This month the column's on what happens when a player wants to play an evil character; their answer is, largely, "say no unless everyone agrees it's awesome", which is a pretty good answer. It is not by accident that D&D no longer offers you the ability to play "evil" or "chaotic evil" characters, and is a deliberate choice to leave the evil deities out of the Player's Handbook.

The larger issue is this: what happens when a player is breaking the game, and justifying it as "roleplaying"? This is not just players who want to sacrifice everyone to their dark god or pick the party's pockets once per day. It's also overly-preachy paladins, emo loners, and players who want to be merchants in a hack-n-slash extravaganza.

It's important for players to make meaningful choices and have opportunities to express themselves. They should never be asked to act out of character for the sake of getting along. But if a player's breaking the fun, there's no good excuse - they need to be stopped.

There are two elements to this problem.

1) The job of the DM - Communicate your goals clearly
Tell the players what sort of game you're going to be running. Is player infighting encouraged? If you don't explicitly say it is, players should assume they're supposed to be working as a team (unless you're playing World of Darkness or Paranoia, in which case the opposite is true). Establish the genre, tone and pacing up front, and don't be subtle about it. I got called up on this one recently, and for good reason. Players want to experience the story you want to tell, and you need to be communicative in order to let them. There are no bonus points to be won for being needlessly coy.

If you find a player that just doesn't get it, and insists on acting like a jerk, be straight. This is something 7th Sea is explicit about, which other games should probably take on board. Say, "This is a game about heroes. What your character is doing is not heroic. Characters who are not heroes are controlled by me, the GM. I need you to find a way for your character to fit into this story, and if you don't, you're in danger of your character coming over to my side of the table."

You can replace "heroes" with "gentlemen", "sane people" or "surgeons who are not also serial killers", as the case demands. Your players are here to play the game you are running, not some other game, and if they're not cool with that you can ask them to leave. You don't throw dice in chess and you don't murder puppies in heroic fantasy (unless everyone is agreed that it is totally awesome).

2) The job of the players - Err in favour of other people's fun
You're playing a social game and unless you're told otherwise it's a co-operative one. That means you need to be enabling everyone else's fun rather than protecting yours. Definitely roleplay - but find in-character reasons for your character to get along, rather than creating conflict for the sake of your art. If you really can't justify following the plot while staying in character, tell the GM, and let him know what you need to get back on track.

You can say, "There's no way my character would do something so risky unless someone he loved was in danger," or, "I don't think my character would trust this person unless someone else in the group vouches for him." It's usually not hard for the GM to work these kind of things into the story.

Here's an easy first step to being a better player: every time you go to do something, ask, "Am I the only one who will enjoy me doing this?" If the answer is yes, then it probably wasn't a good idea. (Actually, that's a pretty good rule for being a DM, too. Even when you screw the players, they should be enjoying it.)

Meaningful Choices

Having just looked at the idea of using equivocation to force a result on a player without their knowledge, I want to explore the concept of choices more generally.

Players need structured choices. A player with too few choices is not a player but an audience. A player with too many choices is not a player but a DM. When there is nothing but choices, play becomes unfocused, the story becomes bogged down in debate, and everyone stops having fun. The job of the DM is to narrow down the infinite canvass of possibility into the tight structure of a story.

DMs should give players choices for good reasons. There are a limited number of good reasons, and they are these.

1) A test of skill.
The player is given a small range of options, one of which is "right" and the others of which are varying degrees of "wrong". The player is given enough information in the environment to discern the right choice, if he or she is clever, perceptive, or patient enough. The choice rewards players for their intelligence.

2) A chance for self-expression.
The player is given a broad range of options, where the eventual choice meaningfully defines both the character and the game. This may be, for example, a "morality call", a setting of priorities, or a chance to define the future development of a location or NPC. The choice made says something important about who the character is and how they think, and lets the player express their uniqueness and individuality.

3) A means for player feedback.
The player is given two or three options, with information as to the likely gameplay consequences of choosing each option. There may be a "dangerous" option and a "safe" option, a "quick" option and an "extended" option, or a "roleplaying" option and a "combat" option. The player's choice lets them direct the game towards the the type of situations they enjoy and away from the ones they find dull or unpleasant.

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That's it. They're the only meaningful choices. If your choice doesn't fall into one of these categories, then you shouldn't be offering it to the players. Or, alternatively, it should be a false choice such as the one we looked at a moment ago, where despite the illusion of choice the players proceed on to the same consequences regardless.

Needless choices will distress your players, and they'll make it unnecessarily hard for you as DM to deliver a high-quality game experience. Give your players a meaningful choice whenever possible, but don't stuff around with other ones. Your players will thank you.

The Tragedy Of The Keep

In amongst all the done-to-death evil priests and goblins, Keep on the Shadowfell presents one section of honest-to-god story, that being the downfall of the Keep and its final commander.

Winterhaven and all the lands that surround it were once part of the Empire of Nerath, a vast continent-spanning kingdom that brought light and civilisation and suchlike to every corner of the wilderness. During the time of the Empire, followers of Orcus tore a rift to the Shadowfell, plane of undeath, and used the energies therein to call forth a great tide of undead.

The Empire mounted a response, and after much battle and sacrifice the undead were driven back and the cultists defeated. Priests of the Empire sealed the rift, and a great keep was built on its site so that it might be watched and guarded forevermore.

However, all things fall into decline and with the passing of decades the Empire collapsed under internal and external pressures. Its borders were drawn inwards, and the Keep and all its guardians were abandoned and forgotten.

The commander of the Keep at the time of the Empire's collapse was a man named Keegan, a staunch and brave knight of the realm. However, finding himself forsaken by his nation, and with resources and manpower running always tighter, he let the darkness and malaise emanating from the rift take hold of his mind.

Keegan went mad; he took up his longsword Aecris, dedicated to the Platinum Dragon Bahamut, and used it to strike down his wife, his children, and almost every man under his command. As the survivors fled the keep, Keegan descended into the crypts that contained the rift, and was never seen again.

It's a great story and adds some real flavour to the keep. Keegan's ultimate fate, of course, plays an important role towards the midpoint of the main dungeon, so it's something you can use as a sub-goal to keep players alert while they're still some distance from Kalarel.

The problem is that the module gives you no way to get this story across to your players. No one involved in the story is still alive, no one in Winterhaven really knows the details, and even if you did have someone ready to narrate the whole tale, a big infodump of non-interactive history makes for terrible storytelling. World class writers often have difficulty finding audiences for prose readings; how much less interesting will you be rattling off something you've jotted down on the back of your game notes?

My personal solution was to use interactive dreams in which the players got to directly live out Keegan's story from a first-person perspective, which seemed to work well, but this isn't typical D&D-style roleplaying and it can be very challenging for beginning DMs.

A more traditional solution would be to integrate Keegan's story into the dungeon design. There are plenty of encounters that cast some light on Kalarel's recent activities, but very few that tie into the keep's tragic history. The players are able to find the corpses of Keegan's children, but these are inexplicably located after the in-dungeon resolution of the Keegan subplot.

The opening areas of the keep should have been littered with the identifiable corpses of Keegan's victims; there should still remain barricades where they attempted to desperately fend off their maddened commander. Terrified survivors trapped in tiny chambers should have left despairing messages scratched in the walls while they heard their comrades being slaughtered all around them.

The writers of Keep on the Shadowfell seem to be aware of the opportunities they're missing. Much in the vein of their "make up your own stories" and "paint the scene" advice, they exhort DMs to "bring the dungeon to life and carry the tragic story behind the dungeon's origin to the forefront" (page 35). This advice, if followed, would indeed make for good storytelling, but it would be nice, in a $30 module aimed at starter DMs, if there were some concrete examples of how it could be achieved.

Bad DM Advice: Paint The Scene

The same page of Keep on the Shadowfell which featured the completely unhelpful advice "make up your own stories" has some more nuggets of wisdom regarding "painting the scene".

Weather: An easy way to set a scene is to describe the weather - is it overcast and damp with a slight hair-ruffling wind? Is the sun blazing down with scarcely a cloud in the sky? Is the night open to the vault of a million stars, or does bone chilling rain cut through the darkness?

I don't know: does bone chilling rain cut through the darkness? This wouldn't be bad advice to include in the Dungeon Master's Guide but here we have a pre-packaged adventure that's supposed to be shouldering the DM gruntwork. A quick flick through the module shows that it doesn't follow its own advice even once. Despite a paragraph of read-it-straight-to-the-players flavour text for each encounter, the kind of evocative prose it's advocating is missing entirely from the module as printed.

I'll be clear: I wouldn't be caught dead reading flavour text to players. I'm comfortable enough coming up with my own narration that I can avoid the whole embarrassing experience of reciting this kind of florid fluff. But not everyone has 18 years of experience, and my hazy memory suggests that as a younger player I found these pre-prepped descriptions incredibly helpful. It's probably something beginning players really appreciate in an official adventure, and so in Keep, which is aimed at exactly those beginners, it's particularly horrible that the flavour text is so crap.

Let's look at a section from the Burial Site encounter:

A steep-sided crater punctures the wilderness. Near the center of the depression, several humanoid figures cluster around a collection of bones. Two small, dragonlike creatures near the crater rim stand alert and stare at your approach.

How large is this crater? About 100 feet in diameter, but we only know that from the map because the description sure as hell doesn't give any clues. The mention of a "collection of bones" conjures up either a human corpse or humanoid remains, whereas in fact these are some frikkin' huge dragon bones we're talking about.

And "small dragonlike creatures" is totally unhelpful. Are these more of the "small dragonlike kobolds" the players have already encountered? Or are we talking the Monster Manual definition of a "small dragon" - ie, something in the Large size range with a wingspan of nearly thirty feet? As it turns out, these are guard drakes, about as large and menacing as a pit-bull, but players have no way of knowing that, and for that matter they're not even described to the Dungeon Master.

The mediocrity of the flavour text owes a lot to the way the module (and for that matter all 4th Edition modules) sets out encounters, with the entire encounter description crammed onto a two page spread. This is actually quite a nice design and makes encounters very easy to run, but, like most of the 4th Edition focus on combat, it comes at a cost to the storytelling.

Question:

[1] Were the designers at least aware of the compromises they were making to fit the format and deadline pressures? Or did they genuinely think that this was adequate flavour text?

The Obvious Spy

The key antagonist in Keep on the Shadowfell is a cultist of Orcus named Kalarel. The players haven't heard his name yet, but they will soon.

Kalarel has a spy in Winterhaven. The module contemplates that the revelation of this spy will be a major surprise, and hinges some of its plot on the idea that the PCs will trust this spy until they are suddenly betrayed.

The module must be expecting some pretty dumb PCs.

The spy is an elf woman named Ninaran. She has no ties to any other NPC. She is described as "a hunter", which is D&D code for "ranger", and clues the players in that she has an honest-to-god character class. Her personality is described as "stiff and bitter", she "drinks alone" and "is not interested in conversation". She is the only person in Winterhaven who knows anything about the possibility of a "death cult" in the area, and is surprisingly forthcoming on where its headquarters might be found.

She may as well be wearing a carefully-lettered badge reading, "Hi! Ask me about being an obvious spy!"

The challenge for the DM is not how best to present her traitorous duplicity; it is how to stop the PCs butchering her like a sow during their first meeting. Players are not idiots and they are particularly receptive to a one-note stereotype. Characters who are "stiff and bitter" and who "drink alone" are unlikely to become the players' bestest buddies.

Questions:

[1] Keep on the Shadowfell presents several characters in Winterhaven that the players have good reason to get along with and like, including a kindly old wizard, a matronly innkeeper, and a ditzy elf who picks flowers for a living. Did it not occur to the developers that any of these would have made for a more surprising and powerful betrayal?

[2] Ninaran is so obviously a traitor that in internet write-ups and games I have personally witnessed she was suspected before the players knew there was anyone for a traitor to work for. Was this issue not detected during playtesting?

Winterhaven Questgivers

The NPCs in Winterhaven are not subtle about giving out quests. They hand those babies out like they are hallowe'en candy. In my running of Keep on the Shadowfell I've provided players with a printed Quest Log, half in jest and half because it is actually useful.

This is the World of Warcraft approach to questgiving. There is a lot of flavour dialogue to be had in Winterhaven, but it's clear that none of it is important to the players. The important conversations - the ones that lead to loot and slaying - are carefully emphasised through some question-and-answer sample dialogue.

Q: What can you tell me about an ancient keep in the area?
Salvana Wrafton: "Oh, the keep? It's just northeast of the village, up in the Cairngorms. But no one goes that way. Too dangerous! Monsters of all sorts! Ghosts and vampires, I hear. Nothing anyone who values their life would get anywhere near. Valthrun probably knows more."

This is pretty horrible dialogue. For starters, no-one talks like that. Also, "ghosts and vampires" is D&D code for "high level monsters". The module is giving players the signal that they are not ready to explore this keep, when in fact they're going to have to go there pretty soon to progress the plot, and there's not a vampire to be seen in the entire adventure. The infodump is saved, though, by the referral to Valthrun (a local wizard), which reveals that it's not a dead-end topic and encourages players to keep investigating.

Mediocre writing aside, this is not a bad approach to questgiving in an entry-level module. Winterhaven provides players with three questlines to pursue: they can investigate a nearby archaeological site, they can check out the ancient keep, or they can exterminate the kobold raiders. The players are given a meaningful choice about what order to tackle the problems in, while being firmly shepherded along Keep on the Shadowfell's central plotline. They're left in no doubt as to what will and will not progress the story.

Questions:

[1] World of Warcraft found more players in three years than D&D did in thirty; Wizards of the Coast were probably clever to draw heavily from it in shaping their 4th Edition. Given the de-emphasis on storytelling and the new prominence of combat, why didn't they actively incorporate the concept of a Quest Log into their game rules?

[2] The description of Winterhaven presents all the major questgivers and information sources as regulars of the local tavern. This fantasy cliche is convenient for the players, but gives them little reason to explore Winterhaven or become attached to the module's hub town. Was this placing a deliberate attempt to get players moving on to the next encounter, or merely a lack of imagination?

In Media Res

The first encounter of the first adventure of the new edition of your flagship product is something you would want to get right. Luckily, Keep on the Shadowfell does.

More or less.

Like it or loathe it, 4th Edition is about combat. Keep on the Shadowfell wisely kicks off its story with a brawl, and it's probably fair to say that if nothing in this first encounter gets you interested then you're probably going to be disappointed by 4th Edition as a whole.

The story goes like this: five travellers (the players) meet on the King's Road, an old and broken down highway. The travellers discover that they are all heading for the nearby village of Winterhaven - but before they can finish their introductions, they're beset by a marauding band of kobolds.

There's a small technical hurdle to get over in running this encounter; for space reasons, the encounter description does not show the full battle map, making it seem as if the kobolds will be spawning practically on top of the players on the first turn. Also, the kobolds, who are supposed to be "hiding behind boulders", are unfortunately depicted on the wrong side of the boulders -making them plainly visible to approaching players.

Still, these are minor problems for a semi-competent GM, and even if the kobolds are placed in their buggy incorrect locations it won't particularly break the encounter. This scene, entitled "Kobold Brigands", is more about demonstrating the improvements that 4th Edition has made to combat, some of which are:

* Variety in monsters - despite all the enemies being "kobolds", they come in three flavours, including an unthreatening rabble of "kobold minions", a pair of more menacing "dragonshields", and a ranged "kobold slinger". Plus, all three types of kobolds have more options than just rolling to hit - they're kitted out with some low-grade movement exploits, they get "mob attack" bonuses for stacking onto the same target, and the slinger's ranged attacks inflict some aggravating debuffs on his unlucky victims.

* Tactical positioning - Even a relatively unassuming location like a road through a forest turns out to be rife with tactical possibilities. Boulders block line of sight, gravestones provide cover bonuses, thick copses of trees can create a tense game of hide-and-seek, and during all this it will soon become apparent that location plays a key role in the core mechanics of virtually every player class.

* Minions - Borrowing from systems like 7th Sea, D&D 4th Edition introduces the concept of "minions", monsters with fixed damage and only one hit point. These simple-to-run thugs let you field small armies of monsters without slowing down your game. I love them.

* Teamwork - Both monsters and players are significantly more effective when they co-ordinate with allies; players who don't quickly start working together will have trouble getting to grips with these new, agile kobolds, and will likely take a mauling from the "mob attack" ability. This is one of the few places where 4th Edition game mechanics support the goal of "roleplaying" implicit in the product's legacy.

Keep on the Shadowfell isn't exactly gifted at storytelling, but the "Kobold Brigands" encounter is one of its narrative successes. Players get a good feel for who their characters are and what they are good at before they're called upon to start playing "in character". It helps prevent the disconnect that occurs when a player claiming to be "the greatest swordsman in the world" discovers they can't land an attack to save their life, and gives everyone some space to get to know themselves before being asked to chat to each other. In all but the most antisocial groups, the Kobold Ambush will create five players who are willing to (at least provisionally) work together to explore whatever dangers lie ahead.

Questions:

[1] The problems with the kobold placement were so troubling that the developers needed to address it in an FAQ. This was an encounter that was going to be first introduction to 4th Edition for tens of thousands of players - presumably it was playtested scores of times. How did such a glaring error find its way into the published product?

[2] The setup says to "give [the players] two rounds to move their characters westwards" before revealing the ambush. This was probably intended to raise tension, but during the playtesting did no-one comment that moving miniatures around an empty map (a) is dull and (b) encourages people to prepare for the obvious ambush that they're not supposed to know about?