jack

Do you like the way I said "what could still be improved", rather than "what went badly" as if doing creative things is an ongoing journey rather than a pass/fail test? I hope so because it's hard work making my brain do that, but I think the rewards are worth it.

I had to force myself to sit down and go through all the major pieces of prep I did and ask "would the session have gone as well without it" to get my list of "what went well" because my first instinct was to assume that all the things the players did awesomely would have happened anyway, even though when I looked closer, a lot of them wouldn't.

Invent not "Who Are They" But "What are They Trying to Do"

In roleplaying -- or linear narrative fiction like books, tv, computer games -- any interaction is more interesting if the participants are actually interacting. If the PCs have a clear goal for the scene which could succeed or fail. And the NPCs are not just passive, but are pushing in a direction -- be it "make the guests happy" or "make friends" or "do a street performance (without being interrupted)" or "don't let anyone past the bridge".

But I just verbalised that dichotomy now, despite reading a lot of similar advice (goals, "what's my motivation for this scene", every scene should be about resolving a conflict of potentially thwarted success, etc)

So in the past a lot of my worldbuilding was too static -- a status quo of "this person/animal/society usually does this" instead of "is currently trying to do that", like a painting instead of a "in media res". I will try to do the opposite!

And further, not just minor conflict, but I always empathise too much with NPCs, I need NPCs who want something unreasonable and aren't willing to compromise, and even NPCs who are just antagonistic, so there is significant conflict for the players to overcome!

FWIW, I think some mediums make the opposite mistake, e.g. art, fictional encyclopaedias, exploration games are much better suited to showing a snapshot than an unfolding narrative. The same applies to larger bodies of work: The Robin Hood or Arthurian legends, or the stories about a pantheon of gods usually paint a picture of what the characters are like much more than presenting a beginning-to-end story. I think Magic:The Gathering is much better suited to showing what a world IS like than by showing some great transition, and I wish they would take an approach more like greek myths and less like the MCU.

Have clear goal

Related to the above, I tried to have a clear goal "a demon has escaped from the spirit forest, find it and fix it". I even explicitly asked people to think about a few ways that scenario could end. But I think it wasn't immediate enough, and didn't build on people's existing awareness enough, so it felt very abstract and not like a clear goal.

I could have fast-forwarded to start the party in the ruin of a farmstead, with an immediate "help, help, stop it, it went that way" or similar.

Or I could have done a cut-away scene to show the spirit demon causing mayhem even if they didn't know that in character yet, so they had a strong motivation to stop it.

I tried to establish the important points by having the party encounter a lesser dangerous spirit immediately, to establish rules of "how to deal with dangerous spirits" and "what damage they could do" and that helped, but I don't think it did enough.

More minor scene-to-scene goals (e.g. convince X to let you take her boat, scale the cliffs at Y) would also give more stakes and opportunity for establishing trade-offs -- sometimes you fail that thing you wanted, without failing the whole mission, and that makes the whole thing more interesting.

Have meaningful action resolution

I hadn't realised I'd done this, but half the session was "find out about the mission, get in a boat, go there", which was great for getting people used to the setting and mechanics, but didn't have a lot of "Can I do X?" "OK, well, roll, and we'll see", simply because I tried to seed in obstacles to the campaign, but I didn't think of every interaction as one that might go either way, even when choosing an NPC's attitude differently might have turned the conversation from "she gives you a quest" to "you try to convince her you're up to it" or turned "you get in a boat" to "oh no, a character acted out one of their flaws and now the situation is harder, can you fix it?"

Timing

I knew with six people, two of whom are 9 and 12, it would be hard to fit things in, and I pared the plot down a lot to a simple "establish premise, dangerous encounter [with fish], some more role-playing to establish characters, climax confrontation", but even so, people were losing concentration after a couple of hours. So we had a good session, hopefully memorable (especially the bees and the fighting the fish), and people got used to the characters and mechanics, but I feel like I could have done better to make two hours thrilling from the start.

Cookie economy

Because there just wasn't enough difficult resolution, people had few opportunities to spend cookies, so they loved earning them, but they didn't matter often enough so there was no real chance of running out, or a sense of how close they were to losing a conflict over something. Partly, I need more opportunities to make actions that matter, maybe I need to reduce the number of cookies.

Minor bits of prep

There were lots of minor things that would have helped. I planned to use physical counters for cookies but that was a bit risky with Ms Under One's inquisitive hands around, but I think they were much less resonant when they weren't being added and spent all the time. I wished I'd had a chance to prep my helpers a bit more specifically with like, this bit could be written small, this bit could be big so everyone can see, that are automatic if you're used to running games, but you don't necessarily know if you don't.

There were a few practical inconveniences like, how do I print out a few copies of the quick start rules and make it obvious at a glance which bits of paper are duplicates and which people should try to look at both of.

It's such a classic of exploration and adventure narratives, that the characters encounter some kind of puzzle or riddle as a break from combat. People actively want puzzles.

But it's hard to do satisfyingly in a roleplaying game. Or in a novel, for that matter, though that's a different question.

We know roughly what a bad puzzle looks like. The GM reads it out. The players discuss it a bit. The player best as puzzles talks it over with a GM and eventually proposes an answer. No-one is in character. The other players don't really do anything.

I talked about this before, but a few more puzzle rooms have come up in my Labyrinth campaign so I wanted to talk more about what worked and what didn't.

What makes a puzzle that works well?

Like other encounters, the session should move forward whether the party succeeds or fails. That means the puzzle either needs to be something they can get past even if they don't solve it. Or sometimes, not essential to the main quest so they can just leave, but even then, that's rather a letdown, it's more exciting if it's too risky to stay, not too boring. The puzzle should come to some sort of resolution. Ideally, even if they fail, they'll find out what they should have done in a natural way, so they feel like they tried and failed, rather than it just always being a mystery.

Ideally failure should look like, "oh no, they had a fight the golem" or "oh no, they lost the gold they had to wager" not "they didn't find out what the prize was, they just go away never knowing". The players going away without finding what's there is ok sometimes, but you need to build sufficient trust that their decisions about what's too dangerous actually matter for them to care and not just feel like it's completely random.

The party should interact with it, in character. Always with roleplaying situations, provide things for the party to do. Ideally there'll be an NPC there they can TALK to and find out more. Or they can get relevant information history rolls, or detect magic spells. Or the whole puzzle is in the middle of a fight, and they have to multitask. Or there's some other risk of taking damage, so there's always a cost.

And just, there should be a bunch of stuff there. Not just a big empty space and a riddle carved somewhere. But decoration. A bunch of levers to pull. Some sort of emotional stakes. The more the party interact with it, the more they'll care. Ideally the party are invested in each step. If bad things come directly from the party's actions, they can feel like, "at least where figuring it out", whereas if they occur randomly the party can just be confused.

But also, while Character abilities should help, make sure they don't usually instantly solve the puzzle. Like other encounters, it's good that they can sometimes completely bypass it with one good use of a spell or ability -- that rewards them for having it. But ideally it will let them find the answer, not just ignore the puzzle.

If you have players who enjoy puzzles, they probably want to understand it. That means, not just get past it, but understand why/how a solution is correct. Make sure that you have answers. Likewise ask "why is this there" because your players might ask. "A mad wizard did it", is fine, but have in mind what sort of thing. What sort of mistakes might they have made? What would they care about? Understand how it works, mechanically, or magically, and if it's been triggered before or not, and the story behind it. The players might surprise you with a way of finding out, and then you'll have something helpful ready-made to give them.

An ideal puzzle might:

* Have a lot of interesting parts
* Tie into the lore of the world somehow
* Have a clear reason for being there (either set up as a puzzle on purpose, or that the players need to figure out an unlabelled device)
* It's clear how it works. The characters don't HAVE to play by the puzzle's rules if they can bypass it somehow
* But they shouldn't be able to do so routinely
* Clever approaches can solve part or all of the puzzle, but "finding out the answer through cleverness" is more satisfying than "not needing to find the answer"
* There should be tactical trade offs affected by the character's abilities and personalities, e.g. who's going to take the risky position? Which position is most risky?
* As much as possible, have something where the players can experiment, but there's a cost, and smart players will get the answer quickly and slower or unlucky players will get there a little later, but not never. E.g. less "if you get it wrong, you fail forever", more "you can have as many tries as you like, but each wrong answer you get zapped/have to fight something".

It's also good to allow a safety-valve, i.e. if the players get frustrated or confused, have some "official" way of letting them get hints, maybe at a cost. Or just to go away and research and come back. Some positive course of action other than "we don't know".

Both of my parties found the location of one of the MacGuffins, each hidden in a "challenge" room, i.e. a chamber in the dungeon designed in-character and out-of-character to present an interesting challenge and reward to the players.

One was a not-library filled with wooden boxes, which shocked you when you opened one, and a guide who partially answered questions about them, with the aim of finding the MacGuffin in one.

The other was a set of altars, bowls, and knives, with instructions to let a drop of blood into the cup on the altar, which produced various magical effects, and the aim of figuring out what was the "right" way to do that.

I'd really wanted to include things like this, as it's very appropriate to the underlabyrinth setting -- I was partly inspired by things like the Labyrinth film -- and a big DnD tradition.

I knew I was taking a risk because both the first two challenges were at the puzzle end of the spectrum, and this sort of puzzle is actually really hard to do well in a roleplaying game.

The problem is, if it relies on figuring something out, it's not really a roleplaying game, it reduces to the players pausing the game and figuring it out.

I think it works well when the puzzle connects to things in the world, where there's a puzzle to be solved, but the individual steps involve small relevant in-world decisions, like combat, or needing to successfully use a skill, or losing or gaining health.

I sketched these particular rooms out ages ago and then just pulled them out when the party found them, and was very pleasantly surprised how my off-the-cuff details worked out.

Both parties successfully navigated most of the puzzle. Gp 1 retreated when they were running low on health, but paid attention to the specifics and know exactly what they're trying next time. I really loved that they had a little chart correctly reconstructing most of my notes. Gp 2 got rather frustrated when it kept seeming they were getting closer but still not getting there.

I think there were some things I sort of did but could still have done better. I should have explicitly thought, "If they get stuck, what options are open to them? Is there an in-world way of getting hints for a sufficient cost? Or will going away and returning help?" And I deliberately tried to allow many indirect approaches to get useful information, but not instantly bypass the puzzle, but I could have been more explicit about what sort of things they might find out, so more of the things they tried I could have a helpful-but-not-insta-win answer ready.