Outdoor Dungeons

While we have not been criticized for our campaigns and missions, at least not directly, we know that they are not everyone’s cup of tea.  Why?  Because we want things to be easy on the GM.  How do we do that?  By making the enemies pretty similar.

How does this work?  Well, if you’re fighting 30 enemies over the course of six fights, we think it is easier to run 30 very similar bad guys, like 12 young soldiers with bows, 12 more experienced soldiers with spears, 4 veteran with lances and 2 officers with tridents.  So 30 guys, but they are all different stages of the same NPC.

So what would the opposite be?  Well, the opposite is what we think of when we think of teen-aged dungeon masters, and we do mean dungeon.  Do you remember those gaming sessions?  You open the door and there’s six orcs.  You open the next door and there’s a sentient ooze.  You open the next door and there’s trap that requires a very clever solution, far too clever for the orcs or ooze to handle.

So is it that much more difficult to handle these incredibly different creatures?  Yes.  Oh it can be done, but as a GM, you cannot best play these NPC enemies if they are all so incredibly different.  Strategically, it just isn’t possible to switch tactics in your head that way.  But let’s not set up a paper tiger here.  It doesn’t need to be one of these two extremes.

So what’s the choice here?  Well, there seem to be two ways of doing this.  The first is to continue to do our extreme, but in a limited fashion.  What!?!  Think of it this way:  While each individual mission has only the one type, each consecutive mission has a different archetype.  So if you’re fighting soldiers this week, next week can be a bandit group, and the week after can be an orcish tribe with shamans.  That makes sense, right?  Easy on the GM, but not monotonous.

The other alternative is to vary the enemies more.  This can be more difficult on the GM, but what it really means is that the GM is likely not going to be using the bad guys to the best of their ability.  This isn’t so bad, but you do need to recognize that this will not be the most efficient use of the NPCs.  But that’s OK.  Maybe the NPCs come up a little more generic, because they aren’t using any cool tactics or strategies, but their mere varied existence will make things seem that much “newer” or even original.

So what’s the point?  We always want to ask that question.  The point is this:  Game mastering is pretty hard.  Getting things lined up before game sessions takes work and herding cats - aka handling players - can be exhausting.  A GM needs to find efficient ways of handling that work.  We’re not necessarily calling them short cuts because of the assumptions that will lead to, but find some of those things and use them.  They really can make game sessions run more smoothly and therefore better.  Better is better!

This post was written as part of the soon to be released Paladin vs. Paladin aka All About Holy Wars, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with paladins aka holy knights as well as the holy wars they fight in, even if those wars are against other paladins (which is when they are the most fun!).

To get the full Game Masters’ edition when it is published, you will need to be a part of our Patreon project.  There will be no free version of this edition.  Seeing as this is a double sized edition (at least over 80 pages) and the culmination of most of the last year (plus) of Small Bites editions, anyone who has been getting involved in our Small Bites project is going to want to have this edition.  Interested?  Click the link here.