Ben Stovall Blog

Tag: fantasy

  • Ben Recommends: A Starstruck Odyssey

    Ben Recommends: A Starstruck Odyssey

    It feels like every time I write about media on this blog, it’s in a negative–or at least critical light. Partially, there’s something easier about criticism; it’s really apparent when there’s something you don’t like. It can be harder to parse out the specifics of a piece of media that made you appreciate it.

    And it’s unfair, because there is a lot of media these days and so much of it is crafted with care and passion. So, that’s where this comes in. I want to celebrate works (movies, shows, etc.) that really resonated with me; I want to share out some positivity, some reinforcement. I want the things I love to get the recognition that they deserve.

    Welcome to Ben Recommends. Today, I want to talk about Dimension 20’s A Starstruck Odyssey.

    What is it?

    I’ve mentioned Dimension 20 and other “actual play” RPG shows on my D&D blog posts before. These days, Dimension 20 is my favorite of the bunch (more on that later). For the uninitiated, these “actual play” shows are a bunch of people playing a table-top role-playing game (TTRPG) on camera.

    Naturally, this isn’t something everyone will be interested in. You might love TTRPGs but watching someone else play will do nothing for you. You might have no experience in D&D or its contemporaries, and that lack of knowledge might cause the inherent limitations of the content to fall flat. However, there are tons of people who are fans of these shows despite never dabbling in RPGs themselves, so it might be worth a try regardless.

    Dimension 20 began after long-running Internet content creation company CollegeHumor picked up Brennan Lee Mulligan, featuring a mix of new and old CollegeHumor alumni as the cast (seven total, Brennan and six players). Unlike many other actual play shows, Dimension 20 has a staffed production team making their battle maps and miniatures and a set number of episodes each season (usually 17+ episodes for the core cast, and between 6-10 for “sidequest” campaigns with guests).

    In this specific season of Dimension 20, they used a heavily modified version of 5th edition D&D to run a crazy, galaxy-spanning adventure full of exciting shootouts and climactic space battles. This is the core D20 cast at their absolute best (yet). It is one of the most entertaining and compelling TTRPG shows I’ve ever seen.

    What do I like about it?

    Dimension 20 has explored a vast selection of settings since their first season. In Fantasy High, we have teenage heroes in a strikingly modern setting; the Unsleeping City is an urban fantasy in New York City; Escape From the Bloodkeep is an adventure about Not-Sauron-For-Legal-Reasons’s death and his lieutenants and advisors trying to keep everything they’ve fought for (evil) from collapsing.

    A Starstruck Odyssey is their first foray into the stars, and it couldn’t have been a more perfect setting for them to explore. It is an age of anarchy and the chaos gremlins are off the leash. The electricity of their first time at a table together since COVID-19 began fuels the game and their energy never comes down.

    It’s fast paced. It’s hilarious. I’ve never had more fun watching a show.

    How does it compare to similar shows?

    I mentioned earlier that D20 is my favorite show of its kind, and that’s for a reason others might view as a mark against the show.

    I like Dimension 20’s production. My longest-standing gripe with Critical Role (and even my own D&D games) is when the party waffles around, uncertain of what to do next. With Dimension 20’s limited seasons and driving narratives, there’s no time for that aimlessness. It is more of a “show” than Critical Role: less of a group of friends just recording their game and uploading as-is. But I’ve come to appreciate that artifice immensely.

    There’s less room for a long-term character reveal or mysterious overarching plot that spans several months of games, but for the trade they gained a show that I find vastly more watchable. I can actively view D20 with no distractions. Critical Role I generally listen to when I work or build maps for my own games. Where you fall between those two comes down to personal preference.

    Potential Cons

    There are some facets of this show that might be a dealbreaker for you.

    • Beyond the 1st episode, the show is behind a paywall on dropout.tv

    I think it’s entirely fair for the company and the team behind D20 to ask for compensation for their show, of course. But Dropout isn’t likely a service you’re using if you haven’t already seen A Starstruck Odyssey. I personally think the service is a great deal, and there’s other fun shows on there, but that barrier to entry might prove too high for some. (But! Those three other seasons I mentioned before? All of them are entirely available for free on Youtube!)

    • These are long episodes

    And the length is really variable. I didn’t have trouble keeping up week-to-week (or catching up on older seasons while I was unemployed), but there is a lot of content here. It might be unfeasible, even, depending on your schedule. But if I didn’t think it was worth the commitment, I wouldn’t have written this post.

    That seems to be the most critical and compelling talking points I could conjure. I’d love to hear from you if this post convinced you to give the show a try. As always, thank you for reading! It’s a tough galaxy out there, but someone’s got to live in it. It might as well be you!

  • D&D: Presentation and Assumption

    D&D: Presentation and Assumption

    Dungeons and Dragons leans pretty hard into stereotypes when it comes to encounter design. When a hulking, plate armored warrior with a greatsword comes lumbering out from behind a door, you don’t expect them to be able to dance their way out of a fireball unscathed. When a frail, elderly wizard is in your grasp, it’s the easy assumption to think they won’t be able to worm their way out of a grapple without magic.

    And this isn’t a mark against the system – this is a good thing to have. Even less detailed descriptions can still communicate the shorthand for these ideas. I don’t need to say anything more than “rogue” to fill a player’s mind with a dozen assumptions about the opponent’s appearance, demeanor, and tactics. Nearly everyone in the world knows what a dragon looks like and what it’s usually capable of.

    It’s a system strength, but it can trip up an unwary DM when they deviate from these stereotypes to present something unusual or uniquely challenging. So, to alleviate the potential for frustration, here’s some things to keep in mind when it’s time to exercise your right to break the damn rules however you like.

    Symmetrical vs. Asymmetrical Opponents

    Recently, I found a retrospective video about the differences between Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II from a former Bioware Executive Producer, Mark Darrah. In the video, he describes a change in the development philosophy of the two games’ combat systems. In Origins, the combat was symmetrical: the enemies had the same abilities you could access through the talents of the classes. In Dragon Age II, they flipped the system into asymmetry with the characters’ abilities doing much more damage than the monsters’ attacks with adjusted health pools to match (Mark Darrah even mentions a specific problem where some of the companion characters might become hostile to the party and deal excessive amounts of damage, more than they’re built to handle).

    At first, I didn’t realize how this articulated a bias I had buried into my subconscious with D&D. Many of my old and current players, and even when I am a player myself, expect humanoid enemies to have symmetrical rules to the party, but with monstrous enemies I assume they have asymmetrical abilities. I inherently designed encounters with this in mind, only breaking the rule when designing a significant boss (such as recently adding Blood Hunter class features to a Loup Garou as a boss). In the first games I ran, I had players express frustration with humanoid enemies doing things they wouldn’t be able to do – perhaps this was a learned behavior that became part of my toolset.

    Regardless of where it came from, it’s been an unspoken, unwritten, informal rule at every table I’ve sat at. So, how do we break it?

    The Power of Presentation

    Breaking these norms can be an important part of designing an adventure, and it all comes down to ensuring that these peculiarities are implied beforehand. If a king tells the players about a rival nation whose soldiers have all sworn themselves to a dark entity, and now they have access to dark magic that has left the king’s army unequal to the fight, you’re more than halfway done. The players know to expect unusual stuff from the run-of-the-mill soldiery of the enemy faction. A classic, normal looking fighter might suddenly cast a spell of some kind! Awesome! It might go without saying that higher ranking soldiers have greater magic to hand, and the enemy ruler might have the greatest level of these powers of them all.

    Providing information to the players that doesn’t give away all the details about their foes, but prepares them for the abnormal abilities those enemies will have is invaluable. There’s a middle ground between surprise and perfect knowledge that’s ideal for the first few encounters with a new type of enemy. And it doesn’t always need to be well ahead of time, at the adventure’s introduction – it could be as late as when the opponent appears when initiative is being rolled to give those hints.

    It seems too-obvious, right? When you introduce a monster the players haven’t battled before, you might describe its long limbs and claws to give them clues as to how it will battle. Yet, when a humanoid opponent is introduced with something unusual in their statblock, a moment might not be taken to describe the arcane focus dangling at their hip just beside their sword scabbard. An aberration using magic to appear like a humanoid might be skilled enough that the characters can’t see all the through its masking magic, but they will be much happier knowing there is something off about their foe.

    With these tricks, you’ll be able to keep your players on their toes, but in a way that feels more fair and balanced. As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • The Witcher: The Lesser Evil

    The Witcher: The Lesser Evil

    Sapkowski’s The Last Wish is a favorite of mine. I don’t often reread books, but after the second season of The Witcher on Netflix released, I revisited this one. One of my favorite short stories in the collection is The Lesser Evil, and I doubt it’s a coincidence that it’s what Netflix chose to adapt for their first episode of the series.

    If you’re unfamiliar with it, I genuinely recommend picking up The Last Wish and giving it a read, or at least watching that episode of the show.

    I want to talk about something from that story that I’ve seen be … misunderstood by a few people. Something that’s taken out of context and bandied like it means exactly what it says. Major spoilers for The Lesser Evil below.

    The Context

    In the short story, Geralt arrives in Blaviken and reunites with an old acquaintance who invites him to stay in his home. On his way into town, Geralt came across a monster and slayed it. He hoped there might be a contract for it in the town, but there isn’t. He’s about to throw it’s carcass out, when some of the townspeople mention that a wizard in town might have a use for the thing. Geralt decides to try his luck.

    The wizard doesn’t want it. But he does want to hire Geralt for another monster that’s been chasing him. He talks about a Curse of the Black Sun, that women born during an eclipse are mutated, cursed, or possessed by demons. The wizard had encountered such a one, and tried to have the girl executed, but she escaped. He asks Geralt to kill her before she can try to hunt for him here, in Blaviken, and by her presence, lock him in his tower. Geralt doesn’t kill people for money, only monsters, and Stregobor pleads that he needs to compromise, as the wizards of old did when the curse first came around, and choose the lesser evil.

    “Evil is evil, Stregobor,” said the witcher seriously as he got up. “Lesser, greater, middling, it’s all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I’m not a pious hermit. I haven’t done only good in my life. But if I’m to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”

    Renfri, the girl allegedly cursed by the eclipse, speaks with him later. The legend behind the curse ruined her life, she was a princess, but Stregobor telling her family of the curse got her thrown out of the castle. She’s fought to survive, killed to avoid being killed, stolen to satiate starvation. She asks Geralt to kill Stregobor, as a lesser evil, and Geralt refuses again, saying he doesn’t believe in a lesser evil.

    “You don’t believe in it, you say. Well you’re right, in a way. Only Evil and Greater Evil exist and beyond them, in the shadows, lurks True Evil. … And sometimes, True Evil seizes you by the throat and demands that you choose between it and another, slightly lesser, Evil.”

    So Renfri employs the Tridam Ultimatum. Her and her crew are going to kill people at the market until the wizard vacates his tower. Geralt, panicked, rushes to the market before it opens to stop them. It ends in slaughter, Geralt forced to kill Renfri and her crew. Stregobor would have let them eradicate the whole town before he left his tower, and Renfri would not leave until she at last had her revenge.

    The Evil of Inaction

    Geralt, in his obstinance, didn’t act. Despite his sympathy for Renfri. Despite his existing disdain for Stregobor. It sticks with him forever. By not acting, he allowed a greater evil. By choosing to refrain, he chose a greater evil.

    It’s crazy how often I’ve seen the quote thrown around without irony. The story very clearly shows how that philosophy just doesn’t work. Refusing to choose doesn’t mean you are absolved – after all, you haven’t refused to choose, you’ve just chosen to do nothing.

    We can’t always see what all the consequences of our actions might be. We can only try and make our decisions with empathy and love in mind. Strive always toward good. Even if it means the most you can do is choose the lesser of two evils.

  • RPGs: Introducing Your Villain

    RPGs: Introducing Your Villain

    Villains are integral to any great narrative. Whether they stand atop a battlefield and glare at your players, or they threaten them directly for a slight imposed, or if they are nothing more than a whisper on the lips of their soldiers in their final moments, your villain matters. But they need to do more than strike an imposing figure – if your characters never meet the villain, why would they care about him? Why would the heroes throw themselves into danger to stand between them and their goals? Why would their name ever pass the player’s lips with a hint of trepidation?

    There’s a delicate balance to strike, however. You could have the villain show up, blade (or spellbook) in hand and have him thrash your players in a deadly encounter with the intention being your characters performing a narrow escape – but that’s … risky. Playing through a no-win scenario (or a scenario with an unclear victory objective) often leaves a bad taste in players’ mouths. Once you let them know that the villain has hitpoints, they’ll think they can kill him. And what if the fight goes poorly? How many characters will they lose in the attempt?

    Or, even worse, what if they succeed? What if your villain who you’ve spent weeks preparing, whose plans will be the focus of the next several months of sessions, dies at their hands? What if they become the big damn heroes, the ones they’ve been working to become due to a turn of the dice?

    But your villain must do something. There must be stakes. In most stories, the heroes need to lose before they can win, but there must be a way for the players to accomplish some kind of victory; otherwise, it won’t incite fear against your villain, but frustration against the whoever’s behind the screen.

    So, what do we do? How can we pull off something this delicate?

    Defining the Stakes

    Number one: clearly define a path to success. If they can’t win in a fight, make it clear from the beginning – cause something that makes it clear they need to flee. Give them villagers to rescue and mooks to fight, don’t throw the villain and his lieutenants at the party. Two, don’t force the villain onto your players. Not yet. Have his stats ready but leave the decision to roll initiative to the players this time. The heroes aren’t even on your villain’s radar yet. Three, take something away from the players – now, I don’t mean steal their magic items or their armor; in fact, don’t try to take anything that has to do with playing their character away. Put a mentor or other NPC that the players have come to trust and love in mortal danger.

    As I mentioned in my Beginning the Adventure blog, I like to leave the first few levels of my games very open-ended. I lay seeds all around with various enemies and storylines to pursue, then either pick one the players have become invested in, or one that I’ve wanted to flesh out.

    In the game that went on to inspire Ebonskar, I focused on using hobgoblins. The eponymous general approached the game’s starting town, a fixture of the campaign for six or so weeks of play full of fun and loved characters, and he set the town to the torch. The characters woke in the early hours of the night to the scent of smoke and bright flames licking the buildings all around the home they’d come to know. People were screaming, the heat was oppressive, and hobgoblin soldiers (several types of which they had encountered in the early stages of the game) patrolling the streets with bloodied weapons in hand.

    This scenario met all my earlier criteria. The objective was immediately clear – one, save as many people as they can and escape the town before it’s death throes take them with it. Two, the general never even acknowledged the party until the end of the event, and by then there was a street covered in burning debris between them and him. Three, the town they’d spent most of the campaign with was reduced to ash, and only the NPCs they managed to save survived.

    When morning came and the villagers looked out at the burnt-out husk that had once been their home, the characters had a villain they hated, and they had become heroes to all they had saved. And as they learned what the hobgoblin general was after, they did all they could to stand in his way.

    The Visage of Villainy

    Another thing to consider is your villain’s appearance. Your players will assume a dozen things from that first glance they get of their foe – what kind of capabilities they might have, the way they might fight, perhaps even some guesses at the kind of things they value or idolize.

    From that first look at Ebonskar across the burning field, they saw him bedecked in black plate armor, they saw that nearly featureless ivory mask with its painted lines, and they saw his greatsword, sheathed on his back with no shield in sight. They knew immediately he was an in-your-face swordsman, aggressive and determined to strike his foes down. They’d learned a lot about the usual hobgoblin statblock, which meant the hints were there for how that might be emphasized for a soldier of his station.

    If your villain is a more subdued flavor of evil, present the places that disguised devilishness shines through. In my current campaign, an early-game villain was a zealot that had co-opted a benevolent deity’s doctrine for hateful and destructive motives. She looked disdainfully on the nonhuman members of the party – and the players were ecstatic when they finally had the chance to strike her down before she could accomplish her goals.

    This is your excuse to steal the spotlight for your villain. The players will have their moments, and they will be all the sweeter with a clear picture in their minds of their foremost opposition. Portraying a villain my players came to truly despise allowed them to latch on to pursuing their defeat both in-and-out of character. There is something to be careful of with that level of investment, however …

    Portraying Adversaries Vs. Being Adversarial

    As the game master, your role is to control all the bad guys. Sometimes you get to toss in a good guy too, but you’re almost entirely relegated to the forces opposing your heroes. But that doesn’t mean you’re actively working against the party. It’s a collaborative medium, and there’s a delicate balance between challenging the players and battling them.

    It’s something that can creep up on the table – you won’t always notice when it’s happening. A quick as-you-go rule of thumb is to remember that while you are trying to play the bad guys as faithfully as you can, you are at the heart of it all rooting for the players to succeed.

    Now, I allow the dice their seat at the table unshackled. If I were playing at a physical table with my current game, I’d be rolling in the open. But the players can still hear the excitement in my voice when they throw a wrench into the carefully laid plans of my antagonists. I’m always ready for something crazy to happen that I never expected. I’ve even played into some jokey antagonism when they slay one of the big monsters in a battle or lock it down with a loss-of-control effect to communicate how much I enjoyed their maneuvers to accomplish those ends. My players rise to the challenge time and again, as I set them against harder and harder foes week-to-week.

    I will often acknowledge it outside of game when just hanging out with my players, or even allow myself a little slip to say something to the effect of “we’re not out of the woods yet” when the tide is shifting into their favor in a battle. They know I want to see them overcome the deadly opposition I’ve designed, and knowing I’m in their corner while still allowing the dice to have their say allows the relief of every hard fought victory to be something the whole table shares.

    For my next post, I’ll be throwing together some tips to ensure you can construct a truly incredible encounter when it does finally come time to face those villains down. Until then, thanks as always for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • RPGs: Beginning The Adventure

    RPGs: Beginning The Adventure

    Running a tabletop RPG for my friends is the most instantly gratifying creative experience I partake in. Each week I get immediate feedback on worldbuilding, narrative construction, character development, arena building, and several other things from people in a collaborative setting where the implicit goal is improving the experience for everyone present.

    I’ve written a handful of blog entries already about my love for this hobby, but none of them have provided much information that’s useful to begin running a game. That’s the goal today. I’ve started up at least a dozen games since my first time sitting behind the screen over a decade ago, two of which have actually reached a conclusion (which is rare, believe me), and I’ve thought a lot about ways to begin a game well.

    Here’s what I’ve got.

    Before the Beginning

    There’s a lot of things to consider before inviting everyone over and setting out the dice. The foundation, the first question, is, simply, “What is the adventure?” What is the driving action that throws the players’ characters together? The answer truly depends on how much work you want to do before the game begins. Running an adventure entirely from scratch (a “homebrew” game) isn’t right for every game master, and running from a published adventure is not inherently worse than a homebrew campaign in any way. I’ve run both in my tenure, using the Tyranny of Dragons two part module back in 5th edition’s infancy, and it was one of the two games I’ve run that ran to its conclusion.

    One of the best games I’ve had the privilege to be in as a player is my friend’s current game that started as a run of the Rime of the Frostmaiden module (which has now shifted into some homebrew after we reached the module’s conclusion and our DM wants to see if he can take a game to 20). Neither style is intrinsically more valuable than the other. It will all depend on the table.

    Where’s the Beginning?

    The backdrop for the start of your adventure is immensely important. For some players it will grow into a place that feels like home. Published adventures do a lot of legwork here, but even they can be improved.

    My best beginning towns have all provided a handful of smaller stakes hooks to pursue and investigate. I use them to determine what the table as a whole is most drawn to. In the game that inspired Ebonskar, sightings of hobgoblins had been noted by the town and the party had latched onto it pretty well – but their primary antagonist at the time was a hag that had just stolen a child.

    That’s not to discount a more linear beginning experience. When I ran Tyranny of Dragons, I used the opening straight from the book, with the party arriving at Greenrest as it was razed by the Cult of the Dragon and their blue ally in the sky. There’s several things I’d do differently if I ran that module again, but a lot of that attack on Greenrest would survive the transition.

    One of the most important things, unless your entire campaign is set in a big city, is to start somewhere that’s a shithole. My best towns – Borno’s Crossing, Saltwallow, Longmire – have all been in a decades-long slump. They’ve been forgotten towns that were once on a major roadway now bypassed by a trader’s highway or set in a forbidding locale that made them undesirable to visit. It helps to have that humble start, and it gives a lot of room for that first settlement to grow in response to the players’ actions. Even in big-city campaigns, beginning in the worse parts of town still aids in that feeling of becoming too big of a fish for the pond.

    Session Zero

    The first time you gather your party to venture forth, you really shouldn’t do much venturing at all.

    Seriously.

    Getting everyone together to lay the foundation for the game is massively important. It matters more than all the prep work in the world. It gets everyone on the same page, and can help you massively understand the type of game you’ll want to run for your table.

    You need to discuss what everyone’s idea for the game is. Do they want to be heroes that start from humble beginnings that go on to save the world? Do they want to fight liches and hydras and dragons, plumbing the depths of the darkest dungeons that ever were buried and forgotten? Or do they want to plan out the best party and make inroads with the nobility to affect change on a systemic scale?

    D&D might not be the perfect fit for every type of game out there. If you guys want to run something focusing less on delving into dungeons and swinging swords and spells at monsters, this is a good time to discuss other game systems.

    And you need to discuss what is and isn’t on the table. One of my current players has arachnophobia and asked that I avoid spiders as much as I could, while giving me the pass to use them occasionally. When they do show up, if he just says the word, I’ll stop describing their spindly little legs racing up and down the sides of the cavern walls or how restrictive the webbing is. It’ll be glossed over with no loss to the game. I have a few other things that aren’t going to be in the games I run, some rules that are hard and fast, and others that are malleable, at least to a degree. Listen carefully and take notes.

    Once you’ve got that squared away, you’ll be ready to truly begin your game. Just, one last thing …

    A Time and Place for Taverns

    Cliché, sure, but for good reason. Don’t let anyone rag on you for beginning your game in a tavern. It can be, and is, a perfect opening for many different games. I’ve started some that way, started many others, and some of my favorite times as a player began in taverns. Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done again.

    A lot of the alternatives I’ve seen presented online seem like going out of one’s way to avoid the tavern. Some ideas take a really specific group of players to work well. But even those aren’t without merit. Beginning in the midst of a siege with the players all needing to take up arms can be exciting! In Dimension 20’s Fantasy High, the players’ characters didn’t interact with one another much until they all ended up getting detention. (Which, when watching I figured they’d all be told beforehand to try and land themselves detention day one – but that still doesn’t detract from how effective it was to group the PCs together!) Even Critical Role’s 2nd campaign began in a tavern – if Matthew Mercer can “get away with it”, then maybe he’s not really “getting away” with anything.

    And, hey, maybe during session zero your players decided they just wanted to have known each other beforehand anyway.

    Before You Go

    A few last-last minute things I wanted to include here.

    First of all, remember that as the game master, you are still a player too. If you aren’t having fun, there’s something wrong. Find whatever you need to find to alleviate that.

    Second, there is a lot of times that bending or ignoring a rule can provide a fantastically cool moment. Go for it! The rules are guidelines, right? And everyone will talk about it forever! The inverse, however, is also true. There will be times that you need to enforce the rules, things that are too janky or overpowered that they can’t become part of the game. Try not to beat yourself up over it, even if you get them wrong on either side.

    As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • D&D: Running Dragons

    D&D: Running Dragons

    When I first started running D&D, I managed to learn how to construct a dungeon with success fairly quickly. My players were quick to engage with these delves and I had no trouble discerning what was working and what wasn’t. But, there in the name lies something I felt was equally essential to the experience: dragons.

    It took me much longer to parse out a successful dragon encounter, given their relative rarity to the near ubiquitous dungeon. My first attempts were beasts that did not display the intelligence present by the stat arrays, going toe-to-toe with the warrior clad in plate armor instead of taking to the skies and raining fire or acid or lightning down upon them. My encounters were in barren, mostly circular caves not shaped in the least by the dragon’s whims or needs.

    I hope to save you some time and failures. Learn from my mistakes. Become the dragon your players will fear to engage.

    Fight and Flight

    Dragons have a natural tactical advantage over most playable character lineages in D&D – their natural ability to fly. There is no greater disservice you can do to your dragons and your players than to have their foe linger thereupon the ground, its wings forgotten. A calculating dragon might only ever choose to land when it believes its claws and teeth can prove the end of its target. Instead allow the dragon to focus on finding a position for its breath attack to cause the most damage, and landing only afterward to tear apart the foe most damaged by the discharge.

    In 5th edition, dragons were given the option of using their wings at the end of a foe’s turn, potentially knocking their assailants prone and taking to the skies once more. I prefer to allow the movement granted by this legendary action to supersede any movement speed reductions, like those from the sentinel feat. This allows the dragon to escape from a tight spot when needed, without entirely stripping the feature of sentinel should the dragon be choosing to shift away from such foes without using this action.

    Stay out of reach of the heaviest hitters, pick your targets to put them on the ground, and don’t linger beyond what’s necessary for the dragon to accomplish its goals. If the dragon is amused by the party, allow them the chance to recover. If its beginning to feel threatened, show the party no mercy.

    Minions

    The true threat any boss encounter in D&D fears is something outside of the scope of dice and decisions: the action economy. The number of creatures on either side of a battle influences the outcome like a finger on the scale. A dragon fighting alone, unless its of a much higher difficulty than the party can handle, has already accepted its death.

    To preserve the difficulty of such an encounter, grant your dragon minions and allies to help keep the fight in its favor – at least until those creatures have been slain. In my setting, dragons are supported by armies of soldiers – kobolds, lizardfolk, and dragonborn. A powerful martial fighter sworn to the dragon’s personal safety could be included in the fight. There are also the abishai, presented as fiendish creations of Tiamat in the hells that are sent to support her servants. Additionally, in my setting, many of the eggs in a dragon’s clutch hatch into offspring that are not full dragons. This is where guard drakes and other reptile-adjacent creatures come from. Your dragon could call to its young in such battles.

    Lairs and Arenas

    One of the most important pieces of any dragon encounter is the arena. Has the dragon flown out from the heart of its domain to a place it believes it can weaken the intruders challenging its claim? Does it lie in wait at the heart of its lair, resting upon a hoard that would make the richest kings blush?

    Each type of dragon is different, and would prefer different lairs to operate in. A black dragon with its amphibious nature would want a locale it can puts its enemies at a disadvantage by submerging itself in the murky depths of the waters. A white dragon would wish for a forbidding mountaintop cavern with icy stretches of floor that put any who would assail it at odds with unsure footing. A green dragon may wish to battle in an enclosed space that slowly fills with the poisonous gas it exhales with its breath attacks.

    A font of inspiration I’ve visited time and again for dragon arenas is the game Dragon Age: Inquisition. Every zone with a dragon battle managed to create a unique locale to encounter the creatures, with an excellent AI that uses the terrain around it to allow for a incredible and dynamic fight. Each of those lairs were immensely helpful when it came to designing my own encounter spaces for D&D.

    Expectations can be at an all-time high when it comes to a battle with a dragon in your D&D game. With these tips, I hope you’ll be able to create encounters that will be the talk of your table for years. Thank you for reading.

  • Adaptation and the Witcher

    Adaptation and the Witcher

    Spoiler Warning: this post contains major spoilers for Sapkowski’s The Last Wish, The Sword of Destiny, and Blood of Elves, with potentially minor spoilers for the rest of the series, and major spoilers for Netflix’s The Witcher seasons 1 and 2.

    Here at the beginning, I want to make it clear that I am in no way an authority on this subject. I am not a professional critic, I am an independent author with three works. I have, however, spent my entire life absorbing stories. From early on in my childhood, my favorite types of videos games were RPGs. I spent more time on the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Dragon Age: Origins than anyone else I knew in my teenage years. To this day, I find most of my enjoyment in media in the stories that are being told. As much as I love a game like Deep Rock Galactic, it’ll never satiate my need for experiencing a narrative as something like Divinity: Original Sin 2, which I’ve played through about two and a half times since I picked it up last year (and it’s a long game).

    It was through video games I first encountered the world of the witcher. I’d seen praise for the second witcher game online and picked it up to play it myself. I slammed through it twice to see both sides of the major branching storyline and immediately told my brother he should give it a try. I received the third witcher game as a gift one year and it coincided with a week of vacation time I’d taken from work around the holidays. I played it every day for an obscene amount of hours, so entirely did it capture me (and so empty was my schedule at the time). I enjoyed it so much, I ordered the written works and devoured them. At the time, the series’ conclusion The Lady of the Lake wasn’t officially translated, so I waited for its release with excitement.

    When I heard news of Netlfix adapting the books, I had some cautious excitement. When Henry Cavill was announced as Geralt and it became apparent how much of a fan he was of the series, I was elated. And, for me, that first season didn’t disappoint. I was excited to see what they’d do going forward.

    Well. We have a second season now, and it’s … polarizing. That seems like the kindest word. Let’s talk about why.

    Adaptation: Changes Necessary

    When taking a piece of media and translating it to another medium, there has to be some changes. Things that are interesting to read aren’t as grabbing when watched. Tension that exists in a visual medium can be lost when read without expansion or alteration. It’s simple fact.

    But while change can enhance the experience, it can also be destructive.

    In season 1 of the show, there are many minor and major changes to the source material, some of which I find make the stories stronger. For example, the Question of Price short story and its corresponding episode Of Banquets, Bastards, and Burials. In Sapkowski’s short story, Geralt is at the ball at the behest of Queen Calanthe, who wants to procure his services for a task she will provide almost no details of. Geralt is reluctant, to say the least, as he has his own scruples about what he will and won’t do for coin. In the show, Jaskier invites Geralt to the ball, and when his reputation as a witcher becomes known, that’s when Calanthe tries to purchase his services.

    I like this change for a number of reasons. In the short story, it’s clear that Geralt has a reputation, but Calanthe thinks that with enough coin she can buy Geralt out of his morals. In the short story, she’s invited someone to the banquet she cannot be sure of, on a night that will determine the future of her kingdom and her daughter’s life. Geralt being present by coincidence and her attempt to gain his allegiance before Duny arrives, to me, seems like a smarter move for a queen as shrewd and calculating as Calanthe.

    And the end of the episode even has stronger characterization for Geralt. In the show, they maintain the consistency that Geralt has in the short story collections as to his disregard for the concept of destiny. He off-handedly asks for payment in the Law of Surprise at Duny’s insistence and immediately doesn’t want anything to do with it. In the short story, Geralt says that Child-Surprises are required to make witchers and he’s hopeful he’ll get one. I think this moment is monumentally better in the show than the short story.

    Other changes exist in the show I can at least make sense of. There’s a reason behind them I can understand after some thought. Another example from the first season, the timeline shenanigans. The short stories have no clue as to their chronology either, but there is a present-day framing device behind them all. In the show, I can understand their mixed timelines as a vehicle for having the series’ principal actors in nearly every episode. Yen’s backstory is just hints and speculation in the books, and expanding that for the show certainly is a sensible decision, as she’s going to be one of the most important characters. However, I do think the show didn’t need to be so secretive about the timelines. Having the background knowledge I did going into the show I knew immediately what was happening, but I think the confusion for unfamiliar audiences was unnecessary. But, again, I can at least understand why the show made that decision.

    Then there was the changes in the second season.

    Destructive Deviation

    While there are still changes in season two I can fit under the umbrella of “necessary for television,” there are plenty of others I cannot fathom. Most of my complaints stem from a complete departure from a character’s established personality into something entirely different, something so extreme I can’t imagine how they’ll reconcile the changes with the story going forward.

    The biggest offender is, obviously, Yennefer. Yen from the books would never begin to consider the idea of trading Ciri for her magic. Within days of training her at the Temple of Melitele she straight up starts calling her “my daughter.” She loves her unconditionally. In season 1, the show even set this up. Yen regrets trading her ability to have children for magic. She wants to enslave a djinn to undo that loss. Even consistent to the show, Yen considering sacrificing Ciri for magic doesn’t follow, at least not for me.

    This problem extends to someone like Vesemir. In the books, our old grandpa witcher has no desire whatsoever to put any children through the Trial of Grasses to make another witcher. Him considering in the show, however, isn’t entirely without reason. The show’s set up a new kind of monster entering the world through their monoliths, and needing more witchers to fight these new monsters, I could see Vesemir reluctantly trying to make more. But I don’t think he’d do it with Ciri. And, even worse, if Ciri’s blood is the key to making more, why would he let her be the first attempt when it’s very unlikely she will survive because of how deadly the Trial of Grasses is.

    How on earth can Ciri reasonably reconcile with these two? Yen in the books becomes a surrogate mother to her, but how can anyone trust someone who was trying to sacrifice them to an ancient evil for their own gain? I don’t think helping reverse the situation she caused is enough. And once she truly appreciates the danger of the Trial of Grasses, will she accept that Vesemir was so easily swayed by a child’s argument to let her try it?

    Even characters as minor as Eskel or Lambert weren’t spared the brunt of these changes. Eskel’s not a large presence in the books – he helps train Ciri in Blood of Elves, and I don’t think he shows up again. He’s in the games and he’s well-liked. They killed him in the show to elicit a reaction, but they did nothing to actually cultivate any attachment to this character. By all intents and purposes, he’s just another guy with the same name as the character the fans of the games know. He has an entirely different personality. It could’ve been a witcher with no name or a name invented for the show, and nothing would’ve changed. Lambert, in the books and games, is more of a playful prick. In the show, he’s just been a bully to Ciri.

    I feel the need to clarify that I do not fault any of the actors for these occurrences at all. I think they’ve done the best they could with what they’ve received. I don’t like that Yennefer is cursing every seventh word in the second season and using such inspired epithets as “Fire-fucker,” but that’s not the fault of the actors.

    I could go on and on about other changes to characters and plots (just ask my brothers and friends), but it’s more of the same as above. I just want to briefly mention a worry I have for the show going forward.

    Mistaking the Stars Reflected in a Pond for those in the Heavens

    These characters, after this season, are simply not the same as the ones in the books. That’s the full stop. They’ve been changed. It’s not impossible there’s a road to get them back to their book characterization, but that’s not who they are right now.

    The problem I am worried will plague this show’s future is an inability to accept this.

    The future seasons of this show will suffer horrendously if all the resolution for Yennefer’s actions with Voleth Meir and Ciri is a single meaningful conversation and some emotional music. And then they’re as thick as they are in the books? It will feel unearned. It will add negative value to the audience investment. Actions have to have consequences.

    The creators of the show have deviated from the blueprint. If they try to bludgeon their way back on track ignoring what they’ve done, no one will be able to trust the storytelling of this show.

    To borrow a line from Vilgefortz (from the books, as he’s yet to say so in the show), the show’s creative team is mistaking the stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the heavens. I hope only they’ll have the wherewithal to look skyward before the potential of this adaption is rotted out from underneath it.

    Thank you for reading. At the very least, it’s helped me to write this all out. I hope you’ve all had wonderful holidays and a Happy New Year to you.