Sample Dungeon - Design

I made a (an unfinished) dungeon.

This is by no means a finished product. It is an example. And this is a lesson about what you need, and what you don't!

First, scale. What is the scale? Scale means how big it is. I don't have a grid, and that's fine. In its absences, we can say the smaller rooms are about 30 ft x 20 ft and the bigger rooms are about 60 ft x 40 ft. Don't like those dimensions? Change them. Precision is extraneous. Keep it simple. This is economic prep and GMing.

Second, cardinal directions. I have no compass rose. Which way is north? You're the GM. You pick.

Third, what's the name and story of this dungeon (the context)? Call it a fill in the blank dungeon. It looks like a cave network right. Or maybe it's an old mine. Doesn't need to be special. Write a short list of three to five things about it. Who, what, when, where, why, how. It's your setting - you know best.

Context

Now that the obvious questions about the map are answered, and I assume not everyone is happy, we can talk about why scale, markings, and deep lore aren't important. Ahem. Your players don't care. OK, they might care. Nerds. The context, why they're here and why this place is or was important, is helpful. Let's brainstorm three explanations.

1. This is an old coal mine. Because of the plague, all the minors got sick and many died. While it was vacant and inactive, monsters moved in and now they're interfering with the mine restarting.
2. A small, private silver mine. The deed holder died of old age, and the heirs are fighting over how to split it. One of them wants to hire diggers and continue to operate it, one of them wants to sell it to a noble and earn some favor. A gang of bandits have arrived to sabotage it for one of the parties.
3. This iron mine operated during the war, was stripped of all the iron deposits, and has been boarded up to prevent outlaws and wild animals from moving in. Someone dangerous opened it up and is hiding out.

Nothing special, right. Simple, one to two sentence backgrounds. There's room for you to improv, speculate, extrapolate, and embellish on, but there's not an overwhelming amount of information for you to learn. It's not limiting, restrictive or cumbersome.

Design

This is where I tell you what makes a good dungeon, obviously.

Room key

The rooms are keyed, but keys are always flexible and subject to change. Note how simple they are. It does not need to be paragraphs. Don't have read aloud text. Use bullet points and keep it to a small list of essentials. Monsters and their stats should be one line. Treasure should be one line.

Exploration

Exploration means that there are choices to make and things to discover or miss. The fun of exploration is discovery, so learn from Starfield by Bethesda and put monsters, traps, hazards, and treasure. Also notice that there are optional paths! In fact, there is an optional entrance that plops the PCs in room 8a near room 11 where the 5-room dungeon begins.

5-Room Dungeon

Believe it or not, rooms 11 through 15 are a 5-room dungeon. You've heard about these right? Each room resembles a significant beat in three-act story structure. There's an intro, a minor obstacle, a major obstacle, a climax, and a reward. It's not perfect, whatever. The point is that it's in the back of the dungeon. This means you have a structured, linear ending after a dungeon with choices.

Multiple Entrances 

The dungeon has two entrances (room 1 and 8a). The reason being is because this means that the PCs have something to discover, and they have a choice about how to access the dungeon. Room 1 is the main entrance, but room 8a goes up. Maybe it was a natural opening that was used an old emergency exit or, maybe above it they build a separate structure and used it for worker housing or for a depo. There are multiple factions in this dungeon, and each gets their own entrance.

Annotated Maps

The edges of this drawing are filled in and the rooms are small. Were I to use the entire piece of paper, I would put notes and symbols all over the map. Anything to simplify the map and make it more intuitive is helpful.

Loops

I've got loops in my map. Loops make it interesting and each loop can be treated as its own zone.

Volume

15 to 24 rooms sounds like a perfectly good size dungeon to me. I have rooms numbered 1 to 15, plus 8a.

Flow Charts

Maps are overrated. Flow charts are simpler. Use a flow chart like this one instead. It's the same as the map above. The shapes of the rooms are all pretty square, but their shapes here are not intended to be literal. 

Map Key

1. Main Entrance. The entrance to the mind shaft has a sign bearing the name of the mine and the notifies trespassers "private property". Roll a 1d6; There is a 1-2 chance of encountering 1d6 bandits on watch for potential trespassers.

2. Rubble path. Recently collapsed, but narrow paths have been haphazardly cleared by its new temporary occupants.

3. Mine and pit. The outer perimeter ramps down into a pit in the center. This is where most of the mining was done.

4. Tool storage. Only old, worn, damaged tools left.

5. Bandit leader's room. His treasure is hidden here in a locked box. A bound prisoner is kept here.

6. Bandit's common room / barracks. They are occupying the mine. Bedrolls, food and drinks, and some possessions are stored here. They keep one watch dog here to protect against traffic coming from the direction of room 7 and beyond.

7. Empty room. 

8. Trap - The trip wire spans the hall, and goes up to a concealed bottle of alchemist fire and is suspended from the ceiling. If kicked or stepped on, the bottle is yanked and falls to the ground. Poof!

8a. Broken Ladder 15 ft up and out of dungeon through a hole among tall grass! It is prone to break under the weight of a human-sized creature (roll 1-2 on a d6). Two people on the ladder at the same time means the ladder automatically breaks. Anyone who falls, or who has someone fall on them, takes 1d6 damage.

9. Seemingly empty. Stash of silver ore hidden by one of the bandits.

10. Three large watchdogs are placed here by bandits who occupy rooms 5 + 6. They are roped in place to a stake in the ground, but each has 50 ft of slack.

11. Stick topped with severed human head. Goblin foot tracks below. Improv ropes has been made from strips of cloth (old shirts) and suspended from the ceiling like a curtain. Bones have been tied in them. They clatter when you pass through them. This is an alarm.

12. Goblin guard post. 1-3 goblins are on watch at any time.

13. Goblin barracks. 4 to 6 goblins, either resting or rough housing.

14. Goblin common room (12 to 18 goblins resting)

15. Goblin chief's room + his 3 goblin concubines and their treasure hoard - a pile of two-hundred forty (240) impure silver nuggets worth about 24 gp.

Wandering Encounters

Yes, you need these. They make your dungeon feel like a living, believable place, and they encourage PCs to treat the dungeon that way. Each round of exploration or movement, roll a 1d6. On a roll of a 1, roll for an encounter based on the room (see below). If you roll an encounter, place it logically. The NPCs do not simply appear without logic. They are either in the room before the PCs arrived, or they are approaching this room from some direction or another.

The NPCs are aware that they share the dungeon with another faction, but they are relatively familiar with their presence, and they tentatively respect each other's boundaries. They are suspicious and untrusting of the other faction, thought they don't tend to engage in violence or theft. Therefore, both factions are generally cautious when wandering the dungeon. If the PCs have not encountered the NPCs, then the NPCs are cautious but not alert; otherwise, the NPCs are cautious of possible intruders and are actively keeping an eye out for them. 

• Rooms 1-6, and 10, encounter 1d6 wandering bandits. They are either on their way to mine, or they're checking on the dogs, or they're going to relieve guards at room 1, or they're preparing to leave the mine to commit various crimes on the road or in town.
• Rooms 11-15, encounter 1d6 goblins.
• Rooms 7-9, you may encounter either 1d6 bandits (1-3 chance) or 1d6 goblins (4-6 chance). The goblins use room 8a to leave the dungeon to raid farms for livestock, pets, or small children.

Annotated Map (Flow Chart)

You can add more notes, but I got lazy. The contents of the room could be added. This is the apex of the dungeon map. Honestly, I don't know why maps aren't done more like this.

Alignment and Morality in TTRPGs

Moral grayness sucks and it needs to go. This post is about the rejection of moral grayness in fantasy and fiction by instructing you on the meanings of the associated ideas. I'm going to reference Avatar the Last Air Bender (AtLAB) because that's where the idea for this post began, then I retrofitted it to D&D and TTRPGs.

Spirits in AtLAB are humanized characters because they're nuanced and complex, but they do not have a mystery morality or some exotic morality. Somehow, audiences think they have some complex, otherworldly morality. This is a mistake; you simply don't fully understand the individual spirits because their thinking isn't fully explained; They have not been demystified. Similarly, there is no alignment to neutrality or evil as these are nonsensical ideas. TL;DR, you're either moral or you're lacking morality. Let me break it down.

Objective morality describes beliefs and values that are either more beneficial (or helpful) than they are detrimental (or harmful) to us, or more detrimental then beneficial, and we call these morally good (moral) or morally bad (immoral). We call morality righteous and we call immorality evil.

Amorality means without morality or lacking morality. Babies and puppies, and people and creatures who don't understand the difference between right and wrong, are amoral because they are not moral agents. A moral agent is someone who understands the difference between right and wrong and can make choices to act in ways that are right and wrong. Amorality does not necessarily mean, imply or suggest moral relativism or that one is a moral relativist.

Immorality and amorality are not their own ideas separate and apart from objective morality. What they mean is a lack of morality.

Moral variety describes different moral values held by different people in different times and places that are still either more beneficial than detrimental or vice versa. Perspectives can change and vary, but the morality of actions can still be measured. You can argue moral relativism, but the problem is anything can be justified if there is no objective right and wrong.

There is no category of morality that is separate from this (i.e. human morality vs spirit morality or some exotic mystery morality). You either recognize actions as being more beneficial than they are detrimental, or you don't.

Just so we're clear, I'm not arguing that one belief is true in real life and the other is false. I'm also not arguing that one belief is superior to live by in real life. I'm arguing that the belief of moral relativism sucks in fiction.

As an intentionally very simple argument, I would argue that unaliving innocent puppies is morally bad (immoral), but saving puppies is morally good (moral). Being indifferent to the unaliving of puppies could be amoral, but it's also lacking morality.

The spirits in AtLAB are depicted as being somewhere on the spectrum of good and bad, moral and immoral. Wan Shi Tong the owl library spirit for instance, demonstrates an indifference to the suffering of mankind due to a lack of interest or understanding in the human world. In our previous puppies example, this makes him lacking morality. It doesn't matter how you explain his reasoning or justify his point of view, he is lacking morality and his choice of actions and inactions would lead to outcomes that are more detrimental than beneficial. Screw Wan Shi Tong. He's a git and a prat. If Wan Shi Tong chose to unalive puppies by burring them in sand and refused to allow you to save them, you should not sit in awe of his exotic otherworldly morality. You should rightly think he's a git and a prat.

Morally gray characters are generally (but not always) unlikable. Don't sit there and argue that your neutrally aligned D&D character is morally grey or amoral, and that somehow means he's not immoral. The moral complexity of every situation is not like the Trolly Cart Dilemma. Sometimes you're playing a character who is making choices that we would describe as more harmful than helpful (bad choices), and the reasoning for your choice may be sympathetic, but we can still say your character is lacking morality. Another neutral character who is concerned with the balance of good and bad (which is nonsensical but a valid alignment in D&D - bleh) is someone who sometimes helps evil triumph over good, and that means they occasionally make choices that are more detrimental than beneficial. Evil is not a force you're aligned to, that's also nonsensical. Evil people are moral agents who actively make choices that are more harmful than helpful (such as murder) and are significantly lacking morality. People like this should be opposed by anyone, not just by those who are moral.

Moral grayness makes for unsatisfying character arcs. How does a morally gray a-hole change and still be morally gray? What do they change into, a slightly more likeable morally gray a-hole? That suggests traits or qualities that are consistent with universally likeable characteristics which would support an argument for moral objectivity. What are they going to defeat, a less likeable morally gray a-hole? You realize that if morality is relative, then it's equally valid for the audience to root for the antagonist if the audience agrees with the antagonist more, right? What themes are there for morally gray a-holes? Always be yourself? I guess you could have a morally gray a-hole learn the value of being an A type morally gray a-hole after struggling with pretending to be a B type morally gray a-hole. Do I need to explain why that's linear and not growth, and also not fulfilling to sit through? It could work in a comedy. Even mean old bad old Dr. Greggory House of the series House has a heart of gold and a standard of trying to save lives.

For some supplemental material, please see this amusing 5-minute video "From my point of view the Jedi are Evil! [Legends] [Remastered]" by Seals are Good.

Related: D&D Alignments - How to Use Them!

5e House Rules - High Immersion, High Discipline, GM Curated Style of 5e

This post is about rules I would use if I were to run D&D 5e. I think D&D 5e is a frustrating game to run or play and most of my experience with it have been mixed. The rules presented here are either optional rules straight out of the 2014 core books or are permitted by the rules therein.

Variant and Optional Rules, Rules Changes

I am going to use variant rules to suit the tone or style of the game.

Slow Natural Healing + Healer's Kit Dependency (DMG pages 266 - 267)

Healer's Kit Dependency applies to short rests only. PCs cannot spend hit dice to recover lost HP during a short rest unless someone expends one use of a healer's kit to treat that character.

Slow Natural Healing applies to long rests only. PCs do not automatically recover lost HP at the end of a long rest. They must spend hit dice to recover HP. Standard rest rules are used (short rest is 1 hour, long rest is 8 hours). RAW, PCs recover half of their hit dice per long rest, and so you need at least two long rests to recover all your hit dice. That means you may need two long rests to be able to recover all your lost HP, then another two long rests to recover all your spent hit dice.

First, this rule encourages down time activities meaning you are encouraged to take an interest in the setting. Rest means light activity is allowed. Go make friends or contacts. Hire allies. Gamble. Research something. Gather information, rumors, news, gossip. Find a teacher and learn something. Try crafting. If you rest in the wilderness or the dungeon, the GM is going to roll wandering encounters and you're going to die. Make the local town your hub.

Second, this rule changes the way you perceive damage within the narrative of the game. Standard rest rules make damage abstract and nonsensical. A stab wound from a spear or a bowshot can be slept off which causes something called narrative dissonance. With this rest variant, damage feels like something to treat seriously. Healing spells and items become more valuable.

Because your class features still recover normally (unlike with gritty realism), it shouldn't slow the game down too much or nerf characters.

Side Initiative (DMG page 270)

The GM rolls one d20 for each NPC group. One player rolls one d20 for the PCs. The rolls are unmodified. Whichever side rolls the highest goes first.

Morale (DMG page 273)

There are conditions that stipulate when to roll to see if the NPCs want to continue to fight or if they try to flee, surrender, or parley. 

Starting Attitude (DMG page 244)

The rules instruct the GM to "Choose the starting attitude of the creature that the adventurers are interacting with..." Either friendly, indifferent, or hostile. For the sake of randomness and emergent gameplay, I may turn this into a Charisma roll on a case-by-case basis, usually for random NPCs. Either the PC who is in the lead or the PC who is nearest to the NPC must roll. The DC for indifferent will depend on the creature or situation. Friendly will be 5 above the DC or a nat 20.

Awarding Inspiration (DMG page 240)

Players can earn inspiration for good roleplaying. To me, good roleplaying is not playing true to your character (even though that is objectively good for roleplaying). People recognize good roleplaying as staying in character as opposed to breaking character, and avoiding metagaming.

If you break character to make jokes, to ask for rules clarification, to ask for room or NPC descriptions that have already been provided, to ask the GM how they'll interpret a rule or make a ruling before you commit to your action, use game terminology in your player narration and descriptions, spoil the mood of a scene, have side-conversations or out-of-character conversations, these are examples of breaking character and are bad roleplaying. You don't have to use a voice or accent to stay in character, but those are also good. Staying in character means providing descriptions of what your character does and how they do it using natural but not necessarily flowery language, and saying what your character says how they would say it.

Players who can maintain character for an entire scene / encounter are automatically awarded inspiration at the end of the scene / encounter.  No discussion needed.

Monsters

The sidebar on page 6 of the monster manual says DM's should feel free to tweak monster stat blocks. No restrictions are given. Page 7 states alignment is part of the stat block and says it is subject to change by the GM. Therefore, I will probably never use any vanilla monster stat blocks.

Race, Class, Background, and Magic Restrictions

I don't like all the races, subraces, classes, subclasses, backgrounds, and spells. The passages cited below show that these things are features of the setting and that the GM has purview over the setting, therefore, the GM is free to restrict race and class availability and even combinations. In addition, Chapter 9 has rules for customizing existing classes, races, backgrounds, spells, and even creating your own. Therefore, count on any race, class, or background feature, or spell being subject to change because I don't like broken builds. Broken builds make more work for the GM.

-PHB page 6: "Your GM might set the campaign...on one (a world) that he or she created...Ultimately, the DM is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world."

-PHB page 17: "Not every intelligent race of the multiverse is appropriate for a player-controlled adventurer."

-PHB page 17: "Humans are the most common people in the worlds of D&D..."

-PHB page 45: "Twelve classes...are found in almost every D&D world..."

-PHB page 165: "This chapter defines two optional sets of rules for customizing your character: Multiclassing and Feats...Your DM decides whether these optional rules are available in a campaign."

-DMG page 4: "And as a referee, the DM interprets the rules and decides when to abide by them and when to change them."

-DMG page 4, "Part 1: Master of Worlds": "Even if you're using an established world such as the Forgotten Realms...The world is yours to change as you see fit and yours to modify as you explore the consequences of your players actions."

-DMG page 9, section "It's your World": "The assumptions sketched out above (reference section Core Assumptions) are not carved in stone...You can build an interesting campaign setting by altering one or more of these core assumptions..."

-DMG Page 9: "Your world is the setting for your campaign. Even if you use an existing setting...it becomes yours."

-DMG page 263 GM's Workshop: "As the GM, you aren't limited by the rules in the PHB, the guidelines in this book, or the selection of monsters in the Monster Manual."

-DMG page 287 Restricting Class Access: "Without changing the way a class functions, you can root it more firmly in the world by associating the class with a particular race or culture."

Table Rules

DMG page 235, "There are the rules of the game, and there are table rules for how the game is played. For instance, they (players) need to know...how to treat a cocked die." Topics listed include Table Talk, Dice Rolling, Rules Discussion, Metagame Thinking, etc. Chapter 8 of the DMG touches on unwritten or soft rules of the game. They discuss things tantamount to style, expectations, and the etiquette. The books make suggestions, but these are things the GM takes responsibility for.

Declaring Actions

Once you've declared your action, you can't change it. No do-overs, no redos, no retracting what you've said. No retcons. If you recognize a mistake two rounds later or after something has been resolved, we're not going back and correcting it unless it's life or death. Otherwise, we can talk about it outside the game and try to do better in the future.

Joke Characters

No joke characters. Joke characters spoil the tone (mood) of the game. Try not to spoil the tone. 

PvP

No PvP (player vs. player). Adversarial play makes your characters unlikable to me, the GM. If your characters are unlikeable, it makes it harder to care about preparing and running the game.

Evil PCs

No evil PCs. Evil PCs are something I don't like about this hobby. It's not fun for me. If you're going to make a character who's a jerk, give them some redeemable quality to make them likeable. If you do something heinous enough, I reserve the right to take your PC and make them mine, and make them an NPC villain in the setting.

PC Names

No joke names, no dumb fantasy names. I need to be able to spell, pronounce, and remember your character name. I am the GM and I portray all NPCs. Your parents are NPCs. Therefore, I have veto powers for all PC names, and it goes like this "my NPC would not have named their kid that. Pick another name or I open up the Bible."

Character Builds

Some players have fun by finding exploits with powers and abilities available in the game and mixing and matching them to create overpowered combinations to trivialize challenges. These are called character builds. Sometimes these builds are called broken because they spoil the intended way the game should play or function. This makes more work for me, the DM, and I don't like it. If you bring a build to my game, I reserve the right to hand you a pre-generated character (a pregen) to play instead, I reserve the right to nerf your character without justification, I reserve the right to do something arbitrary and malicious up to and including stating "rocks fall, your character is dead.", and I reserve the right to remove you from my game or group.

Electronics

I prefer pen and paper. If you're relying on D&D Beyond or a similar application to track your character or understand the rules for how your character works, here's a warning: if that app doesn't work or is slow, I'm not waiting on it.

Table Talk

First rule about speaking at the table: Don't be a dick. If you get mad, it's OK to excuse yourself. It's OK to ask for the GM to call for a break. It's OK to leave a session and come back next week. Second, if it's unclear if you're speaking in-character or out-of-character, I am going to treat what you've said as in-character. No jokes or side-conversations. No phones. No building dice towers. No drawing. These things spoil immersion and slow down the game. Pay attention and be ready.

Player Narration

Players narrate their own stuff. You tell us what your actions look like. Tell us what we see, hear, etc. Use natural language rather than game terminology. For example, don't say "I use my bonus action to rage, I use 20 ft of movement to move to the goblin, and I use my action to attack." Instead, you can say "you see Conan go into a rage, run, and swing his sword at the goblin's head." Don't say "I cast fireball." Say "you see Samson conjure a small flame and hurl it into the center of the goblin hoard and it blossoms into a great big hemisphere of flame." Here's another rule: Description or roleplay first, roll second.

No Rules Discussion During a Game

During the game, there is no asking rules questions for clarity, no reading rules allowed or describing them, no asking the GM for their reasoning for a ruling. The exceptions are if the situation is life or death. Save it for outside the game. Do your best to use the rules correctly and we'll use the honor system. If the rules are unclear or lacking, or if our recollection of the rules is incomplete, I'm going to make a ruling and move on with the game.

No Breaking Character (the Metagaming Rule)

5e DMG page 235 describes Metagame Thinking as "thinking about the game as a game." Essentially treating the game like a game rather than a roleplay exercise. Metagaming is essentially what happens when you break character or roleplay poorly.

For instance, your character doesn't have a concept of a balanced encounter. If you are playing your character cock-sure that the encounters, traps, hazards, etc., will be suited to your character's powers and abilities, you're not playing your character like they care what happens to them. You're playing your character like an idiot, a madman, or like someone with no sense of self-preservation.

Here's another example of metagaming. A combat round represents 6 seconds of real time. It is therefore metagaming to have a discussion about what to do and how to do it mid-encounter if that discussion is out-of-character. If it's in-character, you must wait for your turn to speak, and you can only speak an amount that is reasonable for a 6-second time span.

The best tip to avoid metagaming is to stay in character as much as possible. Every time you break character, you're breaking immersion and you're slowing the game down. I challenge you to try to go without breaking character as much as possible like Liam O'Brien from Critical Role.

No Speech or Insight Checks, Limited to No Ability or Skill Checks

This is a player-skill table, not a character-skill table. Per the DMG, page 236, under the subheading Ignoring the Dice, the 5e DMG says that it is valid for a Dungeon Master to "...use dice as rarely as possible. Some DM's use them only during combat and determine success or failure as they like in other situations."

I believe that the player should use their own intelligence, wisdom, charisma, and luck. This is called player skill over character skill. Treat the NPCs like real people, not like an opportunity to roll-to-solve (tm) a problem; Try to find a solution in-character by using curiosity and creativity. Try to make the NPCs happy or satisfy their needs to get something in exchange. I see game mechanics for social interaction as unnecessary, and the results of their use often feel contrived and unsatisfying. I also think they disincentive player engagement.

Also refer to these passages for social interactions specifically:

-PHB page 186 Results of Roleplaying: "The DM uses your character's action and attitudes to determine how an NPC reacts..." "Pay close attention to the DM's portrayal of the NPC's mood, dialogue, and personality. You might be able to determine an NPC's personality traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds, then play on them to influence the NPC's attitude." "Interactions in D&D are much like interactions in real life..."

-DMG page 244 Social Interaction: "Some DMs prefer to run social interaction as a free-form roleplaying exercise, where dice rarely come into play..."

Interpreting the Dice

5e DMG page 242 has allowances for failing forward or succeeding at a cost if the roll just shy of a difficulty class, for degrees of success or failure where additional effects can occur for when a roll is +/- 5 of a difficulty class, and treating 1s and 20s as special even outside of combat. I will use these situationally and they will be entirely case-by-case. I won't use these as opportunities to be generous or cruel to the players; instead, I'll use them to make the game more interesting or to manage the pacing of the game.

Rules Lite

Conversation is the medium of the game, not the rules or mechanics. I will repeat this for emphasis. Conversation is the medium of the game, not the rules or the mechanics. I as the GM am the referee of the rules, and I will be using them sparingly because I don't like most of them. If something can reasonably succeed, I'll probably just say it works. If something is stupidly impossible, I'll probably just say it fails. Consider the passages below:

-DMG page 4: "And as a referee, the DM interprets the rules and decides when to abide by them and when to change them."

-DMG page 4: "...but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game."

-DMG page 4, How to Use This Book: "The last part helps you to adjudicate the rules of the game and modify them to suit the style of your campaign."

-DMG page 5 subheading Part 3: Master of Rules continued: "As a referee, the DM acts as a mediator between the rules and the players. A player tells the DM what he or she wants to do, and the DM determines whether it is successful or not, in some cases asking the player to make a die roll to determine success..." and "the rules don't account for every possible situation...How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you."

Grounded Fiction

Fiction / fantasy / sci-fi doesn't mean anything goes. The logic of the make-believe world is based on out real world (but is not strictly realistic or simulative). Assume if something can work in real life, it works like that in the game. The reason why we make this assumption is because the real world is our shared point of reference. In other words, don't ask what the game rules allow, ask what the world allows. This makes the game intuitive. Apply our basic understanding of the real world to the make-believe world to understand places, people and character actions. This is how I will make rulings and this is how I expect you to decide what your character can do in a given situation.

More to Come

This is a start. I expect to find more problems with the game and to find more solutions to them as I go were I to actually run 5e. I expect that this post could be revisited and expanded upon by a lot.

Related Post: House Rules for Faster, More Immersive Games

Related Post: How to do Speech in TTRPGs without Dice! (2026)

Related Post: Primer for No Speech Mechanics in TTRPGs (2024)

First Time GM Checklist

If you've never, ever been a Game Master (GM) before or maybe even never even played in a TTRPG before, here's a simple first-time GM checklist:

Starter Checklist

1. A place to play

2. People to play with

3. A beginner-friendly game to play (CairnRPG.com. Read it in your web browser!)

4. A beginner-friendly adventure to run (Tomb of The Serpent King)

5. Paper and pencils 

6. Dice (Google search for google dice and you can roll dice in your browser)

I'm going to assume you have items 1, 2, 5, and 6 under control and skip to item 3.

Beginner-Friendly Game to Play

There are a few games presented as easy, but Cairn is a combination of rules lite and free that makes it simple for absolute beginners. It's got a lot of good principles for playing and running games too which are a must-read. Reading the entire first edition (here) may take fifteen minutes.

Other beginner-friendly games that are free include Basic Fantasy RPG, Olde Swords Reign, and The Black Hack. I highly recommend Index Card RPG (ICRPG) which has a free QuickStart set of rules here! Any are good. They are all derived from one version of D&D or another. Basic Fantasy RPG is a retroclone of an D&D Basic from the 1980s. Olde Swords Reign is a combination of 5th edition and 0th edition D&D with some modern changes. The Black Hack is a hack of D&D, and I mean a hack. ICRPG is very rules-lite and DIY, and it is basically modern D&D stripped down to only the parts that matter and refined into a fast and intuitive game with new game design ideas and style. Pick one game, but definitely read the Principles in Cairn (Cairn RPG).

A Beginner-Friendly Adventure to Run

There may be many adventures marketed as starter adventures, but how many of them are actually beginner-friendly? I don't know. But I recommend Tomb of the Serpent King. It's a teaching dungeon, and it's free. You can download a pdf and you can view it on this blogger page at CoinsandScrolls.blogspot.com. In one game session, you won't be able to play the whole dungeon, so I would suggest only reading up to Room 19. End your game there, leave people wanting more.

Don't stress. Don't take it too seriously. Read your rules. Read your adventure. Get your people together. Make some characters. Play for two-three hours. Call it a night.

Bonus Checklist

Think mood. You want to set the mood if you can. It will improve the experience. You turn down the lights for a movie, right?

1. Something to look at

2. Something to listen to

3. Lightning

4. Food

Something to look at

If you've never done this before, if everyone has never done this before, it might be kind of awkward to have nothing to look at but each other's faces. Put something on your table as a visual. Make it a centerpiece, a piece of art. A big poster board with a crudely drawn map of the dungeon is good. I like to draw the map on a white board and put that down. Everyone can use coins or candies or chess pieces to track their characters. I also have Jinga Blocks. I can put two at a right angle and call that a corner. Get four corners and you suggest a room. Stack two next to each other and put a third block on top and that's a doorway. Get creative.

Something to listen to

Not rock n' roll, not hip hop. Think one of those four-hour long mood tracks you can listen to on Youtube. Commercials will spoil the mood, so if possible, find something ad-free.

Lighting

If you can get the lights down, do it. Just do it. Even if you're not playing a horror game. Candles or flashlights or lanterns. Set the mood.

Food

Get something that is simple, like pizza. If you have to use utensils and serve ware, that's too much. I think it's fair that the first time is on the host, after that everyone pitches in.

Valuable TTRPG Concepts You Should Know! - Managing Expectations

This is a list of concepts that casual TTRPG gamers don't seem to be familiar with or even aware of. I have written them down and provided brief explanations because this is the TTRPG language. I find that having an understanding of more concepts is beneficial for everyone. These are in no particular order.

Genre vs Theme: Genre describes the style or aesthetic of story. Genres include action, tragedy, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, horror, etc. Themes are the ideas or substance. Theme is the moral of the day or the deeper, complex, substantive point for telling the story. Themes are things like love conquers all, violence begets violence, never give up hope, etc. Themes are recurring ideas found among characters and setting. I add this because a big-ish YT channel got this wrong recently!

Fantasy (genre): Means fiction with magic or supernatural stuff. Does not specify what kind or how much! Note that fantasy does not mean anything goes!

High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy: Unintuitively, these terms describe the type of setting, not necessarily the quality or quantity of the fantastic elements in and of themselves. High fantasy describes a completely fantastic world with its own fantastic history, culture, myths, etc. Low fantasy describes earth or an earth-like setting with some fantastic elements added to it.

Sci-Fi vs Space Opera: Science Fiction is speculative fiction meaning it is fiction that speculates about hypothetical technology and how it might affect people or society. In other words, you ask "what would happen if we had X technology?" and you speculate about it in the form of a story. Sci-fi may also try to make a commentary on how modern technology affects people or society by showing the long-term consequences. Conflicts with technology or because of technology are the substance of sci-fi. It usually tries to be scientific although there may be some not-so-scientific tropes or story-telling conventions. A space opera on the other hand is fiction that is set in a futuristic setting with futuristic tech, but the substance of the genre is not the tech. Instead, a space opera tries to be a about mythology or drama with a futuristic setting as a backdrop. It's also called fantasy in space.

Trope vs Cliche: A trope is a word that means a story telling convention, meaning some recurring story or method of telling a story, like slaying the dragon or rescuing the princess. A cliche is a convention that has been so overused that its intended effect no longer works. In many works of fiction, overcoming an adversary via a physical confrontation is a convention. There's nothing wrong with a trope, but it a convention has lost interest to you, then it would be a cliche to you, and cliche only becomes a problem when it affects large portions of the audience.

Stakes: The stakes are what you stand to lose if you fail to achieve your goal. If you fail and the only thing that happens is you die, then the stakes are your life. If failure also means the death of your people, then the fate of your people are also what's at state. High fantasy tends to have epic states like the fate of the world. Low fantasy tends to be about personal or local stakes. Either way, there should always be personal stakes because that's where the drama really comes from. You can't have tension unless something you care about is at stake.

Conflict: I want something. You want something. When we both can't have what we what, then we're in conflict. Conflict is present because someone must lose.

Tone: The mood or atmosphere. If you're in a scary scene, the mood should be scary. Participant buy-in is needed. You would be a spoil sport if you made a joke about farts or palindromes.

Player Skill vs Character Skill: The distinction between the players using their own cleverness to solve problems in the game, and the players using their character's statistics and powers to do that instead.

Gritty Survival or Cinematic Action: On the one hand, you have a game with the intent to be somewhat realistic. If you get stabbed, you're stabbed, and you treat it like that. Cinematic on the other hand, you might just imagine you're a movie action hero who can shrug off any sort of stab wound as long as he has HP to spare.

Player vs Player: Are players and their characters allowed to be adversarial towards each other?

Dark Themes and Subject Matter (Grimdark, Nobledark, Grimbright): Some people act like necromancers are just wizards who are slightly creepy. Some people treat necromancers like villains who violate taboos of life and death.

Simulationist or Abstractionist: Simulationists like to simulate things. I use my 5 foot step and I swing my sword for the monster's head. That's a negative whatever penalty because it's a called shot and because the monsters' in a higher weigh class, yada yada yada. Abstractionists like to simplify things. I run into melee range and I swing sword for the monster's head. Roll dice.

Game Balance or Nah: Balancing the game so that the obstacles always suit the character's skill; or, assign a difficulty based on what seems reasonable were the obstacle to be present in real life.

Martial Realism: Considerations for how weapons and wrestling would really work in real life and trying to model that with rules.

Reputation: Fame and Infamy: Your character earns a reputation for their accomplishments and their behavior. This reputation can precede them and be either detrimental or beneficial.

Moral Objectivity (Black and White) vs Moral Subjectivity (Grey): Some people believe there is an objective good and bad, right and wrong. Others disagree, and they want to represent moral ambiguity and complexity.

Heroic Player Characters, Villainous Player Characters, or both?: Some players want to be the heroes, some want to be the villains.

Zero to Hero: You begin with nothing! You're not special! But you can earn greatness!

Combat as Sport vs Combat as War: Combat is either treated like a game or a sport; it's fair and balanced. Or, combat is treated like a life and death, deadly activity and you fight to survive rather than win! There's no guarantee of balance. You make sure you never have a fair fight because that's a good way to die!

Narrative Driven vs Mechanics Driven: Is the logic of the narrative the criteria that decides what can and cannot happen in a scene or situation, or do you prefer to defer to game mechanics and rules?

Grounded Fiction: The fiction of the game is grounded meaning relatable characters, plausible scenarios, and realistic environments are emphasized. If the rules of the game conflict with the fiction, the fiction beats the rules. The difficulty of the game should suit a grounded fiction rather than a game balanced for the sake of a fair experience.

Rulings vs Rules: Rules are not perfect, and so in the absence of clear or complete rules, the game master makes a ruling. That's normal. However, there are some rules-lite games with looser rules intended to allow for more rulings, and there are games that try to make the rules as complete and clear as possible to eliminate or reduce the need for rulings. Then, there's also people who prefer the rules as they are written, and there are people who are not satisfied with the rules-as-written, for instance if the rule conflicts with the logic of a scene or situation, and they like to take liberties.

Metagaming: This word may be understood differently by different people. It could be understood as using knowledge that you the player possess but which your character does not possess. It could also be understood as thinking about the game as a game rather than a narrative exercise. Both understandings are similar if you think about them.

Metacurrency: Meta currency is a resource that the player has for the game, but the character is not aware of the resource. Examples are luck dice or inspiration. Using metacurrency necessarily means metagaming when the player makes a decision based on the availability of the metacurrency.

Ludo Narrative and Ludo Narrative Dissonance: Ludo is Latin for I play (that's the best I can do). Therefore, Ludo Narrative means I play the narrative or I am not just playing a game, I'm playing a narrative. We are engaging with the story as much as we are engaging with the game. Ludo Narrative Dissonance is a sensation of mental discomfort or disappointment, like a breaking of the suspension of disbelief, that comes from the game mechanics conflicting with the narrative. For example, if I'm playing a game with HP and I get stabbed, the game rules model the injury abstractly as HP loss, not a stab wound. If I can rest and immediately recover the lost HP, then does that not mean I can nap off a stab wound? That's unsatisfyingly immersion breaking to some, but not others.

Factions: A group of people with a shared set of values or goals. Factions have their own identity, history, structure, etc. Factions usually compete with other, opposing factions. Some people might suggest that factions should have an ally faction, a rival faction, and an adversarial faction.

In-Character vs Out-of-Character: When in character, you are pretending, you are roleplaying; You are portraying the character in the scene. When out-of character, you are the gamer at the table asking about rules and rolling dice.

Pacing: The rate that the story moves. A slow paved story has a lot of those little moments or minutiae like walking to a wagon, taking your gear off slowly, sitting down at the campfire, organizing your thoughts and taking a breather. Fast pacing is returning to camp, turning in, and waking up the next day.

Immersion: immersion is the sensation of feeling like you are in the moment, and your awareness of everything else fades. You lose track of time. Some players play for this sensation and spoiling it ruins the fun for them.

Horror (genre): Horror is intended to evoke a sensation of fear or disgust in the audience. Anything that causes feelings of helplessness and uncertainty are beneficial. The characters tend to be victims or survivors rather than heroes. For these reasons, horror is incompatible with modern D&D if the game is balanced.

Exploration (game play): The act of searching for things that are hidden. It is satisfying to discover valuable or interesting things based on choices you made when there was a possibility of missing them.

Socialization or Social Interaction (game play): Also known as social interaction, is a type of game play that involves speaking to GM controlled characters. Challenge can be found in using different methods of speech and social engineering to establish and re-establish power dynamics to earn resources. Rewards can be information, relationships, opportunities, and material support (money or items).

Narration: Using narrative language rather than game terminology to describe actions, features of an object, sensations, etc., often associated with the role of the GM. Since the medium of the game is conversation, the players should use narration to describe their own actions to establish the placement of their character in each scene and communicate intent of actions.

Railroad vs Sandbox: These two terms describe different kinds of games. A railroad game is one where the Game Master gives the players one overarching goal, and they have a very narrow range of meaningful choices to make on their way. It emphasizes a narrative that is plotted out in advanced, and the players just go from plot point to plot point. Obstacles may have intended solutions, meaning that if the player attempts to overcome or circumvent an obstacle in an unintended way, they risk derailing or sabotaging the pre-planned narrative in such a way that they might not be able to achieve that intended end-goal. A sandbox game is one that allows player freedom, exploration, and self-directed goals with an open-world environment. The players bring their own goals to the game, and they search the world for opportunities to achieve their goals. Opportunities are discovered via exploration, and obstacles have no right solution..

Diegetic: means something that is occurring or existing within the context of the setting. Wounds and injuries are diegetic, but hit points are not.

Inciting Incident: When an event occurs that causes a character to deviate from pursuing their general goal in their ordinary life, this is the inciting incident. This event leads to the call to adventure.

Call to Adventure: When an event occurs that demands that the character act that will involve struggle, this is the call to action. Answering the call leads the hero down the heroes journey.

Twist (Reversal): An event that is logical yet unexpected and that changes the anticipated course or direction of the story, usually to the detriment of the main character(s). In three-act structure, this usually occurs at the end of Act I (set up) and the end of Act II (execution).

If you want to see how these concepts apply to real table dynamics, check out my Managing Expectations posts; they turn this vocabulary into practical tools for tone, realism, and player behavior.

Managing Expectations in TTRPGs - Discussing What We Do and Don't Like

Managing Expectations in TTRPGs - GM Expectations Framework

Managing Expectations in TTRPGs - Discussing What We Do and Don't Like

When it comes to TTRPGs like D&D and Pathfinder (pronounced pat-h-fin-der), I think the trickiest part is managing expectations. That is to say that I have had a lot of personal experience with trying to run one kind of game, and players trying to play another kind of game, or vice versa if I'm a player. For me, it's very unsatisfying to tell players, "I'm running a game for heroic characters", and someone still brings a joke character, and someone else still brings a character of neutral alignment and needs some extra motivation to do anything. Ugh.

This article is my attempt to work out a way to manage these expectations. The first thing is to identify the motives, experiences, interests and influences of the participants. Some people's only exposure to fantasy might be Adventure Time. You might think I'm making that up, but I'm not! I have played with that guy. He didn't know any of the classic fantasy conventions and he played like it.

We're going to start with some useful vocabulary. Ask and discuss these questions:

• Influences or Interests: What movies, books, comics, video games, tv, etc. have you seen? that you like? What do you like about them?
• Disinterests: What do you dislike about TTRPGs, genres, literary conventions, etc. Some people are open to anything, some people aren't! For people with discerning tastes, this is as important.
• Experiences: Previous experiences with TTRPG(s). What did you like about them, what did you not like? Players may have learned some things that you would like them to unlearn.
• Motives: Why are you interested in TTRPGs? What about this hobby is fun for you? What makes you want to play a TTRPG?

My Interests: My favorite work of Fantasy might just be Kentaro Miura's Berserk. Let's discuss why. The art is badass. The dark themes are interesting. The scenarios are interesting. There's a sort of cosmic horror to it. Guts is just this regular guy who manages to become above average by sheer effort and a will to survive. He has an extraordinary tenacity for survival in the face of overwhelming odds. His opponents are often otherworldly and nightmarish in power and scale but they have such simple motives like eating people or avoiding boredom. He even earns their respect with his will and fortitude. What else? It's otherwise a low-magic, earth-like setting. The horror elements almost replace the fantastic elements, and I think that's really cool!

I also like Vampire Hunter D for some similar reasons, and because I think it's stylish as hell. In this setting, Vampires became the rulers of the earth. To the extent that the word noble became synonymous with vampire and few people use the word vampire. Humans are cattle. That's pretty dark. The titular character is D, and he's a Dhampir. That means he is a half human half vampire. Because of this, he's rejected by both humans and vampires. He's also secretly the most badass character in the setting. The question is what does he want and why? It seems to me that the author intends to leave these things up to interpretation or inference, but we are to come away believing that this is not a character with ordinary motivations.

Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow was pretty fucking stylish too. In this movie, everyone's dressed in a period era outfit, there's only one monster and he's an absolute badass, no one understands the monster or magic, and the fantastic elements are not casually accepted by anyone. They're all as wild as if you went out for a walk and met an extra-terrestrial.

Generally, low fantasy settings or earth-like settings where the supernatural or extraordinary are rare and maybe even intrusive upon the ordinary world are interesting. Monsters are monsters! Magic is dangerous or even forbidden. The elements of the fantasy that make fantasy unique are kept low so that they when they are used, they have a greater effect, like a guy who never says curse words finally dropping an f-bomb. I also like the low fantasy, dark fantasy Campaign Diaries of Professor DM on the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel!

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean is cool for similar reasons. The fantastic elements are presented as curses, and they present the supernatural as dangerous and mysterious. If you had to assign all the characters in that movie a D&D class, they would either be fighters or thieves (rogues). 

My Disinterests: You might think I don't actually like fantasy, and there might be something to that, but I don't like pure horror and I'm not into the horror TTRPGs because in those you play as a survivor or a victim. I do want to be a hero. Fantasy can be pretty @#$%^ nerdy. The way nerds use wizards, vampires, demons, and lycanthropes can be really cringy because they make it mundane and ordinary. Monsters aren't monsters anymore, they're just like cat people or something. And then there's people who think it's racist to kill monsters and take their stuff, and those people are just detrimental to the hobby. I don't like elves, dwarves, hobbits, and some of the other fantastic races that have become standard like Tieflings, half-orcs, and dragonborn (dragon people). These things make me feel like I'm watching the Muppets. I don't like that magic is common and ordinary, like a skill or an art that people can just pick up and learn. What's so special about magic if everyone can do it?

My Experiences: I have mostly played 5e D&D. It's pretty lame. There's furries. There's scalies. Goblins, bugbears, and other monsters are humanoids or goblinoids, and so they're treated like an exotic people. I don't like that. Demons from the Christian hell are not people. Even goblins should be monstrous. D&D makes me feel like I'm Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabit. Tonally, it's lame. Players play these goofy characters, or they make characters who are kind of goofy conceptually but are intended to be played serious. It makes it difficult for me to care. I don't care about non-humans, and I don't care to humanize the non-humans. I'm hoping for something more serious, but this can't help but feel cartoonish. Besides that, the player characters get pretty powerful, and after a while they play like they know they are. Powerful player characters are antithetical to horror. I have played mostly in Faerun and Eberron, and slightly in Draconlance, Spelljammer, the Underdark, and Greyhawk; but I think 5e modernized it all made it all lame. It's casual and accessible and safe. Even the modern Ravenloft setting is kind of watered down and plebian. I also hate chaotic and evil player characters! They're dicks and they spoil someone's fun. I want PCs who can play as a damn team. And I don't want to be a villainous character, and I don't want to be a character who would particularly tolerate villainous companions or allies. But when you play D&D, this game permits evil and chaotic player characters, and so do most GMs, so I have to put up with it.

Motives: I have lost interest in tv, movies, comics, anime, and books because I think it used to be good, now it's not; but I still want to indulge in some narrative entertainment. I want an outlet for creativity, I want to socialize, and I want to play a game!

I think this was a particularly interesting exercise and I recommend you all do the same.

Here's what I learned about myself: I am not down for any game.

I want an earth-like or low fantasy, human-centric setting where magic and monsters are rare and dangerous. The line between fantasy and horror is blurred. Monsters are not people, they are monsters, and they are opposed to humanity. Magic-users are rare, maybe even feared and hated. Stakes are low, not epic. Characters are generally relatable; scenarios are generally plausible; environments are generally realistic. Your character is an ordinary or above average person. You are not great, but you can earn greatness. You have a chance to become a hero, and I want you to aspire to be, but if you become a villain, I take your PC and make them an NPC in my setting, and they become the property of the me, the GM. Don't do anything you wouldn't do in real life. Play your character like you care what happens to them. This is low, dark fantasy.

This post pairs well with my five‑rule guide for managing expectations, which turns these ideas into practical tools you can use in Session Zero and character creation.

If you want a deeper foundation for the ideas in this post, my TTRPG Concepts glossary explains the vocabulary behind tone, realism, stakes, immersion, and playstyle.

Types of Fun (MDA Framework)

I want to give you some GM advice that no one teaches except for the Angry GM. Go read his article(s)  on his website on this subject if you think I suck at it. The subject is MDA Framework and how you can use it to make your game appeal to different players.

You every hear that condescending "having fun wrong" comment on the internet? Sure you have. Usually in internet conversation where someone tells someone else that "all fun is valid". Ugh. Look man, I'm sure some people have fun punching puppies or kicking kittens. That's an extreme example, but I'm not going to work out an intelligent example right now, I'm trying to sell you on an idea. You might understand what you have fun doing, and you might understand why it's fun for you, but can you say you understand how other people have fun or why that stuff is fun to them?

Let me introduce you to a concept called MDA Framework. MDA means Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics, and it's a concept that tries to explain how video game players have fun. Here's the simplest break down. The Mechanics of a game are what the designers see, but the player doesn't perceive the mechanics, they perceive the Aesthetics (or sensations). In D&D 5e for a very specific example, the game designers have worked out the math so that the players succeed about 65% of the time at things their character is good at. Those are the mechanics. The player doesn't recognize this though because the mechanics are not explained like that in the official books; instead, what the players recognize is that they succeed an amount of time that feels just right. Not too much so that the game isn't too easy, but not too little that the game is too hard. It's an aesthetic; a sensation or a feeling.

What about the Dynamic in MDA? Shut up. That's a stupid question. Ahem.

What is the value of the MDA Framework? Because the people who invented the MDA Framework came up with a list of different ways that players have fun. This is a pretty clever idea. There's a list of eight different ways (or sensations) that people have fun, with other ways being less common but also identified.

One aesthetic is called challenge. That's a pretty easy to recognize concept. Fun comes from challenge when people derive pleasure by succeeding based on choices they made when failure was a possibility. That's easy to understand, right? Now, how about the aesthetic of fellowship. Fellowship is a type of fun that is derived from a sense of belonging. To simplify this, there are people who like to play multiplayers because they like being included in a group or team. Belonging is more valuable to them than the activity.

So, go look up the list of eight MDA aesthetics because it's worth having an understanding of the different ways there are to have fun. Different people have fun in different ways and being able to identify those ways are going to make you better at social forms of play or producing a product intended to entertain an audience.

Then there's also GNS Theory. GNS stands for Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism. I think these words are pretty self-explanatory. GNS Theory is simpler than MDA and a bit less useful. One difference is that GNS theory uses Simulationism to describe a person who wants an experience that they can be immersed in. Something that disrupts immersion, like a game mechanic that feels arbitrary for the sake of using a game mechanic and that does not adequately simulate the make-believe world, spoils immersion. That's a fine and dandy concept! But MDA describes fantasy as an aesthetic of wanting a make-believe world, expression as wanting to create a character to express yourself and narrative as an aesthetic of a satisfying story, and MDA presents these as distinct where as GNS's Simulationism might lump these kinds of fun but not adequately describe them as separate.

MDA is more complicated than D&D's attempt to explain different kinds of players: Problem Solvers, Hack-n-Slashers, and Actors. D&D will cause you to overlook sensations, like fellowship. How many of you have seen GMs asking for help engaging certain players in their games? Some players are engaged even though they don't look it. They're having fun just being included. Where D&D says actor, MDA says expression, narrative, and fantasy, which are not the same, and may cause you to fail to engage certain players by misidentifying the ways they have fun.

So let's look at a real example of how all of this knowledge could help me to provide a more satisfying experience as a Game Master.

I think one of the ways I like to have fun is discovery. Discovery is the satisfaction of finding something that was hidden based on choices I made. This can be a secret door, a secret fortress in the woods, or learning a about the castle's steward secret arrangement of selling the lord's wine to the thieves' guild. One thing that discourages this kind of play is a game mechanic! Let's say that I as a player describe examining a bookshelf in a dusty old room. I say I slowly, thoroughly read all the titles on the spines, and if a book doesn't have anything written on its spine, I pull it out and read the front cover or on the inside pages for a title. I say I'm looking for a book about magic, the occult, or the arcane, or something mystic and weird. Because I'm a magic-user, duh. You as the GM could say that I find a book called "The Interstice: The Space Between Spaces". I think that sound interesting and I would like to take that book. Cool, done! But if you instead make me roll dice to see if I spot that book, that feels arbitrary and failure discourages me from engaging in that kind of play again. Why do you think that there needs to be a mechanic to see if I spot this book?

Rolling dice to find something in plain sight also ruins the aesthetic of submission (or immersion) because it makes no sense that I could miss something that I think should be obvious and have no chance of failure! This also spoils the sensation of narrative because my character is not stupid, but you've made me doubt the competency of my own character. I should not have a chance to fail at discovery for something that's in plain sight if I take my time, but you introduced random chance where it shouldn't factor. For some situations, you use the logic of the narrative, not the game mechanics!

So, learn these ideas. Teach them to others. This will help you to communicate your needs to others, and it will help you to help others to communicate their needs to you. This has been a public service announcement brought to you by the letter Q. All hail Q, the most useless letter of the English alphabet. We could literally replace you with K and no one would miss you. I hope you die in a fire you lame ass letter.