On Epilogues, Baldur's Gate 3, and "Session Omega"

Baldur's Gate 3 has been out for a few months by now, so many people have played through it at least once (a lot of people had somehow beaten it within days of it coming out, and I'm now in the third act of my second playthrough).

It's a great game - maybe the game of the year, and one of the better RPGs in recent memory. Larian managed to take 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons's tabletop engine and put it into a video game largely successfully (there are a few weird changes I don't like, but by and large they are improvements on the system). People on the internet have hailed it as either "Everything that's good about D&D" or lambasted it as "Everything that's wrong about D&D", so...welcome to D&D discourse!

The game's first act is a near-perfect video game encapsulation of a D&D sandbox, where it feels like you can go anywhere and do things in a variety of ways, and like a good Dungeon Master, the game always seems to be prepared regardless of your approach. The second act is a bit more linear, same-y, and dreary, like a DM forcing you to play Curse of Strahd, but the game is good enough at recreating the power fantasy of mid-level D&D that it's still highly enjoyable.

Then, it kind of gets messy. The companions the players has traveled with and learned to love and care about throughout the first two chapters of the game cease to have anything interesting to say about pretty much anything (or so I've heard - I intensely dislike Larian's nonplayer character companions and decided in early access I'd be playing with a custom party instead). The characters fight the big bad and the player chooses to save the world or rule the world or whatever and the game abruptly ends.

Does anything seem missing?

Oh, right.

To give Larian credit, apparently they are working on adding epilogues in a coming patch, so we'll check in on that later and see how they do.

I started playing AD&D 2e in elementary school, and from then until some time in high school, neither me nor my friends who DM'ed never really knew what we were doing. We had seen Lord of the Rings and they had read Dragonlance, so those were essentially our group's Appendix N. We tried, but, in retrospect, I don't think we were playing the sort of game that D&D is meant to be. So when I played Baldur's Gate and its sequel in high school, in a lot of ways it felt like my first real D&D experience. Now, when I'm not sure how something in my games should "feel", Baldur's Gate is one of my foremost touchstones (along with Jack Vance, Conan, Fritz Leiber, and the rest of the typical Appendix N fare).

"Tier 1", as it's known in 5e, is exploring the Sword Coast, discovering and solving local problems like the Nashkel Mines and the Iron Crisis, and trying not to die along the way. Tier 2 is when you make it to the big city and uncover the sinister plot which will plunge the region into war unless its thwarted. By Tier 3, the player is a full-fledged hero of the realm - they may draw the attention of powerful enemies and go toe-to-toe with reality-shaping spellcasters. In Tier 4, they fight an existential battle which shapes the cosmos itself, and cement their legacy, for better or worse.

Then, there's the epilogue. It just a single slide of text that tells the player what became of their companions after those adventures which are within the scope of the campaign.

Session Omega

Every few sessions or so - usually towards the end of the current quest or adventure - I'm talking to my players about what they want to do next, or if they want to do anything at all. I'm either trying to figure out what to prepare for them, or I'm trying to determine if they're ready to be done with the game. My most recent game went to 20th-level and beyond (using epic boons, ability score improvements up to 30, feats, and multiclassing for advancement beyond 20th-level), but for me, the game ends at any point when the players decide they are done, at any level.

When we all agree that we're done, we talk about what becomes of the characters. If we need to, we might schedule an entire "session" just to do so - sort of the opposite of a Session 0. Let's call it "Session Omega".

The point of this is to reach a satisfying end for the characters without needing to work it into the game itself. Of course, if a player wants their character to achieve something, they are encouraged to take the steps to do it in-game, but sometimes everyone agrees that the game is over, even though some of the characters might have unfinished business.

An example of this was the party's kobold warlock, who sold their soul to a devil early in the game to be brought back from a more-or-less TPK. After another near brush with death, it occurred to this character that if they died, they would likely be stuck in Hell as a lemure, as the devil owned their soul, and the devil's contractual obligations (bringing them back to life that one time and investing them with warlock powers) would be fulfilled. To avoid this, the warlock began conspiring to become a lich, to sequester their soul away in a phylactery so that the devil couldn't claim it. I laid out a process for the warlock to accomplish this, and over the next ten levels or so, they did it. 

The same character also wanted to become the new kobold god of death, but the characters were level 20 by that time and other players had things they wanted to do with their characters. Becoming the kobold god of death was out of the scope of the campaign, but the character's story didn't feel complete until that issue was resolved.

During the campaign's "Session Omega", we talked through the "epilogues" of each character until we were satisfied that their stories were done. The kobold lich became the god of death. The eldritch knight and aspiring necromancer became their apprentice. The barbarian opened an adventurer's guild and trained the next crop of young adventurers, becoming a local legend and protector of the campaign's main city. The paladin led an army of fire giants and ghouls in a campaign against the Draconic Principalities and conquered them (and was a irresponsible ruler who did little besides starting wars). The wizard became the center of a fungoid hivemind which stretched across the world, making him omnipotent (imagine A Song of Ice and Fire's Three-Eyed Raven). The lizardman found the tarrasque in hibernation, killed it, ate it, gestated for a millenia, and became the new tarrasque, then emerged from hibernation and had to be put down by the members of the party who were still active in the world at that time.

Part of this feels wrong in some way. The story of a character is what they accomplish in-game - if you didn't do it in the game, you can't say you did it. But we all agreed - the game was over. And I love epilogues. If we had all the time in the world, and we all agreed that we wanted to spend it playing this one campaign, I'm confident that we could play out all of these scenarios.

There's another utility to these epilogues, which is to develop the DM's setting and enrich the next campaign there. A player in a future campaign can play a death cleric who worships the kobold player's character, or they might be an adventurer trained by the barbarian's guild. A future campaign could center on the problems caused by the inept rulership of the paladin conqueror. A future Circle of Spores druid could easily tie back to the fungus wizard, or the wizard could serve as the patron to a warlock (using a subclass I may or may not be working on). The lizardfolk-turned-tarrasque could be a Tier 4 encounter for a future campaign, or the start of a campaign could be framed around the emergence of the tarrasque and the ruin that the ensuing battle causes in the world.

In short, campaigns are always going to end. If the DM and players know a campaign is going to end, they should try to end it right. Epilogues give the DM and players closure, enhance the setting, and enrich future campaigns.

On Strongholds and Bastions

With the release of not-OneD&D's (let's call it NOD&D) most recent playtest, Bastions and Cantrips, it seems that strongholds - or "Bastions", now (out of habit I'll probably just refer to them as strongholds in this post) - are the topic of the day among online D&D discussions. 

I don't plan to play NOD&D, mostly because my own sensibilities are often at odds with the design team's vision of an "updated" 5th edition (overall I feel like they are designing towards equivalent, "balanced" mediocrity versus unique identities which each feel powerful in their own way) and because Wizard of the Coast's recent offerings have all been disappointing, and I've made up my mind to never purchase any of their products again (not that I own many of them anyway 😉). But, I am keeping my eye on the playtest documents to see if there's anything worth incorporating into my own stitched-together version of 5e.

I mostly like the rules as laid out in the playtest document. There are some basic guidelines for creating a stronghold layout, what types of facilities a player can add to their stronghold and what hirelings and defenders come with those facilities, what those facilities might do, how big they are, and how much they cost in gold and time to build. I don't know that I like the abstraction that is Bastion Points or how exactly Bastion Turns work (you can't give specific orders to your hirelings unless you're physically there to do so), but it's a decent structure which I can probably use. It's at once more robust than what's presented in 5e, without veering into the very complicated morass of AD&D.

I quite like the rules that are presented in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide. They're simple, but not useless. Each type of property has an associated amount of gold and time needed to build it. Then, there's a per-day upkeep cost which includes the salaries of skilled and untrained hirelings. 

This is a nice middle ground between the way strongholds were presented in OD&D and AD&D. As is usually the case, OD&D's rules are simple but quirky, and sometimes hard to parse or oddly specific. Much and more is left to the imagination of Dungeon Master and player - the rules only hint at the possibilities, rather than trying to cover them completely. AD&D, on the other hand, has exhaustive rules pertaining to strongholds, hirelings, henchmen, excavation, construction, patrols, peasant uprisings, employing assassins, sages, and spies, and many other bits of minutiae. The polar opposite of OD&D, AD&D tries to account for everything.

And honestly, I appreciate the "Encyclopedia of D&D" approach of the AD&D DMG. I appreciate that no matter what version of D&D (or really any fantasy roleplaying game) I'm playing at the time, if my players decide to recruit an assassin to kill one of their enemies, I can say "Let's see what AD&D says about this". Almost always there's some guidance that I can mangle into something I'm interested in using. It might be a lot to sift through, Gygaxian, verbose, and confounding, but it's something.

Unfortunately, in 5e there isn't much guidance as to what sorts of facilities each property contains or what purpose it serves besides what's implied by the name. The benefit of having a keep or castle is obvious, but there's no way to determine specifics - how tall and thick are the walls, what built-in defenses does it have, what's the layout, etc. What is the benefit to splurging on a large temple versus a small temple, aside from the number of hirelings and upkeep cost?

There also isn't any guidance as to what amounts to a skilled or untrained hireling in a given property, beyond garrisons for castles, keeps, inns, outposts, forts, palaces, and temples. Untrained hirelings are 0th-level non-player characters that attend to the property's mundane upkeep (they possess no "skills" so to speak), whereas skilled hirelings are any NPCs with a proficiency of any kind (so a mercenary, sage, spy, assassin, etc. are all "skilled hirelings" and would earn the same wage - a bit simplistic for my tastes). The DM could leave it to the player to determine exactly who each of their skilled hirelings is, but it would be nice to have a list of options to choose from.

The Power Fantasy of Property Ownership

I'll confess that I'm writing this post mainly because of the Dicebreaker article, "Dungeons & Dragons' latest playtest wants to sell you the dream of being a fantasy landlord". I dislike WotC, their corporate brand of D&D, and landlords as much as the next person who can't help but write about D&D online and who also laments the state of housing and wealth inequality in the real world, but this is clickbait (yes, I know I fell for it by reading and engaging with it and now linking to it here). 

An even cursory glance at the new playtest material will reveal that there is no mechanic for charging rent or taxing peasants to generate passive income. There are ways to generate income, but the player does so by building facilities which generate goods to sell to surrounding communities, inviting locals to gamble away their measly incomes (predatory, sure, but what would you expect a rogue to want to build a stronghold for?), or send underlings out to slay monsters that are no longer worth the character's time. Compare this to OD&D and AD&D, which present passive income via taxation as one of the main benefits of owning a stronghold (tempered by the looming threat of "The Angry Villager Rule"), and the difference is stark.

The article criticizes the simplicity of stronghold defense by pointing out that a player's stronghold defenders are nameless and without character, will lay down their lives freely to defend the player's property, and are without pay (at least not the sort that the player needs to worry about), and that the success of a stronghold defense amounts to nothing more than a die roll. 

The former points I agree with, to an extent. It would behoove the DM to at least detail key NPCs, like the garrison's master-at-arms, head librarian, smith, etc., but this can easily be done, at least using the 5e DMG - the DM generates an NPC whenever a character acquires a new facility and gives the player their information to keep track of (the DM should also track this information, along with extra, secret information like bonds and flaws). Presumably there will be similar NPC generation tables in the forthcoming update to the DMG (the error at the heart of critiquing playtest material like this before the core rulebooks are even available to review is that we don't know what else will be included in the final published books - it's difficult to accurately critique the parts without knowledge of the whole). 

Although morale has fallen by the wayside in 5e and presumably NOD&D, I use it in my games, and would employ morale checks for stronghold defenders in the event of an attack (recruiting a charismatic master-at-arms could improve the chances of a successful morale check in this event). Although the playtest packet states that the designers "want the gold [players] spend to make them happy (as opposed to feeling like mortgage payments", I would eschew this and have players keep track of the expenses they have to pay each "Bastion Turn", including wages for defenders and unique skilled hirelings like assassins, sages, and spies - it simply doesn't make sense to me that these things pay for themselves, although I understand why the team designed them that way.

A single die roll for stronghold defense is fine with me. My issue is that the strength of the attackers is always static, and it's assumed that they'll always be defeated (as with everything else in modern D&D, player success is a foregone conclusion). The player rolls 6d6, and each die that rolls a 1 indicates a defender has died in the defense. Though this isn't mentioned in the playtest document, the DM could easily increase or decrease the number of dice the player rolls to represent weaker or stronger forcese, but there's no indication of what sort of force that baseline of 6d6 represents. Is it assumed that the attackers are non-magical, ordinarily equipped human soldiers? (Presumably ones who are ill-prepared to lay siege to a stronghold, considering their defeat is always certain, even if the stronghold has no defenders.) How many dice would represent an attack from an army of ogres? What about a dragon?

The Dicebreaker article goes on to criticize the playtest for isolating the stronghold from the greater community and society, claiming that community members only appear to present burdens to the player character or enrich them "by either increasing their ability to enact violence or fattening their purse". But that's...the game. The players go on adventures, which often involve violence, usually with the goal of either solving a local problem, "fattening their purses", or acquiring items and experience levels which enhance their ability to do violence in their next adventure. Criticisms of the politics or worldview embedded in that gameplay loop are fair, but it's a fantasy adventure game, not Animal Crossing. D&D is never not going to be the game that these people criticize it for being.

Again, none of the rules in the playtest document preclude the DM from generating in-depth NPCs with any number of characterizations, problems, or relations to the player characters and the larger world. 

Similarly, although the playtest provides a procedure for resolving each Bastion Event (cops come to your stronghold to apprehend one of your hirelings - you can hand them over or bribe the cops; refugees show up outside your walls - they pay you gold for protection, but they're wiped out the next time your stronghold is attacked), no DM worth their salt would limit the players to these options. The player could just as well refuse to hand over the criminal hireling or pay a bribe, diffusing the situation with social tact or fanning the flames with violence, in turn creating tension with the local community. The next time the stronghold is attacked, the player might bring the refugees inside their walls to protect them. The refugees could establish a small village around the stronghold over time if permitted to remain there. It requires some extra work on the DM's part, but that's always been the case with building a world that feels real, where players are empowered to try to do anything. The designers simply can't account for the diverse tastes and playstyles of everyone who might engage with the game.

A further criticism is that the playtest material doesn't allow you to, for example, "pull the nearby village out of near poverty, or simply increase the wages of the butler that you named and wrote a backstory for last session". If a player wanted to pay their butler extra gold each turn in order to increase their loyalty score (another element from AD&D which I'd incorporate, alongside morale), then I would help to facilitate that. The matter of the local village is more troublesome, as it would be entirely DM discretion as to how much gold expenditure that would require, but I'm not exactly expecting the rules to cover such a specific situation - this is not AD&D, after all.

This is a problem you see all the time in modern D&D discussions. The introduction of skill checks (in 3e, and to a lesser extent in AD&D 2e with non-weapon proficiencies, and an even lesser extent in older editions with thief skills) has internalized the thought process in players "If it's not in the rules/on my character sheet, I can't do it." As a result, players clamor for more rules, so the designers oblige them by introducing/reintroducing new/old systems like Bastions/strongholds. Then, people complain that those rules don't cover the total gamut of things they could conceivably do in the game. 

Even before the WotC era of D&D, players would write in to the designers for "official rulings" on specific marginalities not covered by the rules. Gary Gygax eventually said in response to this "we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you?"

The thing that D&D and TTRPGs in general have always had over video games is that the rules don't have to cover the gamut of gameplay options. Rules certainly help, and the Bastion system introduces a framework which might be useful in my games - much like how AD&D's DMG is a handy reference regardless of edition - but that framework isn't the totality of how I would use the system - much like how the rules of 5e aren't the totality of how I run 5e. 

With imaginative players and flexible DMs, the framework can become so much more. And while it's fair to criticize the rules that the designers put out to the extent that they reflect the kind of game they're designing, and the designers' implicit politics and worldview, the game they design isn't everything the game can be, and their politics and worldview needn't be your own. If the DM doesn't like the way something is presented or wish it presented more, the onus is on them to make that game element theirs.

Personally, I will probably use NOD&D's Bastion system to allow players to build more modular, customized strongholds which develop over time. The specific hirelings, their wages, and functions will be determined by AD&D's DMG in some combination with NOD&D's rules for facilities. Important NPCs will have writeups alongside other important NPCs in my setting, and they'll each have AD&D-style loyalty scores based on a variety of factors, including (especially) how they're treated by the PC. 

The stronghold will exist within a larger world and the two will mutually influence each other according to the events which transpire in the game's fiction. A player can do just about anything feasible with their stronghold and I will do my best to adjudicate the outcome as referee. I may use Bastion Events as they're presented in the playtest document, combine them with other complications found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything's downtime activities, or make my own tables. I'll have some rough outline of how all of this works, but it will grow and evolve and become simplified or more complex to taste as I playtest it in my games.

I understand that the Bastion, as presented in the playtest document, is meant to be in the background of the campaign, another bell or whistle to complement the 5e player character's purely beneficial wealth of existing bells and whistles, that Bastion Turns are meant to be a minigame resolved quickly, and Bastion Points a simple abstraction, and that most DMs would prefer it that way, but if the designers are going to dangle this kind of mechanic in front of me I am going to wonder how it could be more robust or lifelike, and how I can customize it to fit my game and my tastes. And the beauty of D&D is that my players and I can do pretty much whatever we want with our game.

On Horror, Fear, Safety Tools, and Consent

It's fitting to write a post in October about horror in Dungeons & Dragons. There has also been some by now not-so-recent discourse on TTRPG Twitter (a truly terrifying place) about the use of horror tropes in gaming and how consent and safety tools play a role in using these elements in games effectively.

Horror has always been inherent to the genre fiction that has inspired and is in turn inspired by D&D. The monsters the characters might encounter in any given game include aliens, demons, devils, ghouls, ghosts, vampire, witches, zombies, and more. It's challenging as a Dungeon Master to describe these creatures and their behaviors in all their visceral detail without evoking some measure of horror or ick in your players. 

I want to elicit those reactions, but not every DM does, and not every player wants to experience those feelings. How do we square that?

Fear

Fear in D&D is two-faceted - that which terrifies the characters and that which terrifies the players. Characters can be subjected to magical fear and effects which induce magical madness, but otherwise, characters are only frightened when the players decide they are, which is very rare (in my experience - your mileage may vary). Players can be made uneasy using description and ambience, and can occasionally be frightened by the risk of losing a beloved character or by a particularly nasty mechanic or monster, like undead and their level draining abilities in editions past.

This article on D&D Beyond, published around the time of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and written by the supplement's project lead, is particularly useful in gaining an insight into how the designers of 5th edition view horror and how it should and shouldn't be used in the game, as well as why the genre might be challenging to utilize in D&D. To summarize:

• "D&D’s rules directly oppose building long-term dread...D&D characters steadily get stronger and more versatile, giving them the resources to triumph over ever-greater threats."
• Attempting to make D&D a different game in order to fit it into the horror genre is a bad idea.
• The DM and players are mutually responsible for making a game scary.
• Miscommunications about the tone of a game can ruin the game, i.e., talk to your players about what they're looking to experience and craft a game to match their expectations.
• Frighten characters, not players.

I agree with most of these points, minus the last one, and the prior point to some extent. 

D&D is best played as the game is was meant to be played as - if the DM wants to run an adventure similar to one of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, then they should run Call of Cthulhu, not D&D. The rules of D&D make it so that your players are more likely to want to fight a gruesome monster than they are to run away from it. Players are the only ones who should be deciding if their characters are non-magically frightened, so their buy-in is important if the DM wants them to roleplay their characters being scared, and in order to get buy-in the DM needs to set expectations appropriately.

Now, I certainly don't think you should go all Scare Tactics on your players in the middle of a session, but I do think that it's perfectly fine to scare your players. You can do this by creating a playful sense unease at the table - by changing the lighting, playing music, etc. - using gruesome descriptions of fantasy situations and creatures, and by using deadlier-than-recommended monsters in your encounters to threaten their characters.

All of the above can put everyone in the right headspace for a game like Curse of Strahd or anything else in Ravenloft, or even just for a good ol' fashioned delve into a ruin filled with level-draining undead. My preferred brand of horror in D&D is one which causes my players to ask where I came up with something so disturbing, then laugh as they do the predictable thing and fight their way out of the gruesome situation. If I can get them to run away instead, it's a job well done, but I know I'm playing D&D, and that my players are looking to be victorious in most scenarios.

I also don't agree that the DM should cater to their players' expectations when including horror in their games. It's like players submitting a "Chosen One" backstory or a list of desired magic items in Session 0 - it's great to know that a player wants their character to become Luke Skywalker or that their build relies on getting a Holy Avenger at Xth level, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cater to that specifically. Similarly, I'm probably not going to ask my players how they want to be scared and then orchestrate scenarios to scare them in those specific ways, but players should know what kinds of horror are on the table.

As with other horror media, good taste is important. Horror movies which engage solely in torture porn are reviled by all but the most hardcore gore-lovers, and movies which exploit sexual assault to elicit fear are usually alienating for a huge chunk of their potential audience. Not everyone loves slashers and body horror, but they are more widely accepted by mainstream viewers. A DM should make an effort to get an idea of what their players are into, and have the good sense to not be a weirdo or a creep about it.

Consent and Safety Tools

The most important thing a DM can do with their players, especially if the two are unfamiliar with each other, is to set expectations and get consent beforehand. This is pretty easy if the DM is running an adventure module or some other pre-written (especially linear) content. The DM should have at least skimmed the content to get a sense for what all is there, so it's fairly trivial to go through the list and say "We're playing Curse of Strahd. Are you familiar with Dracula? The big bad guy is a vampire lord who preys upon his subjects and is a generic creepy vampire. The people of Ravenloft all have horrible lives and it's very bleak. There are also fiendish hags who eat babies and stuff. We good with all that?"

I find this to be a point of consternation in my own games, which tend to be sandboxes which I loosely build from the ground up as the campaign progresses. I don't know every single thing that's going to come up in one of my games at the first session. The starting town might be dealing with down-on-their luck mercenaries turned to banditry, troublesome fey pranksters, and skeletons who have broken free from their overlord, but by the end of the game the players may have encountered dwarf vampires engaging in ritualistic cannibalism, brain-eating aliens that transform their victims, sorcerous snake men that lay eggs in their mammalian slaves, and Hellraiser demons from the Elemental Plane of Pain who get off on torturing mortals. 

Luckily, the DM doesn't need to know everything that will happen in their game in order to make their players aware of what might happen. The DM knows their self (hopefully) and is more aware than anyone else what sensibilities they tend towards in their games. For example, I know that I love body horror and alien weirdness. I love to describe gross transformations and horrific monsters that try to eat your brains or plant their babies into you (more like slaad tadpoles wriggling under your skin and less like...sex stuff). I can easily tell my players up front that I like horror movies (and which ones, or subgenres) and that I like to accentuate the inherent horror of certain D&D monsters in my games.

It also helps to know one's players, and luckily I do. I tend to play with people who are familiar with D&D's tropes, so they're well acquainted with mind flayers, aboleths, hags, and the like. I don't need to preface most of my games with warnings about what might happen to my players' characters. It's worth it for the DM to know if their players are familiar with D&D tropes and monsters, but I wouldn't want to completely spoil it for anyone who hasn't encountered those things, either. Make them aware of the possibilities - don't take them on a guided tour of the Monster Manual.

If the DM knows their players, they also might know what horror tropes might take them out of the game or viscerally upset them, and obviously the DM should avoid those. If DM and players are comfortable with each other, the DM can let their players know that players can talk to the DM at any time about anything that bothers them in-game, whether as a group or privately.

I've never used Lines and Veils or X Cards in my own games because my players have always turned down the option, but they are useful tools for players, and I might require their use were I to play with people I was entirely unfamiliar with.

Isn't There Someone You Forgot to Ask? (It's TTRPG Twitter)

The screenshot above, from Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, made the rounds on the internet and triggered a broader discussion about consent and safety tools in D&D and TTRPGs. At the risk of sounding like some tedious people on the internet, this gave me pause.

On the one hand, as I stated above, if you're running a game like Curse of Strahd, you should probably have a conversation about vampires and about the bleakness of the setting. If you're playing Phandelver and Below, maybe you should have a conversation about character transformation, but these elements aren't immediately apparent from the beginning of the module - it's a secret for the characters to discover. Divulging the involvement of the mind flayers and the Far Realm in a Session 0 before the campaign starts is a "spoiler" of things to come in the adventure.

And what about DMs running custom sandboxes, who might not know every detail of their setting during Session 0? Should DMs have these conversations with players mid-game as their world takes shape? "Oh, I just rolled up a mind flayer in this ruin - better have the Mind Flayer Talk with my players."

The introduction to Phandelver and Below goes on to say that "Given the significance of some of these [transformations], it's better for the player to give you suggestions regarding a change than vice versa" and "[The transformations are] intended to be fun, not to make players uncomfortable". Well, that doesn't sound very horrific.

It's a good thing that Wizards of the Coast is beginning to address consent in their publications, but these issues should be discussed in the Player's Handbook rather than in individual adventures. D&D is a game which includes a lot of violence, death, and other debilitating things that can happen to a character, none of which require player or character consent in the moment. A ghoul might paralyze and devour your character, all while they're unable to fight back. A demon might possess them and make them do all sorts of abhorrent things. A number of creatures can mind control the character and make them into mindless thralls. And yes, creatures like mind flayers, slaads, and others can permanently transform a character into an NPC monster under the DM's control. If the PHB makes the players aware of these possibilities as they learn about the game, its assumptions, and tropes, they are then consenting to any ill fates that may befall their characters by agreeing to play the game.

Solutions will differ by table. Unfortunately, because consent is now an issue in the broader culture war - and safety tools an issue in the more narrow culture war specific to TTRPGs - any nuanced, public discussion of it is virtually impossible. As I said earlier, horror is inherent to D&D in some way, and I make an effort to make my players aware that I'm bringing that assumption to my games. 

Players should understand what kind of game D&D is generally as well as the way the DM intends to run it specifically. The DM should include content warnings that body horror, mind control, and possession - among other things - are on the table, just as they should talk about character death, house rules, expected player behaviors, and touchy subjects like colonialism, politics, racism, religion, sex, slavery, etc. Players should be made aware that they can withdraw consent at any time with an out-of-game discussion with the DM or with the use of something akin to X cards in-game, but the DM shouldn't feel compelled to make the game something that it isn't because the players can't handle bad things happening to their characters.

Ultimately, D&D is a game, and DM and players alike are probably both trying to have fun. All kinds of elements of the game might be more or less fun for both DM and players. Those issues are best addressed in Session 0, but can also be addressed in-game at any point. 

What makes a game truly thrilling is the triumph made possible by the chance of failure. In D&D that might mean bungling a quest, but it also might mean losing a character, whether by death, transformation, or any number of horrible fates, all of which are heightened in a game with an emphasis on horror. If the DM or players aren't comfortable enough with one another - or unwilling to have the conversations or use the tools necessary to establish comfort - then maybe horror - or D&D, a game ripe with risks to their character -  isn't right for them.

Happy Halloween!

On Augury

“What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously.

"I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.”

― Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

In my long-running 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which ended just a few months ago, one of the player characters was a Path of the Ancestral Guardian barbarian (Xanathar's Guide to Everything - side note: perhaps my favorite barbarian Primal Path, and arguably more busted than the infamous Bear Totem Warrior). At 10th-level, the Ancestral Guardian barbarian gains the feature "Consult the Spirits", which allows them to cast augury or clairvoyance once per rest without using material components or a spell slot.

I don't think I've ever had a player choose to take augury, but in this case the barbarian got it for free. Understandably, they wanted to use it. A lot.

"I hate this spell, but I'll try," I said.

Babbling in an Unknown Tongue

The problem with augury, more so than other divination spells, is that is asks the Dungeon Master to predict the future of a game which relies heavily on dice rolls.

In 5e, the spellcaster "receives an omen...about the results of a specific course of action" and the DM chooses between Weal ("something good will happen if you do this"), Woe ("something bad will happen if you do this"), Weal and Woe, or Nothing. Given the nature of dice, I find it hard to give any answer other than "Both...maybe?"

The spell is much the same in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd edition) - along with 1st edition, my fallback when something in 5e needs more advice, context, or (dare I say?) mechanics - except that the spell is, in classic AD&D fashion, slightly more difficult to cast effectively, having a much greater chance of giving a "meaningless reply", and requiring 1,000 gold pieces-worth of components!

Interestingly, the 2e description includes this example of use:

"...if the question is 'Will we do well if we venture to the third level?' and a terrible troll guarding 10,000 sp and a shield +1 lurks near the entrance to the level (which the DM estimates the party could beat after a hard fight), the augury might be: 'Great risk brings great reward.' If the troll is too strong for the party, the augury might be: 'Woe and destruction await!'

Interpret As You Will

Two potential uses of augury come to mind which don't fundamentally change the mechanics of the spell: telegraphing danger and enhancing a piety system (as described in Mythic Odysseys of Theros, page 36).

The above play example included in 2e demonstrates the spell's potential to telegraph danger. If the DM is running a sandbox, in which challenges and locations of varying difficulty and danger are usually scattered about the area of play somewhat randomly, and the players can well and truly try to go anywhere and do anything, a savvy cleric, druid, wizard, etc. might use this spell to effectively assess the "appropriateness" of a given expedition for characters of their level.

Unfortunately, the spell only applies to courses of action that the party plans to take within the next 30 minutes. It's unclear if, for example, the party plans to set out to the incredibly dangerous Kandalifi Jungle region in the next 30 minutes, whether or not the spell accounts for the entirety of that journey or only the first 30 minutes of it. If it's the latter, then the spell is good only for assessing the danger of exploring the next few rooms of the dungeon (which can also be useful). I'd lean towards interpreting the spell as applying broadly to the currently-planned course of action, so long as the party plans to take that action imminently. Here, I'm favoring leniency and generosity because this is an oft-neglected spell which could use some love from the referee.

5e's optional piety system is laid out in the Magic: The Gathering setting book, Mythic Odysseys of Theros (a supplement which, like Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, is useful but unfairly maligned and neglected merely for being a Magic book). Theros provides a comprehensive list of its gods, their goals, worship, suggested alignment, classes, cleric domains, backgrounds, and - most importantly - ways to earn and lose piety.

In an ideal world, this system would be a part of every D&D book going forward (given it details the gods in some way). If the DM is running a game in the Forgotten Realms or another established setting, it's easy enough to extrapolate ways to earn and lose piety - as well as piety's benefits - from Theros's blueprint and the descriptions of the gods in the chosen setting. If the DM is running a custom setting, it's worth it to consider these elements for each of the setting's gods (or at least the ones that are relevant to the campaign).

So how does this relate to augury? Well, a character who is concerned with piety could use the spell to determine whether a given course of action would gain or lose their god's favor, or leave it unaffected. Piety works just as well for a cleric as it does for a druid concerned with placating nature spirits or a wizard who is particularly devout towards a deity of magic or knowledge. If the DM was to introduce a piety system and tie augury into it in this way, I would recommend opening the spell up to godly paladins as well (perhaps the spell could also telegraph whether the paladin is likely to be put in a situation where their morals or oath is put into jeopardy, although this might be asking too much of the DM).

Admitting for Ambiguity

5e's description of the augury spell has another element I didn't mention, which further complicates the issue:

"The spell doesn't take into account any possible circumstances that might change the outcome."

This is basically the DM's "get out of jail free" card for the spell. The description specifies the casting of additional spells or the loss or gaining of a companion. It's obvious enough that if the player casts this spell before proceeding to fight the fearsome troll beyond the stairs to the dungeon's third level and gets the "Weal" result, and then the party's fighter abruptly decides to go home, that the odds of defeating the troll have probably drastically changed. Similarly, a result of "Woe" might be significantly altered by the druid casting flame blade immediately afterwards. But what if the troll is accompanied by an ogre mage who wins initiative and opens the encounter by devastating the party with a cone of cold? The DM can anticipate the added difficulty posed by the ogre mage's presence, but they cannot foresee bad luck such as the ogre going first in combat, or a majority of the party failing their saving throws against its spell.

One way to account for this uncertainty is to tie a certain benefit to the spell. Perhaps a "Weal" result carries with it a Portent, akin to the School of Divination's 2nd-level feature, which the caster then gets to utilize at a time of their choosing within the next 30 minutes. A "Woe" result might grant the DM a Portent instead. Instead, maybe the caster gains inspiration from an auspicious omen, or - one of my personal favorite house rule mechanics - the DM gains reverse inspiration from a bad omen, i.e., the DM can force a player to have disadvantage on a roll or reroll a result of their choice at a later time.

These are two ways the DM can gently nudge an uncertain outcome towards greater certainty, if so inclined. The question is, is it fair for the DM to then have say over the result of the spell's casting when it's now being tied to a meta-currency? Is it more fair to roll a d4 to determine the result and apply the benefits and drawbacks based on that? Should the spell remain a ritual? Should the components be consumed?

For Twenty Terces

I included the Jack Vance quote from Tales of the Dying Earth at the top of this post because it made me think of augury as transactional, which made me think of material components. The spell requires 25 gold pieces-worth of "specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens", which are not consumed in the casting of the spell. What if greater components could garner greater portents? What if augury could be cast at higher spell levels? When viewed this way, augury is less a neutral reading of the situation at hand and more a ritual performed and offering made to gain a god's favor.

My revised version of augury is as follows:

Augury

2nd-level divination (ritual)
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens worth at least 25 gp and up to 2,500 gp)
Duration: Instantaneous, or 30 minutes

By casting gem-inlaid sticks, rolling dragon bones, laying out ornate cards, or employing some other divining tool, you receive an omen from an otherworldly entity about the results of a specific course of action that you plan to take within the next 30 minutes. The DM chooses from the following possible omens:

• Weal, for good results
• Woe, for bad results
• Weal and woe, for both good and bad results
• Nothing, for results that aren't especially good or bad

The spell doesn't take into account any possible circumstances that might change the outcome, such as the casting of additional spells or the loss or gain of a companion.

Alternatively, you can use this spell to determine whether a given course of action will be looked upon favorably or unfavorably by any one god.

If you cast this spell using a 2nd-level spell slot, you can instead choose to roll a d20 and record the number rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with this foretelling roll. You must choose to so before the roll. The foretelling roll can be used only once. After 30 minutes, you lose the foretelling roll if it is unused. This use of the spell consumes the material components.

If you cast the spell two or more times before completing your next long rest, there is a cumulative 25 percent chance for each casting after the first that you get a random reading. The DM makes this roll in secret.

At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a 5th-level spell slot and material components worth at least 250 gp, you can choose to roll two foretelling rolls, and you lose any unused rolls after 8 hours. When you cast this spell using an 8th-level spell slot and material components worth at 2,500 gp, you can choose to roll three foretelling rolls, and you lose any unused rolls after 24 hours. Both of these uses of the spell consume the associated material components.

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard