Forgotten Arts & Crafts, Wilderness Survival Guides, American Indian crafts and Depression Methods are among my favorite Non-Fiction Book Subjects. Simple living comes in handy regardless of income.

My father raised us to remember these things and see their value. My grandfather believed that electricity was a fad, and preferred the old ways more often than not. He had a tractor, but for tedious jobs such as picking corn, he took the horse and cart out to the fields, his logic being that the horse just kept following him, he didn't have to stop working to go move the machine. 

I do the same thing for my children, I raise them to be self-reliant and to know where they came from. It has been hard to adjust to city life, but I am doing my best. For vacation we tend to go camping, there are many important skills that one can learn from primitive camping, the most important being self-reliance.

In regards to light, we have modern battery-powered lanterns, but we leave them at home. Those things are terrible! They do nothing but draw bugs and batteries are very expensive compared to other forms of fuel. Instead, we use railroad lanterns. Not only is the fuel cheaper (and a hell of a lot cleaner!), but the light doesn't draw insects and doesn't kill your night vision.

Torches, these are easy to make, and we've done it! They suck. The fire itself blinds you, in fiction, they always have the person in the lead carrying the torch, but it should be the person in the back, though it does get passed around a lot. The torch-bearer really can't see very far, you can't even see the ground which is a problem, and it is harder than you think to hold a torch above your head and out of your eyes. Even a lantern will do the same thing unless it is fixed with a shield, you don't want the light to be too bright, just bright enough.

Cab drivers who drove at night had to keep the flame itself out of their eyes, seeing the ground was imperative because of potholes. Nobody wanted to drive at night, even with a light source, because moving around is dangerous. People did it, but people also got lost on their own properties and drowned in rivers.

In regards to cave exploration, torches aren't the best idea. The best option is a candle, low levels of light to highlight your surroundings. They told you more than just your surroundings, the flame is sensitive to changes in air quality, professional miners preferred candles to lanterns, it wasn't just budget concerns. Even today you'll see a lot of miners smoking, they watch the smoke to see the air flow. Once battery operated light came about, that is when people started carrying canaries. 

One would be shocked at how deep the old-timers got inside of caves, and these weren't professional spelunkers, these were just everyday locals who took some time off and wanted to see things that nobody else had seen. They used candles, and they'd climb deep inside of these things until they either got scared, ran out of time, or could progress no more because of the muck. They'd mark their spot with their name and usually the date, and these writings are still in there.

What does this have to do with D&D games? Nothing. We're dealing with fantasy, it is just easier to have tunnels that you can stand upright in, the rule-of-cool dictates a lot of stuff! I do give them raw caves to explore when I want to. Passages that aren't 5'x5'. I'll also get picky about supplies if that is the game, but we rarely play that game.


Typically, I'll do the math and how many torches you bring in dictates how far in one can go and get back out again. I'm also a creep, demihumans don't need as much light to see in the dark as men do, and once a demihuman gets beyond the range of men, the underground world becomes more habitable for them, fungus and stones radiate light that they can see, but humans and normal elves cannot.

Elves can see normally at night above ground, starlight is enough, but it is reversed, the Dwarvish folk needs to carry a light source.

Candles are preferred, lanterns break, but the oil can be used to make a torch. To light a torch you only need one stick, but you've got to bring enough cloth and fuel with you. The problem with light is that it gives your position away. Enemy sentries typically sit in the dark, living spaces are lit, but that is it. Golin will sometimes light passages to help sentries see intruders sneaking around in the dark (if they are paying attention), so light itself is part of their survival plan.

The players tried to utilize the Permanent Light Spell, which works great in unoccupied caves and dungeons, but since you've got to put it out to sneak around, and recast it, it can be terribly expensive.

That is the game that we prefer to play. One of stealth. I have also found that it is difficult to put a torch out, the fastest way is with water, a slower way is to smother it with dirt, the slowest way is to tap and roll it around on stone, which is also noisy. I don't think that I've ever used these experiments in a game before. Maybe stripping it off with a sword real quick and stamping it out would work? That might be a fun game!

Today I’d like to talk about describing stuff. Scenes can be difficult, and storytelling isn’t easy. The secret is to be quick and brief, but choosing your words carefully to put just the right things into the player’s imaginations so that they can all color the world in roughly the same way and see the same things.

I find that most modules are too wordy, and these huge text boxes need to be trimmed down and summarized considerably so that we don’t get ignored, and we need to resist over describing things because, for one, players loose interest in such things, and two, we don’t want to fill their heads with gibberish. The human mind can only hold so much information, and if we bog it down with too much information then we’ll get lost. I’ve had characters put too much stock in facts that really weren’t important, and I’ve had them become so lost that they can no longer remember what in the hell the goal that they were supposed to be accomplishing even was anymore.

Coloring things is simple. The quicker that you are at doing it the better. Say that I describe a room to you, I can go all crazy and describe everything right down to the shine on the couch, but is that really necessary? Probably not! We’ll just want to put the idea of what this room is used for in the players heads, and let them fill in all of the empty spaces themselves. They can also learn more about the things by asking questions.

You open the door and see a 25 x 25 foot room dominated by plush furniture constructed of well-lacquered wood, the room smells of lavender. Many pictures hang on the wall.

PLAYER: Is there anything of interest in this room?

On a small table, next to a sitting chair is a reading lamp and a book.

Player: Anything else?

A curious cabinet is all by itself on the west wall.

Player: Anything else?

Nope.

And from there, these guys can explore the rest of the room. People who just assume to much are going to miss much, but this is the way of life too isn’t it? Most folks, when they walk into a room, don’t even bother to look around. Five minutes later, if asked to describe the room their answers aren’t going to be all that accurate, if they can tell you anything about it at all.

Basically, what we want to do is describe what a space is used for, and then the things that are found within the space that might be useful to adventurers. The best advice that I can give you, is to be observant yourself. What is the first thing that you notice when you walk into a space? Is it the loud ticking of a clock? Maybe a scent? Is it visual or is it something else? Scents are dramatic while sounds are more easily ignored, however once we leave a space we will miss the sound of white noise that a particular room created. Pay attention to this. Most visuals aren’t emotional, however scents and sounds are; and they both bring an emotional response.

The fun part is that we get to describe fantasy settings, or places that never existed. What would a goblin cave small like?

Well first off it would smell like dirty bodies, as goblins don’t bathe. They also don’t have plumbing so the smell of bodily waste would be an indicator that that is what a particular room or cavern is used for. What can one find in a cavern like that? If you dropped a coin or something, would you pick it up, or bother looking for it? Perhaps there is some treasure in Poop caves, but getting too it would probably not justify the risk . . . nor the smell. Perhaps a goblin tribe counts on this, and it is this place where the goblin’s hide their horde of stolen booty?

Goblins also must eat, and they are pigs about it. Do they cook? If so, they need a space to keep food and utensils to cook with. They may have procured an oven, but they might not know what to do with it, it might not be ventilated properly so whenever the cooks start it up the entire cave fills with noxious wood smoke and ash which sticks to everything, and if they are using coal, then it will be even worse! This adds color, but we needn’t bother the PC’s with this stuff unless they specifically ask what the source of this ash or smoke is, but once they discover the cooking cavern, the oven will definitely be out of place, and probably the cause of a giant mess since the goblins wouldn’t really ever clean the thing, and just scrap the hot ash and partially burned fuel right out onto the floor in front of it.

The eating area won’t be much better, the place would be covered in bones, inedible chunks of gristle, and other stuff which the goblins don’t care to eat. Perhaps dry, and withered eyes shrunken by the heat, stray fingers and toes or other things which don’t have much meat on it. This room would be filled with horror and what would that smell like? Rats would have a heyday here, as would lots of parasites and insects which feed and breed in filth. Broken pottery filled with living fuzzy molds which may or may not be infectious if it is touched.

The deal that you want to accomplish, is to bring the spaces to life. This is where we DMs are allowed to become story-tellers. We can use the five senses as foreshadow, or in layman terms, giving hints of things to come.

We can look at the map on Prep day, and study it. What noises would be generated by this thing? During the day we would tend to ignore everything but what is in our own general area, but come time to camp, deep in some underground labyrinth of endless hallways and monster infested corridors, our minds expand and we would hear EVERYTHING!

The underground lake with a monster in it would generate sounds as it catches a lone orc for dinner. Perhaps the pine supports in the dwarven mine section are creaking and shifting under the tremendous weight that they are forced to endure? Natural caves are caused by water carving paths in the rock, drips and damp drafts are constant. Then we have the sounds of the master race underground. The fighting, the yelling, the nightmarish grumbling as they make their rounds . . . and of course, if the party is being too loud, then they can be heard too!

Spirits are also fun to throw in. Nothing strong or formidable, nothing powerful enough to even pose a threat to anything, just little things to keep the adventurers on edge. Chains rattling down a hallway, a disembodied sigh or a few meaningless words uttered in the darkness. Critters can also sound bigger in the middle of the night, a mouse could get inside of a pack and look for food or some bedding. We should fill up the time spent resting with some kind of color, even if it isn’t combat.

Have fun with descriptions, be colorful and be aware of your own senses and how your mind works. What does your living space look like? Perhaps your favorite spot in the house? I know that mine is the leather chair down stairs. Its got a forever full ashtray, a bowl of candy, and my remotes right there, as well as a book or two. My wallet is sometimes there if I’m planning to come back soon, and if I just left, there is usually a cigarette butt smoldering in the ashtray. I suppose that that is helpful foreshadowing too. Signs of life, is a room empty? How long has it been so? Does it look like the occupant has just left or will be back soon? All of this can be colored in with a little ingenuity on your part. It may not be outright apparent, a person who just steps into my living space may not notice the smoldering cigarette right away, only after they look at my little coffee table will they catch it; how they feel about it depends on their intent.

The undead can be a tricky thing to describe too. We want to fill their worlds up with evil. Things of gloom. Few creatures can tolerate them being around, creatures like rats, owls, and ravens would not only be present, but possess a very brave and bold front. There should be an oppressive weight upon everything until the undead creature has truly been destroyed, and once this happens, then, and only then will life and light return to the area. Walking from a crypt would reward you with a sunny day, and all of the birds chirping and singing and carrying on. It should be in stark contrast of how the cemetery felt on the way in to perform this grim task. Evil corrupts, it stains and taints everything that it touches, and this should not be forgotten.

Today’s topic is in regards to how groups handle darkness. This is difficult because some characters have infravision, and others don’t. As DM we typically want our descriptions of an area to pertain to everybody at the table, and often forget about those who have infravision unless asked, which is fine, depending on how you handle infravision.

Me personally, I treat it as if they are seeing in the dark as we can when the ground has snow on it. I don’t consider it to be something that they have to focus on, it just comes naturally and their eyes require less light to see. It isn’t perfect, a scene which a human can see a man’s silhouette, an elf could determine just a bit more information, such as he is armed, he may be able to determine that it is either an elf or a human, but he can’t identify him.

If a human can identify the above, then the elf could possibly identify him if he has seen him before, and maybe, identify his shield or some other information, but that is all Infravision does in my game. Ultravision has its own rules, and thankfully PC’s don’t have this power so I don’t have to worry about describing scenes to them. Ultravision is the ability to see with no light what so ever.

That is how I interpret it, but I know that each DM is different, and most concerns regarding vision are all interpretational, EXCEPT for one. And that involves missile weapons.

Player Characters often find themselves in the dark, and while blind-fighting can aid you with a melee weapon, you’ll always have some smartass who tries to use a bow in a vast cavern and wants to know his odds for hitting the said target.

This is absolutely crazy! And to make matters worse, the Players Handbook doesn’t cover perfect darkness in the chart which tells us the modifiers for different kinds of light. Darkness can happen to you in other ways, such as a magic-user casting darkness, or blinding you, or even casting continual light in your eyeballs (ouch)! Thankfully The Complete Fighter’s Handbook corrects this error.

According to the handbook, a melee weapon attacks with a –4. A missile weapon at –6. And those with infravision have a bonus of +3, assuming, of course, that the target/enemy is within the range of the infravision limit.

I don’t think that I would allow Infravision to be this good, we are talking perfect darkness, and since my system requires some kind of light, the demi-human would be just as blind in perfect darkness as anyone else.

I have ran into instances of competing parties fighting with each other in the midst of a monster infested cavern. Both parties had to extinguish their lights and handle monster attacks in the dark with melee weapons which alerted the other party of their location so they shot at the noise, sometimes hitting monsters, some times hitting members of the rival party. I didn’t use this system to handle the case (but I wish that I had), instead I treated everybody as if they were invisible, except for for the monsters which had ultravision so they saw normally and used the disadvantage to ravage both parties.

FUN STUFF!

Light is a fun tool to take a so-so scene, and really amp it up. If used wisely, you can even out other odds. A large monster such as a giant can be used to challenge low level adventurers by putting the fight more on their playing field. They can hide in the fog, and the giant can’t. Of course, if a giant hits somebody, then it will kill them, but wise PC’s won’t get close enough, and try to be as quiet as possible.

It works the other way around too, of course. Goblins attacking a party will have a good advantage, especially if they know the area and can use the fog to hit and run.

Namely, what we have to consider here, is Movement Rate, which will be slowed down to a crawl in low visibility and in an unfamiliar location, how much noise that the target is making, and if a character can see or not. Ultravision probably can, and a few monsters will need to be modified to adjust for this. Monsters which spend their lives in the dark will see perfectly . . . of course, is ultravision really vision at all? It might not be! In the real world, creatures that live like that typically don’t even have eyes. Nature has supplied them with an alternative sense.

Smell, super-hearing, psychic sight. Who knows what ultravision really is, but since we never have to describe it to the PC’s, we really don’t have to worry about exactly HOW it works, just that it does.

I’d also like to add that Dwarves and Gnomes don’t have ultravision, they use lanterns, and other forms of low light which wouldn’t be enough for humans to see by, but sufficient enough for the Dwarves and Gnomes to work in.

A cool game franchise that I love to play is the Fire Emblem series. In it, they use fog and darkness to increase the difficulty level of a situation. In order to see further, one must either use a torch, or a thief. If a fighter rushes into the fog, he runs the risk of bumping into an enemy and he isn’t allowed to attack. Initiative is automatically lost, and the enemy gets a free attack on him.

A thief can better ones odds of locating the enemy by using his “Hear Noise” ability. Thieves are highly dangerous during these situations because they have an improved chance of hiding in it, and can backstab an opponent much easier. A party with a thief present could qualify for a bonus to everybody, as long as they stay close to him. A torch will also reveal the enemy at a further distance if it isn’t too thick, of course, a torch will also reveal your position as well, but this is a risk that you are either willing to live with, or you aren’t.

If a thief is present, those within visual contact of him have a bonus equal to his backstab adjustment. Of course it won’t be multiplied, but added to attack only. A fighter fighting in dense fog would normally have a –4 to his attack, but with a 3rd level thief, whose backstab modifier is x2 gains a +2 to his attack roll by watching a thief who succeeded in his Hear Noise and can point it out, giving the fighter a –2 to his missile attack.

I hope that makes sense, I know some things are lost in translation, so let me know if I did nothing but write confusing gibberish.

Our camping trip was a great success. Now it is just a matter of shaking off the vacation laziness which never fails to hold me in its grip.

There were moments during our trip that were truly terrifying. A storm blew in with hurricane force winds of an F1 tornado. It was a wicked son-of-a-gun, and instead of going to the camper, I chose to sit it out in my tent and just relax while listening to the rain. It has been years since I have weathered through a really good storm in a tent. Back when I was a kid, and those cool little dome tents were first introduced to the market. Everybody said that they were to flimsy, but while camping in a large campground, after a forceful storm which beat and battered the tent, in the morning, my tent was the only one which still stood. All of the other tents were destroyed, their inflexible metal poles bent and collapsed.

This is just one of the many problems that can sneak up on you while you give yourself to the mercy of nature. The winds battered our tent around for an hour, the rain was so relentless that it flooded the tent, a stream flowing right through it soaking all of our gear. Thankfully no big trees fell, blocking the road out, else we’d probably still be there.

The point is that you can use more then just monsters to heckle your players. Natural storms can either work in your favor, or against it. When you’re using roads, bad storms turn these things into flooded and muddy creaks, trees fall blocking the passage and it can take weeks before whoever maintains the roads can get around to clearing up the damage.

Water can really ruin your day, it causes you to stop all movement because if you don’t dry your supplies, then they’ll mildew. Water can also ruin your food supplies, most adventurers rely on hard-tack, a nasty biscuit that can handle getting a little wet, but if your entire supply gets wet then it instantly starts to rot, and there wasn’t any plastic to protect these things. Dried meats were also used, and again, if they got wet then the rotting process would begin. This process can be stopped by finding a nice sunny area and drying everything out. It takes most of the day, all of your gear must be systematically unpacked and laid out. All cloth probably has to be hung up, and consider how much cloth was utilized by these people! Everything was made of some form of fabric, canvas repels water only so long before it becomes saturated, leather is the same way. We spray leather and canvas with a special chemical that helps it repel more and preserve leathers and skins from rotting, but what do our characters do?

Another thing to consider is blood. A beat up party will be bleeding, and blood attracts the critters. The predators of the area will be able to smell this blood and begin haunting your camp. Cougars, bears, lynx, these things plague campers to this day. A DM has to ask himself, what do these animals know of people? If it is a populated area, then they may avoid them, but most adventurers chose to go where people are scarce, and it is possible that the wild animals which rule this place have never seen a person and have no fear of them.

Animals are unpredictable. A bear, for instance, can ignore the people completely, choosing to just eat as much food as it can until the person retaliates, or it gets too uncomfortable. I’ve heard of an angry camper tired of being heckled by bears bust one right in the gut through his tent, and the bear ran away not knowing what the heck happened. Injuring a bear is a risk, if you make it angry then you could be in trouble. Attacking a bear can either bring its full wrath on you, or cause it to run away. Morale checks are definitely a blessing when dealing with wild animals. Any time an animal is hit, you should make a morale check. A successful check indicates that the animal chooses to defend itself. Big cats typically have more sense then bears do, if a predator is weaker then the humans attacking it, then continue checking for morale every round until it either dies or runs away, but for thick skinned and stubborn predators, such as bears or elephants, once they choose to attack they will never back down.

Now, I thought about putting a random table of events here, but I’m not sure if that is a good idea. A big storm effects more then just the adventurers themselves, it effects the entire region, this would make it more of an encounter situation then a random one. Random storms are typically your usual affairs, seasonal events that don’t really effect supplies or travel.

Truly spectacular storms should be written and prepped to serve a purpose, even if that purpose is a true encounter, where the enemy is the storm, and failure to properly defend yourself will cost you your life.

I love true stories about Man vs. Nature, and D&D is the perfect medium to explore these terrible scenarios in the safety of your own home. Sure it is easy to just use a random encounter table, but why not really test the players? It does require a bit more from the DM as there aren’t any hard-rules to govern these events, but common sense and a good understanding of cause and effect are always better tools then anything in the DMG or PHB.

With that said, I give you a table. You can insert this in your own random encounters table, or just make a check once per night on top of your normal weather generation. I think that I will only make this check during travel, and only once per night. I’ll roll a d% and if I get 00, I’ll check the table below. Of course this isn’t play-tested, if you try this out and find a different method works better, or if it feels too clunky or what have you, then speak up! This is an interactive forum.

1d12 roll/effect

1/ Cataclysm
2/ Travel impossible for 1d12 days
3/ disease/parasite
4/ d% of supplies destroyed
5/ 1d20 items are lost
6-12/ nothing happens

EFFECTS EXPLAINED

Much of this requires a human brain to figure out what it means. The purpose of this table and list of results is for it to be random. The exact results are up to the DM.

Cataclysm

This is a natural occurrence of epic proportions which are dictated by the area which the party is camping in. It could be a forest fire which rages out of control, flash flooding, a sandstorm of such power and fury that it kills the locals who’ve never seen something like it before. An earthquake, killer winds, snows which bury entire forests, rivers. The key is to make it a natural disaster that effects the entire region. The cataclysm is an enemy which can’t be attacked or countered except by some spells which can effect such things. It is up to the players to survive by their wits, and skills alone. This can, and probably will, take an entire session to deal with, and effect whatever plans that you had. Thankfully, the odds of this ever happening are slim.

Travel impossible

A road can be washed out, trees fallen, if the party is using wagons, perhaps a wheel shatters or the horse dies. A bad storm can be the cause, as can a broken leg or some other emergency which is totally up to the DM. The party can become lost, sickened, forced to hide from some monster which can easily kill them, whatever. This can either be role-played to minimize damage, or just deduct the days and the supplies from the party.

Disease or Parasite

Sickness can happen at any time. A cleric can usually repair this, but what happens if it happens to the cleric himself? Handle this however you want. Everyone has to roll a CON check with a –10 penalty or get infected. The disease effects are also up to you, perhaps it just weakens them to the point were movement is impossible, and only healthy people can defend the party? The penalty of the disease is to halt progress for a week or two, deplete supplies, or even force the party to return to civilization, possibly infecting a large population if they aren’t careful. The DM can either take this as a total campaign failure, or as a setback, whatever he wishes.

d% of supplies destroyed

This is a serious blow when it happens. Water can be spilled or accidentally poisoned. Lamp oil leaking all over a bag and ruining stuff. Food spoiling, canvas tearing or burning, oats infested with bugs, go after the stuff which is normally consumed and brought along to make their lives easier. It is up to the party if they wish to continue or solve problems caused by the supply loss. Food will have to be hunted daily, depending on the environment, water loss can be fatal if a clean source can’t be found. Again, a cleric can fix much of this stuff, but not all of it.

1d20 Items Lost

Gather up all of the Character sheets and remove items as you see fit. Don’t tell them what items are gone, they’ll discover it for themselves at the end of the day or if they reach for it and it isn’t there.

Hiking is dangerous work, a hole in a bag is a fairly common occurrence and contents can spill out for hours before it is detected. Objects are misplaced, forgotten, or otherwise left behind. Stuff like lanterns, daggers, and other small objects are sometimes accidentally forgotten. Potions can lose their cork and spill out inside the bag for some fun results. How you decide to deduct the items is up to you, a favorite sword or spellbook probably will be kept meticulously, thus they’ll never loose it, but everything else is up for grabs. A warrior is good at keeping his sword properly maintained, but a thief or a wizard isn’t. Rust can make an item brittle, a roll of a 20 will break the item and leave the character with nothing to defend himself with. A normal book or map can become damaged and destroyed by natural causes. Anything is fair game. (NOTE: don’t erase the items off of the character sheets, the players shouldn’t know what happened, just write a note to yourself on the side for the effected items.)

ART BY: Robh Ruppel

There are times during games where nobody knows what to do, or how you are suppose to handle it. One of those times is when one or more persons, NPCs, or monsters is invisible. What a nightmare! I mean, the DMG lists a characters chances of hitting an invisible target as –4. –4? Where do they get this number from? If you are attacking an invisible force with a bow and arrow, do you still only have to worry about a –4 penalty? And, if so, what exactly is the bonus for being invisible?

Well, this area really does need some enlightenment. What is invisible in the game? What are the rules which govern it? The answer to all of these questions and more is one of those things which requires a Dungeon Master to determine. Thankfully, however, there are rules which form the guidelines to help us get this done.

INVISIBILITY

Being invisible is more difficult then it sounds. Light passes through you, and you can’t see yourself either. Most tasks are easily preformed, getting on a horse, drawing your weapon, picking up money; however tasks which require fine-motor skills are much harder when you can’t see your fingers. Tasks such as picking a lock, shooting an arrow, catching an object which was tossed to you. These tasks are much more difficult, and may not even be possible! It is up to the DM to decide if a task simply can’t be done, or s/he can impose a –3 penalty to a characters chances of performing a non-weapon proficiency, else a –15% to all percentage based skills.

Of course if there is more then one person invisible, then you run into some severe problems, you have no idea where the other people in the party are and you’re just as likely to strike them if you draw your weapon to attack something. In cases like this, the only person who will know exactly who you are attacking is the DM, somebody may be in the way, unless some plan is made before hand, becoming invisible and rushing into battle is a fools mission!

DETECTING INVISIBLE

Invisible is invisible to both normal vision & infravision, however there are some tricks available to those who are being heckled by invisible foes. Mud and powders which stick to the invisible being will remain visible. While an invisible person who is swimming doesn’t leave a hole in the water, viewers may notice the water moving differently as it flows around the invisible force. Invisible people also leave visible foot prints! Notice that all of this depends on how giving a DM is at the moment. An invisible creature in the perfect conditions will be completely invisible, opponents will only be able to attack him when he attacks them. The –4 to hit requires that the person who is trying to hit the invisible being knows exactly where the creature is, if this isn’t known, even a true 20 will miss the target.

Another consideration is light. If the invisible creature requires light to see and moves into a dark area, he’ll need to bring a lightsource with him if he wants to see. If the lantern or torch which the creature is using was on him when the spell was cast, then the vessel (the lantern or torch) will be invisible, however the light will not be. Foes can use this light to pinpoint the location of the invisible person . . . or at least the vessel.

Using a Detect Magic spell does not work, the caster is aware that magic is in the air, however he cannot use the spell to pinpoint the invisible creatures location. Only Detect Invisibility is effective, and that is it.

HOWEVER! Once the DM feels that there is a chance of the character or NPC to notice a sound, smell, or something else from the DM’s deviously brilliant brain that may give away a creatures location, he is allowed to either give the player a Saving Throw vs. Spell or roll one secretly. Making this Saving Throw DOES grant you a –4 to hit, and this is where that modifier comes from. It is totally up to the DM to choose all penalties and to decide if maybe the penalties can be ignored entirely! Of course bribery will get you nowhere, but it never hurts to try.

When dealing with non-intelligent creatures or stupid races/individuals, being alert to the presence of an invisible creature may not be enough to provoke an attack, wild animals and such will be higher on guard! But they aren’t necessarily going to leap and attack something which their eyes tell them isn’t there. Anybody who has ever dealt with a ghost (NASTY creatures) or even heard of a ghost, may instantly flee in fear that the invisible person IS a ghost, which considering how nasty ghosts are, really isn’t all that bad of an idea once you think about it.

The room before you is dusty, the scent of mildew and dead flowers puts a bitter taste in your mouth. This is an old room, and from the looks of it, it hasn’t been touched in years. Sunlight fights its way through a filthy window pane, casting everything in gloomy, pale shades of blue. A delicate vanity sits against the wall, the mirror shrouded with a sheet that has stained yellow over the passage of ages. Dominating the room, an obviously expensive bed wasted by time, its mattress drooping miserably, the wooden frame twisted in neglect. Upon a dusty nightstand you can see a novel, the pages dry and brown. Upon the floor, near a thick oval shaped rug; a picture frame lays face-down, the fragile glass shattered and broken into angry, jagged pieces.

The one thing that good old fashioned D&D has over any computer game, is that the graphics are a lot better. Thinking back to some of the games that I’ve played, I don’t see myself sitting at a table, tapping my pencil on my cheetoh stained character sheet while seeing how long I can get a d10 to spin. I am magically taken back to standing in some dark and cold corridor illuminated by the fighters torch. I’m crouched down in front of a thick wooden door, forcing all of my attention to the grimy, brass lock; my picks . . . Extensions of my own fingers, feel their way around the mechanism. . . The cleric sighs in that impatient way as she fights the instinct to tell me to hurry before something comes, then “CLICK”! I GOT IT!!!

How much do you tell your PC’s?

You want to give them enough information about what they are seeing, but we also want to give them a bit more. I remember some DM’s that didn’t care about this, “You walk into a room and there are 3 trolls in there, roll for initiative.” BORING!!! But I’ve also had DM’s on the other side of the tracks who spend 5 minutes describing the shine on a leather couch. BORING!!!

How much is TOO much? Modules tend to get overly wordy in their descriptions, but that is because we as the DM have to be able to see a room before we can describe it. When writing my own dungeons, I’ll just list important things that are in the room, and wait to creatively describe them on game day.

The trick to knowing what too much is and if you’re not giving enough is based on the importance of the room. Logically, the scene about the abandoned room that I described above must be an important room that contains a mystery to be solved, or an object to find, or an encounter just waiting to happen. If this was just window dressing then you don’t want to get overly specific, the human brain is a magnificent tool and the players will color in all of the details to fill up the missing space. You just have to use your judgment, but as a rule of thumb, if it isn’t something that you would typically role-play, then keep it brief.

That said, what kind of stuff should the DM describe to his players? As a writer, one of the things that I do is experience something first hand and pay attention to the world around me. When you walk into a hospital, typically it isn’t what you see that you notice first, but how it smells. Try making a habit of this, pay attention to your other senses, and make mental notes of them. What do you see, feel, hear, smell. This is what we will be focusing on.

I Spy . . .

I know that all DM’s describe contents of rooms, but most of us need to work on specifics. Instead of just saying that there is a table in the room, quickly describe it so that the players can see the table.

A monstrously, large table. A dirty wooden table. A spotless, glass table. Be specific without being overly wordy. We need to separate this table from all of the other tables that are out there in the world.

Visually, we notice large objects first, or shiny objects that catch our eyes. Visualize the room yourself, and quickly tell the players what they need to know so that you are all looking at roughly the same room, starting from large objects and work your way down to obvious small ones. This doesn’t include objects that characters need to search for, just the general appearance.

Do you smell that?

You may not notice this, but smells are hardwired directly into our nervous systems in a way that profoundly effects how we feel towards something. They also trigger memories, we remember weird stuff like how our mom’s purse smelled, or grandpa’s pipe. We want to incorporate the smell of a place as well as the visual aspects of it.

Obviously we don’t need to over do this one, a musty dungeon is always going to smell musty and we’ll quickly start to ignore this smell. But through smells, we can hint at an encounter. Trolls are known to live in filth, chances are you are going to be able to smell them way before you see them.

The young lady has a sweet smell. The distinct odor of death waifs out of the cave entrance. Greasy old barrels stacked against the wall stink of mold and waste. Don’t just describe the bad smells, yes we notice these more then pleasant smells, but you can quickly color a scene with the use of a scent faster then you can describe it visually.

The rich smell of jasmine permeates the garden. The smell of the morning dew wakes you up in the morning. The creeping wind reeks of rain and violence, a storm is coming . . . A big one!

I‘ve got a bad feeling about this

We often forget physical touch, especially when dealing with objects. How an object feels in our hands is sometimes important. I’m sure that we’ve all played the Halloween party about “Old Herman’s Eyes”. If a character picks something up, how does it feel? Is it cold or warm to the touch? Smooth or rough? Soft or scratchy?

Some things we can feel before we can see.

There is an energy in the air that causes the hair on your arms to raise and your knees to ache.

A hot wind shoots out of the open hole, blowing your hair as you peer into the unforgiving darkness.

As the dragon reels himself up, his large powerful chest expands as all of the air seems to rush out of the room towards him.

A gentle summer breeze gently kisses you, while a bitter winter wind bites at you. Cold water can either give you relief or be terribly unpleasant depending upon your situation.

Hearing is believing

Our ears are one of our prime defenses, especially an edgy adventurer whose senses are keen. Sometimes the lack of sounds tells you more about your surroundings then what you’re eyes can see. Describing what a character hears is another trick to quickly describing a scene.

Birds singing morning songs in the meadow.

A loathsome howl seems to come from everywhere around you, yet the exact source seems to be nowhere at all.

The tired, old boat creaks and moans as it sails under a wide, starry night sky. In the distance, a lonesome whale sings a sad song that makes your heart ache, and your mind thoughtful.

Taste This, it just fell out of my nose

Tastes are more rarely described, but some smells can be so strong that it effects our tongues as well. They can be used to hint at an encounter, or be used to describe a dreadful attack where an unfortunately gross sliming can occur. Drinking potions could be described to color them up some. A spooky witch woman who lives deep in a dark swamp would make a healing potion that tastes much different from that which a high-priestess of light would make.

Some magical effects would also come with a smell of burnt ozone and leave a distinctly metallic taste in ones mouth. Poisons, even injected ones, tend to immediately flood the mouth with a bitter taste, thus instead of simply telling a player that he has been poisoned, we can quickly describe what he is feeling instead.

Other applications

We don’t just have to use our descriptions while dealing with settings, we want to describe the whole world so that they can explore it first hand.

Avoid all mention of numbers outside of combat. If the players find a Long Sword+2 in a broken boat that’s been floating aimlessly down the river, don’t just come out and say it. Encourage the warrior to notice that the blade isn’t rusty or aged at all. The quality is superb! Despite being rained on and left unattended the blade is still sharper then what he could ever grind his to be.

Art objects should be written up during prep, and described as well. Same process for any magical item. Make them earn everything by being inquisitive and immersing themselves into your world.

The key is to avoid as many mentions of numbers as possible, turning the players characters from a sheet of paper marked with stats, into a real, living and breathing entity that takes in their world as we do, which brings us to a huge part of this little essay . . .

Describing Encounters

We all have players that have memorized the Monstrous Manual . . . Hell, I am one! You throw a monster at me, then I know the quickest way to defeat it. It’s not intentional, it just comes naturally. I WANT TO WIN!!! You can spice up the encounter by refraining from using the creatures name. Use logic about it, ask yourself if this character has ever encountered such a creature in his life! How does he know that such and such monster is vulnerable to cold attacks, or that only a plus weapon can strike the monster? “I read it in the MM.” isn’t an acceptable answer, but we are all guilty of letting this logic go.

Instead of just telling the players what it is that they are fighting, you can create a sense of mystery and horror by hiding your monster behind descriptions.

You see before you what at first appeared to be a pack of dogs, but their filthy grey fur is caked with blood and gore and they are laughing. This insane, whiney laughter mixed with high pitched chatter chills you to the bone. They dodge back and forth in ways that convince you that they are mad, yet their drooling mouths aren’t frothed, and their round, piggish eyes glare into your soul with unmistakable intelligence. They keep their distance, as they circle your camp. What do they want?

This description is pretty long, but I wanted to use it as an example. It isn’t anything all that powerful, I simply described Hyenas to a party that hadn’t ever seen them before. After they encounter it a couple of times, and get to understand what they are then I can just throw the name hyena out there.

AVOID NUMBERS!!! During combat, it’s just to hard unless you’re playing with a small group. I don’t ever come right out and say what my Armor Class is, I ask the players what they rolled and tell them if they hit or not. I do prefer to get through combat as quickly and smoothly as possible. If it is a small enough encounter then I may keep up with just describing the scene, but I find that there are only so many ways to say, “I swung my war hammer!”

I do describe how the creature responds to the damage, and all odd attacks that are unique to that specific creature, but for claw claw bite, that’s as boring as saying that I swung my sword.

Is this right for my game?

What we are doing is projecting feelings. By describing the scene through all of our senses, we encourage our players to have an emotional response to the scene. We are making it more real to them, and aiding them to have exceptionally vivid visualizations. This does take practice and awareness on our part.

A great practice technique that I employ is to imagine an alien fruit from another planet. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What does it feel like in your hands? Taste it, how did it sound when you took a bite from it? Is it juicy or dry? Is it sweet or have some other taste?

Burning out players with over doing it

We are going for simplicity here, less is more. We are also going for specifics! Speed is key, if the players want to know more about an object, then they will ask questions about it. If you over do it, then you are going to bore and frustrate your them. You want to supply them with just a few specifics so that they can see the settings in their minds.

If you over explain a room or an object it could cause your Players to believe that there is something to the scene that really isn’t there. Don’t neglect the rooms, but don’t over do it either. If your characters get obsessed about unraveling the mystery of the overstuffed red reading chair, then that is your cue that you went to far, it’s up to you if you want to reward them for their curiosity or just tell them that it’s a just a chair. Also watch out for them taking everything that isn’t nailed down, which does tend to be a problem for groups that aren’t use to this approach. Just tone down your descriptions of the junk, and remember it when they are trying to retrieve something from their backpack.

End Notes

Some things also shouldn’t be described. Combat gore should be avoided, it can be misleading, and no matter how bad we want our stories to be realistic, we just can’t do it when combat is concerned. I guess I should just say that I’ve play tested violence, and can get it to work to some extent, but I could never keep it consistent. Why can you hit a 10th level fighter with a sword thirty times with a two-handed broadsword? As much as we would like to believe that it makes sense, it’s just a delusion that we keep with us while playing. It’s a necessary evil, I’d be pissed if you killed my 10th level fighter with a single swing of your sword!

Also think about other mechanics that this might apply to. How does infravision work in your world? THAT is a big question. In my world, it’s based on heat.

Describing magic consistently is challenging, but try to pass that kind of stuff off to your characters. Do encourage them to describe what they are doing so that the other players can visualize it as well. It helps get their creative juices flowing, and to me, that is what makes the game so damned fun!

By properly describing what is happening, instead of just telling them stuff, it colors the world in which you game in, and makes it come alive to your players. They will SEE distant mountains fogged in danger, they will feel the forest seem to swallow them up when they enter its dark embrace. They’ll smell the food as they walk the market streets. They’ll cringe in horror as an unknown . . . Thing stares back at them from the darkness of an ancient tomb.

With just a little bit of work on your part, instead of it just being a another gaming session for your players, it will become an intense experience that will leave them panting for more and giving them stories that they can take with them for the rest of their lives. GOOD LUCK!


(This Article was originally published by myself on April 22, 2008)

SEARCHING FOR THINGS can be a pain for both players and game masters alike. As a DM, I really try to leave as much up to the player’s imagination as possible. In the perfect world, I suppose that I would fully dress a room, but to be honest, I just don’t care enough to dress it in anything more then generalities. Not to mention that I play my games during the Victorian era, and those folks loved cluttering every corner of their rooms up with stuff. I simply couldn’t do it! Thus I just describe a room briefly, let the party know what they can safely assume a room is used for, describe the largest pieces of furniture, and maybe one or two things that catch their eyes at a glance. It is up to them to really drag what is in the room out of me.

The worst possible thing that could happen though is that they start searching the place, which gives them a slim chance of finding something, if anything is there. What exactly does this mean? That is what I intend to figure out today.

TIME

The biggest factor in searching for stuff like concealed doors, stashes of money, or clues, is the time that is involved in performing this action. Time affects two major aspects of the game. The first is Magic. Most spells are time sensitive, we have to know exactly how much time that the characters are going to spend looking for something, we must not ever forget to subtract this time from either spells or other time sensitive issues that can come up in a game.

The second thing that we should consider is the DM’s dream of “The Living World”. Are the characters snooping around where they don’t belong? Usually, they are! And for instances like this, we need to know the base chance of the person returning to catch the players red-handed. Alternatively, somebody else might spy this action going on as well and interrupt them, be it a guest, servant, or wandering monster.

SEARCH AS AN ACTION

I am sure that there are grumpy ol Dungeon Masters out there who would say that this whole system is weak. I can’t deny that! A player CAN open drawers and tap on walls, I’m not saying that this system isn’t lazy, however, it IS practical. Players love to pull this one, and they should be able to, after all, it is in the Players Handbook. We should keep to the rules, but, I feel that these rules can be expanded upon.

That said; let’s keep it as simple as possible. Something that we can remember without the need for any new “house rules” written down on paper. We’ll simply turn the search into an action, chopping it up into three different forms of search.

• Brief Search
• Regular Search
• Thorough Search

Depending on how much time and energy a group wants to put forth an effort, determines different factors. This IS an action, and the party will continue doing this action until they are caught or interrupted. If they are caught or interrupted it will change their base chance of finding what they are looking for. It also changes how big of a mess that they are making, and increasing their chances of being discovered, even after the fact.

SEARCHING RESULTS

For every minute searching, the party will gain a 1% chance of finding whatever is hidden in the room. If the party knows exactly what they are looking for, or state specifically what they are searching for, then they get a 2% chance per minute of finding it if it is in the room.

For every two minutes spent searching, there may be a 1% chance of being discovered, depending on if they belong there or not.

BRIEF SEARCH

To conduct a brief search, first all players involved must state this intention. Brief searches can take between 1 to 10 minutes. For each person in the party who is actively searching, the party gets a bonus of +1 (example: 4 people search a room for 10 minutes, they have a 14% chance of finding something which may be hidden.)

Brief searches are fast and simply looking at objects which are in plain view. They don’t open drawers or ruffle through personal property; they are merely examining the room for surface clues and items which are left out.

STANDARD SEARCH

A Standard Search can take between 11 to 20 minutes, plus additional 1% bonus per member actively searching. This kind of search is more invasive. It details moving objects around, looking in drawers and chests, looking under beds, tapping walls, and looking through property.

Standard searches can locate objects which are not in plain view, but not hidden very well either. This includes concealed doors, but excludes secret doors.

The owner of the room may realize that someone has gone through his/her stuff, unless the party is taking special care to keep their activities clean; i.e. shutting cabinets and drawers and leaving the place the way that they found it. If they don’t state this, a wisdom check on the part of the victim will result in them being aware that their stuff has been tampered with. If a 1 is rolled, they probably know exactly who it was that did it. If any items are taken as a result of the search, then the victim will always know that they have been robbed and will take appropriate action. They may not know WHO stole from them, but they will know that they were robbed.

THOROUGH SEARCH

The Thorough Search can take anywhere from a half hour to an hour. While it gives better results, the chances of getting away with it are much slimmer. Unlike brief and standard searching, your chances of being interrupted are equal to your finding something.

Thorough searching is making a mess; it involves dumping the contents of drawers to look for false bottoms, upsetting furniture to see if they have any hidden compartments, ruffling up books to see if they are hiding anything within the pages. This is noisy and messy work, but it brings about very good results. Secret items and horded items can be located this way, as can secret doors and passageways.

Those that perform thorough searches don’t care if they are caught or not, only a thief who is employing his Move Silently skill can do this quietly, and only then if he is alone or with a party of others who successfully use this skill.

I am not so sure that I’d actually give out a 60 percent chance to locate objects for trashing a room, I would be really tempted to have anybody's best chances of finding anything in a search be 45%.

I would also be pressed to give negative results to the chances for intelligent targets. A wizard with an intelligence of 17 isn’t going to hide an object where anybody who trashes a room can stumble upon it; in fact, the only thing that you will ever be able to find of his when conducting a search is probably just the stuff that he WANTS you to find.

This system isn’t perfect, but it is better then simply rolling a 1 or a 2 on a d6. If you wish to expand it, there is a lot of room left to be worked on, however I like to keep things as simple as possible, and I’m not above making stuff up on the fly.