I wrote this following article while in the thick of running a D&D Club for my old school. I think the advice is sound for those running games, but also serves as something interesting to think about when plottingout short stories. Do with it as you wish :]
Running a D&D Club at school with a gaggle of 12 year olds is absolutely not for someone looking to phone it in.
Kids want to constantly explore the weirdest places. Kids will run their characters into walls just to see what happens. Kids want loot, constantly. Kids will get lost in roll play about what food the characters are eating. Kids won’t follow your story, they’ll make their own, and they’ll laugh and meme at each other at the table, and they’ll absolutely chew up your entire afternoon of play.
And the beautiful thing is, you have to let them. Or, better put, you have to learn to let them. You have to become a DM who can control and corral without constraining the kids. I won’t profess that it’s easy, and I won’t lie and say I’m amazing at it, but I will boldly state that I’m conscious of it and as such I’m building tools to become a boss at it [one day, one day].
One of the key things I’ve tried to be conscious of is making my adventures shorter. I’m an ideas man. Years of writing comics have built cerebral connections where an idea fractures into ideas, which spark off into characters and backstories and problems. It’s just what my brain does. It’s a superpower and a complete mental overload.
This is why every damn NPC I introduce suddenly gets his own complete story and quest scribbled into my notebook and I desperately want to get to it. It’s why rooms will suddenly lead into other rooms, into other dimensions, into whole new stories with more loot and enemies and things for me to control.
This is why my stories weren’t working for the school club that met once a week for an hour and a half in everyone’s afternoon. If I had my druthers, we’d just be campaigning one epic story that rolled on forever, but that doesn’t work with kids. They want to feel success, they want closure, they need to compartmentalise [sometimes, I am generalising a bit].
I also know I need to make things easier to remember and track. I’m teaching full time, I’m running an entire school’s ICT workload, I’m running extension literacy courses for the kids, on top of parenting two wonderful little children, and maintaining a happy marriage. If I need to remember who gave someone the Crown of Sinister Intent from last term, I’m sorry, but I’m toast. Even if I noted it down, where did I note it down, the story is one long scroll by this point and I’m starting to resemble Halaster Blackcloak.
Eventually, I discovered one of my best tricks was finding a way to end an adventure in a way that felt organic and satisfying, but also could be fit into the final 15 minutes of any session. Whatever further story I had planned - NPCs and loot and magic for days - I’d just push into the next adventure and make it feel standalone. Or, more like episodes in a season. Kids are fine with rolling that way, what I found my group wasn’t digging were constant cliffhangers, so I had to work out ways to settle all characters into a rest and the following arrows became mighty game changers [and savers] in my quiver.
The Quest Was Built on Misleading Intel
The adventuring party took so long playing with that mirror that lets them see a snapshot from 5 years into their future, that they burnt up the whole session and only with ten minutes play time left do they enter the Water Mage’s cave lair.
The entire battle you’d set up, involving electric eels, and floating pontoons, and stalactite illusions is never going to fit into this session. You can start it, have people get maybe one roll in, and then pause for the next session, but you’d much prefer to wrap it up. Even though you really dug your plans and don’t want to throw them away.
The good news is, you don’t have to.
Have your players enter the cave lair only to find it...empty, or now home to a wandering troupe of dwarven bards, or maybe it’s just haunted by this weird mountain goat centaur. The point is, the Water Mage is definitely not here and he’ll have to wait for another day.
The beauty here is that the players can more quickly interact with whatever relatively benign NPC you put in their way, they can maybe rest or trade for some loot or find out something else that points them to the Water Mage’s new location. This isn’t a failure, it’s just a detour, and if you make the loot quality, or the NPC really engaging and fun, or you aim the party towards an even more perilous quest they can continue next time, they’ll feel that sense of completion of this ‘episode’ and they’ll have more to think about, and you can rest knowing you aren’t pausing mid-scene and you haven’t lost your final reel set pieces, but rather displaced it in space and time.
Someone Already Beat You There
Your party was supposed to get to the top of the mountain about half an hour ago, they should have been battling the Bear Squad fuelled by rage already, and they’re still wandering past the cave they found halfway up and continuing to poke around it and enjoy the creatures and loot and experiences you throw at them there because you know when you mention a cave and they decide to investigate it and you reveal nothing there then they’re going to find the game boring.
Kids want every experience to be an experience, and they’ve no time nor patience for investing effort and d20 rolls in story asides that feel boring. So you allowed them to find some sentient gold figurines in the cave, and when their glinting bodies in the daylight attracted the treasure hunting ravens, you had to let someone discover the archery range on the other side of the tree which yielded some Arrows of Finding that helped them save the day and get some gems for their time. But this hasn’t got them to the mountain top, and you don’t want to have them camp halfway up because that might be a little bit staid [“Roll d20 to see how well you erect your tent.”] so instead you throw a curveball at the kids.
Kids love curve balls because they’ll always swing harder at them.
The party was ascending this mountain in order to steal a cauldron of such power that they could use it to become amazing heroes, or sell it to become rich, or just bathe in it to bump up their AC. Whatever you want. The point becomes, as they wander away from this cave, they see someone running down the mountain, full speed, and in their hands is the cauldron which they sought. And behind them, at a growling ferocious pace, are the Bear Squad.
That’s right, the fight has been brought to them, and that treasure they wanted is about to get away. So, the party has some quick decisions to make. Attack the Bear Squad and help this other adventurer in hopes they’ll share the goods. Help the Bear Squad track and trap this horrible thief, and then the party can work out if they have a chance at the cauldron now, or if they should thank themselves lucky to be alive.
Or maybe the party watches the whole commotion roll down the hill without them and they strut up to the now unguarded Bear Squad Den to calmly see what’s what and make their silent escape down the other side.
James Remar, the NPC
This one is the most obvious tool, but it’s always good to remind ourselves of the classics.
The party can’t decide on anything, or figure much out on their own - maybe it’s not their day, maybe their rolls are bad, or maybe you plotted an adventure murkier than a dirty river bottom. Information isn’t coming to light, so, never fear.
If you ever saw James Remar in any of the 170 credits he’s racked up since starring in THE WARRIORS [1979] you’ll know he’s an amazing exposition machine. That guy just knew how to make sure other characters knew what was up, and as such the audience also always knew how to follow along.
You need James Remar: Elven Expository Exemplar to roll out of your notes and suddenly point your party in the right direction. They can explain a puzzle, or set a mapping problem straight, or just straight up hint at how to resolve the big bad, and if you need more juice in the story, they can then die for their efforts.
Bravery, adventure, exposition: James Remar be thy name.
The Big Bad Rushes You, Then Bounces
Every kid assumes they’re going to play the game, take the loot, win the adventure, and they’ll roll back next week to do it all again.
Mostly, this is right. You want kids to enjoy D&D, you want them to experience success and most likely not die, but there’s a way to flip this, especially when time is running out.
The party is only halfway through an adventure, and maybe the adventure just isn’t clicking. You thought a castle crawl would be fun, but the kids hate it, or you lack the castle skills to make it feel immersive, so you want out of this one. Easy.
Take that big bad, the one maybe 2 more plot tokens ahead in the game you planned out, and make it rush the room. This gambit isn’t played so your party can defeat it quicker, no, your party is gonna get rushed and flushed. Have the attack come quick and hard, let your players feel what it’s like to get rolled, and then have the big bad scarper off, leaving them to lie half-dead in the destruction left behind just thankful to still be breathing.
Who knows, maybe in all the rush, a huge hint at what comes next was dropped, and that’ll give the group something to stew on for the next week.
The Epic Sacrifice
This one has been my favourite so far.
The clock is ticking down and you can see your players are into the final reel, but they just aren’t going to finish this final puzzle/battle and you don’t want to drag it out. So long as someone has picked up some kind of weapon or unknown item along the way, you can sort this whole adventure out with a few quick rolls and it’s going to be something the players will never forget.
The big bad is putting up a fight, and you don’t want to undermine them by having a final dagger hit of 3 damage fell them, so you have an NPC from the story inform your player that the wooden sword they picked up [and wooden swords always sound lame and have little use] is magically enhanced in a way where it can instantly kill the big bad, it’s a guaranteed slaying tool, one hit.
But.
Whoever does the killing will also need to roll Xd20 damage to themselves [X being the number of rolls that equal 18 or above that could kill the character - if they have 58 hit points, then they roll 3d20 damage].
Watch the players debate who should do it. Watch the players who absolutely refuse to do it. And then watch the final player who steps up like a boss. If they are taking too long to decide, the big bad hits them all a few times, eventually someone will cave. It’s a harsh crucible in which to place your players, but it yields amazing results.
One player grasps the wooden sword. They take a running leap and you describe the most epic and majestic attack anyone at the table has ever seen. The big bad goes down hard, they scream, they puddle into red goo, they are absolutely destroyed. Then, the battle won, the player still holding the wooden sword’s handle rests for a moment, the room silent, and then pain floods through their system. They grit their teeth, they hold it in, they know it was all worth it.
And they roll Xd20.
You’ll never see someone so tense as they add up so much damage. Every other player feels so bad they left this lone adventurer to cover the weight of the battle on their shoulders.
And hopefully [hopefully] the player survives. Maybe just. Their story will go down through the ages, their name will be remembered, and their song shall be glorious.
You can instantly level them up, or have them advance two levels if you’re feeling saucy, and want to teach the other players a lesson, and you know they’re going to keep that wooden sword for life.
It is the most epic end to an adventure ever.
Unless they die. Then everyone just feels horrible, but it’s also, let’s admit it, still pretty metal and awesome.
Besides, it’s the end of the story, a lot can happen in the next adventure if everyone puts their minds to it.