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CHAPTER 5: OUTLINE POTENTIAL SCENES

“The true goal of your session notes is to make you comfortable enough to run your session.” — Phil Vecchione, Never Unprepared

With the strong start written out, we outline potential scenes to help feel like we have a handle on the adventure. Because these scenes might never actually happen, the outline must remain loose and brief—usually just a few words per line and one or two lines per hour of gameplay.

PREPARE TO THROW IT AWAY

The strength of being a Lazy Dungeon Master comes from being ready to throw all preparation away when the game goes in an unexpected direction. If you overprepare, you might fall in love with your work and find it hard to let go. Keeping details brief ensures you are ready to improvise when the players make choices you didn’t see coming.

CHECKLIST FOR OUTLINING POTENTIAL SCENES

• Write down a short list of scenes that might occur in your game.
• Remember that the goal of writing down scenes is primarily to help you feel prepared.
• Scenes can occur in or out of sequence. Write only as much as you need to remind yourself of what might happen.
• Don’t fall in love with your scenes. Be prepared to throw them away.

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CHAPTER 6: DEFINE SECRETS AND CLUES

Secrets and clues are the connective tissue of an adventure and the next most important part of preparation after a strong start.

ANATOMY OF SECRETS AND CLUES

A secret or clue is a single sentence that encapsulates a piece of the game world, its history, or the current story. It contains information that matters to the characters, such as hints about special locations, powerful items, or NPC motivations.

ABSTRACT FROM PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS

Critical rule: Do not tie secrets and clues to specific discovery points during preparation. A secret should not be tied to one particular NPC’s mouth or a specific glyph. Instead, you improvise the discovery during the game, dropping the right clues wherever it makes sense based on the players’ actions.

KEY PRINCIPLES

• Write Ten per Session: Aim for ten secrets. Fewer might not be enough; more can be difficult to reference.
• Not Always Revealed: It is fine if characters don’t find every secret. Unrevealed secrets can be moved to the next session or discarded.
• Only Real when Revealed: A secret is not part of the campaign story until the characters discover it.
• Unrefined Quests: Secrets often solidify into quests when they catch the interest of the players.

CHECKLIST FOR DEFINING SECRETS AND CLUES

• Write down ten secrets and clues that the characters might discover in the next game session.
• Secrets and clues are the connective tissue of a campaign.
• Each secret or clue reveals a piece of the story or the history of the world and its inhabitants.
• Keep secrets and clues abstract from how they might be revealed. Improvise the discovery during the game.
• Throw away secrets that aren’t revealed during a session. Write a fresh list each time.

TEN EXAMPLE SECRETS (FOR “THE SCOURGE OF VOLIXUS”)

• The hobgoblins are building a terrible city-destroying war machine in the western mountains.
• The war machine was forged in the fires of the Nine Hells centuries ago, and was lost in a great battle.
• The hobgoblins have gnome tinkerers and alchemists working on the war machine, but it isn’t clear whether those are prisoners or allies.
• A hobgoblin half-dragon veteran known as Volixus the Burning Rage leads the hobgoblins.
• In addition to his goblin and hobgoblin army, Volixus has hired a band of ogre mercenaries known as the Bonemashers.
• The hobgoblins have taken over a ruined mountain fortress known as Grayspire.
• Centuries past, Grayspire served as the fortress headquarters of High Lord Grandel Whitesparrow, but it fell into ruin long ago.
• A nearly limitless series of sewers and catacombs spreads out beneath Grayspire—including some caverns and ancient ruins said to predate the construction of the citadel.
• Wraiths haunt the old Watchtower of Set, which sits above tunnels connecting it to the lower levels of Grayspire.
• The library of Lord Whitesparrow might hold old maps or clues to navigating the sewers and tunnels beneath Grayspire.

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CHAPTER 7: DEVELOP FANTASTIC LOCATIONS

“Be brave and embrace the largest, wildest themes of your campaign.” — Wolfgang Baur, publisher at Kobold Press

Building fantastic locations is worth preparing because it is difficult to improvise unique sites at the table without falling back on stereotypes.

COMPONENTS OF A LOCATION

A fantastic location needs only two components:

1. An Evocative Name: A title like “The Bridge of Teeth” that fires the imagination.
2. Three Aspects: Short descriptive tags (like “Narrow bridge of bone” or “Howling wind sounds like moaning”) that describe interactable features.

WHAT MAKES IT FANTASTIC?

When in doubt, focus on Scale. Big things, ancient things, and vast things—like a cliff wall that is actually an enormous stone hand—capture the players’ breath.

BUILDING FANTASTIC DUNGEONS

For a single session, you likely need only five to eight main chambers. Instead of detailed mapping, you can draw a “stick-figure” dungeon: write room names on paper and connect them with lines representing hallways or connectors.

CHECKLIST FOR DEVELOPING FANTASTIC LOCATIONS

• Write down an evocative name for the location.
• Write down three fantastic aspects of the location.
• Plan on using one or two locations per hour of play.
• Make locations fantastic using age and size. Tie some locations to the backgrounds of the characters.
• Draw stick-figure dungeon maps with names connected by lines.

TEN FANTASTIC LOCATIONS (GENERAL EXAMPLES)

• Emerald Waterfall: Mile-high waterfall; huge, razor-sharp emerald deposits; ancient primeval steps snaking underneath.
• Crashed Planar Vessel: Huge planar vessel half-buried in ancient rock; blue fires burning eternally in molten rock pits; strange alien beings petrified in obsidian.
• Fang of the First Wyrm: Thirty-foot-high fang thrust up out of the ground; draconic glyphs carved around the fang’s base; sacrificial pedestal stained with blood.
• Floating Geode: Large opaque crystalline geode floating twenty feet off the ground; bolts of red lightning arcing from geode to the ground; deep hole in the earth below the geode like an infected wound.
• Bones of the Behemoth: Huge ribcage and pelvic bone of an impossibly large creature; hanging carcasses of predators; totem of twisted skulls.
• Pit of the Otherworldly Stone: Vast crater surrounded by eternally dead trees; noxious fumes perpetually flowing from the crater; rune-marked glowing stone still hot at the center of the pit.
• Crucified Titan: Massive stone-and-wood structure crucifying a huge, half-shattered titan; black-green liquid dripping from the titan’s cracked chest; ancient stepped altar in front of the titan.
• Ruined Tower: Shattered wizard’s tower somehow still standing; corpses of huge beasts at the tower’s base; twisted weave of arcane energy surrounding the tower.
• Carapace of the World Walker: Huge spider corpse, decayed and hollow; splintered leg carapace, razor-sharp; huge unbroken egg sacks.
• Exposed Tomb: Buried tomb exposed by recent erosion; hooded statues with open, beckoning hands; skeletal hands reaching out of the unhallowed earth.