Tension on a Timer: How Progress Clocks Keep Your Game Exciting

Word up my homes.

Today we’re going to talk about “Progress Clocks”. I think these were first introduced by John Harper with Blades in the Dark. (Correction 2025-03-12 I'm reliably informed that they were introduced first in Apocalypse World!) They weren’t the first solution to the particular problems they address, but I do think that they’re perhaps the most elegant.

You’ll understand in a bit.

Why Use a Progress Clock?

You’ve all felt that, right? That anticlimactic feeling that comes from presenting your players this mountain to climb, only for them to simply roll Athletics and pass. “Well done, you’re at the top, well that was dull”. Extreme example I know, but I’m trying to illustrate a point here :)

Experienced GMs might have other techniques for circumventing this problem, but Progress Clocks are for turning a single mechanical success or failure event into something that matches its theme. They’re for showing players exactly what the stakes are, and for managing their expectations regarding how they’re currently performing.

They prevent a couple of failed rolls from completely derailing the players’ current plan.

How does a Progress Clock work?

You draw a circle, and you divide it into a number of pizza slices. 3-6 slices is common, but you can go higher or lower to taste.

You then label that circle with the event that WILL happen once the clock is filled in, and you put it out in front of the players so that they understand what’s at stake.

Then as relevant in game activities take place, you colour in those pizza slices, representing the final event drawing closer. Depending on the sheer influence of the activity that has happened, you may wish to fill in more than one slice. You should also be open to the idea of filling in the entire clock in one go if the situation justifies it (or even disregarding the clock entirely) - You might have thought that something is quite big and complex and worthy of 8 slices, but your players might come up with something that deals with it in one swoop. You’ll know when it happens, don’t impede this.

I should note, it’s not just in game activity that might fill a clock, it might literally represent the passage of time itself.

When do you use a Progress Clock?

You know when you’re running a game and the players want to do something, you might call for a check, and if they succeed, happy days? Well, Progress Clocks are for when the action is too big or significant that it’s success or failure should fall down to a single mechanical event like a dice roll.

Likewise, imagine your players trying to break someone out of jail and there’s this really cool stealth session. Unfortunately they just failed a stealth roll and tripped over in front of a guard, so now the guards are alerted to their presence, and unless you the entire place to come down upon them over a simple misstep, you’ve got to tie yourself in narrative knots trying to justify why the first guard hasn’t just raised the alarm.

Or imagine if your players are trying to accomplish something before this other thing that they cannot affect happens. You might have two clocks here, one for the players progress and one for the other event.

What are the Types of Progress Clock?

Ticking Bomb (or even it’s inverse)

The Ticking Bomb Progress Clock represents how long until something terrible happens. In that time, they need to find a way to circumvent the problem or to prepare for it. This is the classic heist Progress Clock, representing how many mess ups PCs can make before the guards are alerted - in the meantime the PCs want to be in and out.

Competing

Competing Progress Clocks are used to show the progress of two separate events that do not influence each other. For example, the PCs might be trying to evacuate the village in the valley before the Dam breaks. The PCs might advance their clock by sounding the alarms, and guiding people across the bridge, and the Dam’s clock might advance as you roll a check to see if the crack in the damn wall is growing.

Tug of War

Possibly the most complicated to explain, there are two possible event outcomes, and you don’t start these clocks empty. Tug of War Progress Clocks represent two outcomes that DO influence each other. So if the PCs were running away from a monster, as the PCs succeeded in their checks they might fill the clock, and as they fail, then the clock empties. The outcomes in this case would be either a successful escape, or the Monster catching up to them.

Multiple

Not technically a type of clock, but there’s no reason why you can’t have a string of clocks together to accomplish a bigger thing. For example, if we go back to that heist example - The big picture might be “steal the gemstone” but you might present the players with the following clocks (again, allowing them to circumvent any that they reasonably find a work around for):

1. Deal with the guards

2. Make a route inside

3. Get past the traps

4. Evade the security investigating the alarm

5. Get back to the hideout

Conclusion

Nice, hopefully that makes sense to you. If you could use more information, checkout Sly Flourish’s video for extra guidance, or reach out to me on Bluesky.

By the way, I’m currently making a one shot adventure for GOZR called The Rusted Colossus, about a giant old mech that’s been uncovered in the desert. I’m planning on referencing this post, so that if people need pointers on Progress Clocks, they’ve got them. If you’ve come from there - this is time travel. Hello future people! I hope my adventure came out well :)

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

Random Encounters, Not Random Chaos: A GM’s Guide

Word up my peeps.

I finally broke the other day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was sharing my (shameless plug) fantastic free Encounter Timer app online and I’d just heard the same myth being spewed out too many times by people that have misunderstood, been misinformed and consequently have mentally closed the door.

“I don’t use random encounters in my games, I like all my encounters to be woven into my story, and I don’t want to cause a TPK just because the BBEG turns up unexpectantly and wipes the party”

There are probably legitimate reasons for not wanting to use random encounters (“I am cripplingly terrified of improvisation” for example), but this one sucks, and I hear versions of it all the time online, and frankly it is toxic, because other people will read it and then a good chunk of them accept and internalise it and then they go on to miss out too.

Perhaps this goes without saying, but Random Encounters are chuffing awesome. They make your world feel proactive and alive instead of this stale place that only seems to respond to the players presence, we create a convincing illusion of greater activity without burning ourselves out prepping to the Nth degree. Random encounters drive action and interesting situations. Use random encounters, but use them properly, and don’t use them exclusively - there’s nothing wrong with some set pieces.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea, So this objection is like an onion, there’s so many layers to unpack here, wish me luck.

D&D is not a story, it’s a game

The first part to address is the easy one: “I like all my encounters to be woven into my story…“.

GM’s, there’s no delicate way for me to say this: It’s not ‘your story’.

Two things, firstly there is no “story” until after the fact. The story is what happened, not what will happen. If you find yourself controlling what will happen to the extent that the idea of a random encounter ruins your day, then you have too tight a grip on your game. In fact, I’d hesitate to even call it a game at this point - it’s more like you’re asking your ‘players’ to act through your screen play. You need to chill my dudes, embrace a little bit of improvisation and give the players, and even the dice some agency, they will thank you for it (not the dice though, they’re gits).

Point two: If this after-the-fact story belongs to anyone at all, then it belongs to everyone at the table, not just the GM. The GM’s role is not to pre-write a story to control how the adventure pans out (this is video game mentality), the GM’s role is to present interesting conflicts so that the players can resolve them, and then the GM reacts to those resolutions with fair consequences.

Rince & repeat, this is the core gameplay loop of TTRPGs, and it is what makes them unique and special.

Honestly - understanding and accepting this is the key to solving like 50% of all your GMing woes: be a bit more loosey goosey and roll with the flow, baby.

How to use Random Encounters

Rather than worrying about random encounters not fitting into your Lizards-Ate-My-Toast approved, predefined story beats, consider instead the current zeitgeist, a mood, a vibe specific to what is going on this session. If the players are currently investigating ‘The Crypt of the lich king, Misinformedarex’, then it absolutely wouldn’t make sense if an Aboleth rocked up and bust down the door to interrupt a long rest.

So, what do we do about this?

Simple: the Obi Wan Kenobi’s of the GMing world curate their random encounters. We don’t just pick a literal random creature from the Monster Manual, or an online generator - No! In our prep for the session, we spend 5 minutes building a d6 table of encounters that makes sense, so now nothing throws us a curve ball and we’re calm like prescient Jedi Masters.

To Darth “I don’t want to cause a TPK just because the BBEG turns up unexpectantly“, I say, if you don’t want this to happen, don’t put your BBEG in your random encounter table! Rocket science, it ain’t!

Trust your Players to Play

My dear reader, I know I just said don’t put your BBEG in your random tables buuuuuut I have a curve ball for you. A Wrigley worm of a caveat that I’m just dying to wave tantalisingly in front of your snouts. Go on, nibble it.

You shouldn’t be afraid to put something cataclysmic in your random table. Why not?

Mines of Moria. You know what the coolest thing about the Mines of Moria was? It was when the Fellowship are all making a successful run for it and they’re almost home free, and then Peter Jackson rolled a 2 on his Random Encounter check, followed by a 6, and he whipped out a mother trucking Balrog. The players knew that they were no match, so they chose to retreat, but Gandalf rolled high on his insight, and knew they wouldn’t make it without him buying them some time…

He was all like “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!“, and the Balrog was all like “ROROAAAGAHGHAGHH”, one minor quake spell, followed by a bitch whip slap and we just had the best moment of the movie so far, son.

How cool was that?! Think how much weaker that chapter would have been if the Fellowship just escaped because Peter Jackson kept fudging hundreds of his To Hit rolls on those Goblin archers, just to ensure the sanctity of his precious story?

Not all Random Encounters are combats

Wait there’s more! (Holy cow, it’s a second curve ball!!) You should use Reaction Tables hand in hand with your random encounters (but only when it’s not patently obvious what the reaction should be):

d6 | Reaction

1 | I hate your face and will rip it off and wear it as a loincloth

2 | I am grumpy as chuff and have a short fuse

3 | Halt! Who goes there?!

4 | Ahoy!

5 | Oh sure, I can help you with that

6 | You have my sword! (And my Axe!)

The deal here is that the higher the dice roll, the friendlier the disposition on the thing you’ve encountered.

This way, all of a sudden not every encounter is a fight. Mixes it up, keeps players on their toes. If your curated encounter table tells you it’s a Banshee, but also you get a middling 3 on your reaction table, that’s where you have some quick thinking to do.

Maybe the Banshee is sad, inquisitive players might notice this and assuming they are cool with her, she opens up to them and tells them that she wants to be released from undeath to be with her lover, and the only way to do it is [insert clue about the dungeon boss here]. Wait - Holy smokes, did we just enrich the “Story” with a random encounter??!

Encounter Clues!

A triple curve ball! This post is like a whirlwind! Brace yourself, here it comes:

Not every encounter needs to be: “Bam! Thing, in your face, go!”

Good people of Earth, behold! I have a third table for you which modifies the encounter again, let’s call it a Perception Table:

d6 | Perception

1 | Shhh, they’re sleeping

2 | I can hear them talking in the next area

3 | I can hear them approaching, unaware of us

4 | Bam! Thing in your face, Go!

5 | They know we’re here and by the thunder of their feet, they’re coming!

6 | Ahhhck, where did they come from!

What’s the point of this? It gives the players options, they could hide, they could set up an ambush, they could reroute a different way, they could set a trap… I’m sure the list goes on.

The point is, it adds layers of interesting conflicts for your players to resolve - and remember, that is literally the game.

Conclusion

Random encounters are a powerful tool to create interesting conflicts, not something to be feared. Let go of your controlling grip, embrace improvisation. Oh, also, go back to my other post and checkout my Encounter Timer app!

If you still don’t believe me, that’s OK. I hope at least I made you smile. If I didn’t even manage that, then please accept my humblest apologies and maybe I’ve not lost you forever :)

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

3 More GM Crutches that Hold Your Game Back

Now then, have we all had a good week? Are we feeling ready for round 2? Good, lets continue.

Hopefully you’ve tossed away the first 2 big crutches identified in last weeks post, and you’re already starting to reap the rewards of a freer game. Well, now I’ve got 3 more crutches that hold your game back, and you should seriously consider binning these too.

3) Artistic, Player Facing, Playable Maps

Yes, yes, they look cool, but outside of sparing use for set piece battles like “boss fights”, they just take the game towards video game territory. You see, the thing with video games is that the best video game is a video game, so stop trying to be a video game and be a TTRPG instead and play to those strengths.

Why do we use them?

• Maps look cool, and give a certain wow factor.

• They take the pressure off when describing locations - you can just point at the map instead.

• Players with minis or tokens are able to pin point their location.

Why are they bad?

• If you rely upon them, they limit your encounters to only situations where you have a relevant map handy.

• When you’re using them to gradually reveal a location, then the players can’t help but metagame and notice areas that they have not explored - making exploration less about in game experience and more about how much of the map has been revealed.

• Players will take the map as gospel and stop using their imagination. If the map doesn’t specifically show a chandelier then the players are much less likely to ask if there is one for them to shoot down on top of the mob of Goblins.

What is the alternative?

Depending on what is more appropriate for the moment, you should use either theatre of the mind, or quickly draw up a rough map on a Chessex grid. If we’re talking about mapping out a dungeon then let the players do that themselves in their notes.

Gridded battle maps are massively over-used in my experience, and they only really have value in two situations: The battle is very tactical and positioning is very important, or you’re filming an actual play and you want to give your audience something to look at.

Theatre of the mind is generally considered old school, but it’s just as applicable today as it ever was for filling the gaps when gridded maps are not suitable. Big monster? TotM. Horror game? TotM. Small scuffle? TotM. The idea here is that with a couple of prompts, the players imagination and questions will create something far cooler than you can describe, and it really isn’t important that everyone is imagining a slightly different thing.

If you struggle to describe environments, start with the areas utility: “It’s a Kitchen” - At that point you don’t need to describe the sink or the fridge, players have already filled in those blanks. You can move on to identifying the key objects in the room that the players might want to engage with like the discolored brick above the stove, and the stinky open casserole pan on the table.

4) Rule Expansion Books

Ho boy, this is a contentious one.

They’re the worst for this by far, so I’ll pick on them - Since 2014 Lizards Ate Your Toast have released a boat load of 5e expansion books (not counting adventure modules) all containing new rules and stats, sold under the guise of enabling your players to do/experience more things.

If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.

I get it, they’re a business and we want our favourite games to succeed, and for them to succeed then the business needs to sell stuff. Catch 22. Well as far as I’m concerned the onus is on them to produce something that actually has value - like a good module.

Why do we use them?

• Marketing hype?

• Sunk cost fallacy?

• At some base level we believe that teams of TTRPG scientists have sat down meticulously testing all the rules to ensure their perfection, and that if the game does or doesn’t allow for a specific ability then it must be for good reason. Therefore when the new book is released that has rules for blowing your nose, we go wild because our PCs have had blocked sinuses for weeks and this is just what we’ve been waiting for. Picture the scene: “You look down at your tissue, make a DC12 Religion check to determine if you see the face of God”.

Why are they bad?

• Rules expansion books are mega expensive, and they don’t hold their value when you’ve decided that you don’t need them anymore.

• Because they have to justify their £50 price point, these books pad in pages and pages of unnecessary complication to their rules, which makes the total system less elegant and slower in play.

• They create a culture that says you’re only allowed to do the thing if the rules specifically say that you can.

What is the alternative?

If the system is any good then it should have a core rules language that is easy to understand and widely applicable. The 5e game system is actually an example of this - roll a d20, add modifiers and score higher than a DC to do the thing.

As GMs you need to throw off the shackles of looking to rules supplements for rulings for new things, instead you can use the existing rules language to house rule any situation.

If you want to see how other GMs have handled a situation, the web is full of blogs and videos with free content. For example, check out my stuff on inventory management.

5) Pre-Planning Solutions

I used to do this when I started out GMing. It’s part of that same video game mentality that dictates that everything should be balanced. Eugh.

So for example, you’re doing this when you put a chasm between the players and their goal, and also a tree that is partially fallen, that would span the gap if only the players gave it some encouragement.

Why do we use them?

• We pre-plan solutions because we’re obsessed with the idea that the game should be “balanced”. Video games have taught us that all problems have one solution that was designed by the developers and we carry this thought process over to TTRPGs as well.

• We cling to the hope that if the solutions pan out the way we design, then the game will go the direction we envision. Then there won’t be any difficult moments at the table where we have to think on our feet.

Why are they bad?

• By restricting all problems to only those that we can think of a solution to, we’re limiting our own creative expression as a GM.

• Your problems tend to lean to all having the same solution.

• It makes session planning a lot more like hard work if you have to stop every time you introduce a conflict to verify that it has a solution.

• If all problems have to be solved the way you intended, then the players have no agency. That’s a boring experience.

What is the alternative?

Trust your players to find a way, and be prepared to say yes to it.

That’s good GM advice right there - Default to yes, unless there’s a very good internal consistency reason not to.

Whilst we’re at it, throw off the shackles of expecting everything to go the way you designed - no plan survives contact with the enemy, so learn to embrace the chaos of thinking on your feet. Use random tables if you need on the spot inspiration for what the next challenge should be.

conclusion

We got there! I sure hope I didn’t lose any loyal readers with these two frankly quite ranty posts, but sometimes you just gotta vent, ya know? I promise that this is all good advice, and although none of it should be taken as 100% applicable 100% of the time, you should use your judgement and I reckon your games will improve.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

These 2 Expensive GM Crutches are Actually Traps, I Have Alternatives

Ahoy there, welcome aboard. I’m feeling spicy today so it’s time to drop some meta disruptive truth bombs.

I’m absolutely swimming against the tide here, so some of you won’t agree with this post, and that’s A-OK because we’re still friends and one of us will change our mind eventually as we grow and become better GMs for it, and then we shall fondly look back upon this post from a position of supreme transcendence and inner harmony. Zen.

As it is written, shall it be so.

Lets start with defining terminology. What do I mean by crutches and traps?

Well, a crutch is simply something that you introduce to make a task easier, and you should - seeking crutches is 100% the right thing to do. For example, a GM screen is a crutch because it can give the GM helpful improv prompts and reminders for key rules.

A trap however is something that initially appears to be solely beneficial, but not only does it create a dependency, it also has a hidden detrimental effect on your game, such as a GM fudging dice rolls to help their players, leading to a game suffering for its lack of stakes or player agency (told you I was feeling spicy).

1) Miniatures

Minis are cool, I like to collect them, I like to paint them, I like to use them in miniature war games. I totally get the appeal here.

Why do we use them?

• Minis allow the GM to relax their descriptions of monsters - you don’t need to give a massive description if players can just see the mini, right?

• Minis allow us to demonstrate where the actor is on a battle map.

• Minis look cool, they create more of a spectacle.

Why are they bad?

• Minis are expensive, difficult to store, and take a long time to paint.

• Minis tend to limit our encounters to the models that we have in our collection, and that we have brought with us to the game. This means that if we want to improv an encounter mid game that we don’t have minis for then we’ve got a problem.

• It also means that players may see your minis before the encounter, and then know what’s coming.

• When players pour hours of effort into a mini, that creates a conflict of interest for the GM. No one wants to be the a$$hole that kills the character that Billy has spent the last 2 weeks painstakingly preparing.

What is the alternative?

Tokens. Generic tokens. Sly flourish did a great service to the community with these and they work perfectly, because rather than needing a specific token for a goblin, you can use the hooded face token. Got a big brute? Cool, use the token in the armoured helmet. Being attacked by a group of beasts? Use the animal skulls.

Not only that, but each token within a group is lettered, so that players can say “I want to attack goblin C” instead of trying to work out which goblin they mean.

On top of this:

• They’re robust.

• Easy to store

• Cheap and easy to replace

• You don’t need many

• They’re multi purpose

Image credited to Sly Flourish

I’m planning on making and selling a set of my own soon, subscribe to the Mailer of Many Things, my monthly newsletter if you want to be kept up to date about when they’re available.

2) Automation Tools

When I was first starting out with 5e I found the character creation process so complicated that a tool like D&D Beyond was really useful as it took players through the process of character creation step by step, and did all the calculations for modifiers behind the scenes. Then the developers sold it to a company whose name might rhyme with Lizards Ate Your Toast, and the enshittification began.

But it’s not just D&D Beyond this applies to. Many digital toolsets such as virtual tabletops (VTTs) have these same issues whenever they have processes that script elements together.

Why do we use them?

• Many processes in TTRPGs are complicated, scripted automation allows us to focus on the fun role play instead without burdening the players with having to understand the behind the scenes mechanics of the game.

• They stop us forgetting about important mechanics.

Why are they bad?

• They’re very expensive. At time of writing, D&D Beyond can cost over $70 for a monthly subscription over a single year.

• If the GM wants to homebrew some new mechanical effects on the spot, these tools either do not allow for that, or they force the game to grind to a halt whilst the GM deciphers a complicated process to integrate their ideas into the system.

• Heaven forbid if you trigger an automated action by mistake. Automation tools frequently script a string of effects into motion that need carefully unpicking. For example, if you mistakenly roll to fire a gun in Alien RPG, that might subtract ammo. If you miss, it may trigger a stress roll, which triggers a panic roll, which may fail, then that might automatically alter your PCs stats.

What is the alternative?

I don’t mean this to sound dismissive, but simply get everyone to learn how the game works so that they can perform the games processes manually.

• You should use your first session to teach everyone the game and help them all build characters.

• If the game has really obtuse processes, play a simpler game. “Complicated” rarely equates to “better”. In fact, complicated games are a sure sign of bad design. And I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.

• Use game agnostic VTTs like Owlbear Rodeo which have a free tier, and do not contain scripted automations.

Conclusion

Phew! This is a longer post than I thought it’d be. I’ll discuss Player Facing Maps, Planned Outcomes, and Rule Expansion Books in a later post, this text will be linked if I’ve written it yet.

I hope these first two traps disguised as crutches have been eye opening for you, and that you’re able to kick the habit using the alternatives I’ve proposed. If you have additional alternatives, why not join the discussion on Bluesky?

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

campaign modules drag on, run episodic games instead

Yo. Before I begin, this article makes a critical point about modern TTRPG campaigns, and I’m drawing on my lived in experience to do so.

So dear reader, I don’t know about you, but I think that there’s a cultural expectation that RPG campaigns should go on for months - I’ve ran a few myself over the years this way, and despite them starting out strongly, 5+ sessions in, I start to find myself losing interest and I suspect that my players do too. Do you think that’s a common experience? I think it might be.

That got me speculating as to why, and I have conclusions. I also think that Episodic play might be the solution.

Event Based Campaigns

Campaigns in the modern “I just picked up a module for my game and it’s the size of a university text book” sense often follow a predefined interactive story. They’re “event based”, which means they’re formatted so that ‘this’ happens, and then ‘this’ happens, and then “this” happens, and it’s all packed with filler between these set story beats.

D&D 5e literally trains DMs to run games like this with it’s various linear starter sets and modules.

I theorise that running campaigns this way also demonstrates to your players that they should expect to be passive consumers of whatever you have planned for the evening, rather than lead actors with agency, driving their own experience.

For example, Lost Mines of Phandelver is often considered a great module for 5e, and indeed it’s first two chapters are very enjoyable as quasi one shot experiences, both can be completed in an evening and both are simple enough so that the players know what they’re doing - Rescue Sildar Hallwinter from the Goblin Cave, and save Phandalin from the tyranny of the Red Brands respectively.

However, when the third act begins, the story introduces a number of tangents - the game opens up and the players are expected to investigate Phandalin themselves to identify adventure opportunities and follow whatever path they like. Only… we’ve just spent the last couple of sessions very obviously pointing at the objective and saying “this is where the adventure goes next”, and now, without warning we whip the training wheels off the railroad and expect the players not to fall over? It’s a big ask.

Inevitably this results in a whole lot of nothing, to recap - the players have been primed to believe that the DM is going to hit them over the head with the next quest, and instead they’re just being fed a series of small off-plot hooks about things going on in the wider world. Analysis paralysis kicks in, and the session slows down to a crawl. Engagement takes a hit.

Losing the plot

If the players are expected to engage enthusiastically with prewritten story beats, then it needs to be focused - like a one shot. In fact, in one shots I think pre-defined stories work really well because the players get a satisfying hook and resolution all whilst they still have interest.

Contrast that against the real time gap between sessions in Event Based Campaigns where the players and GMs can lose track of plot threads and hooks, and questions like “I don’t know what’s going on?” or “Why are we going over here again?” start creeping into play. Not to mention how it becomes increasingly difficult to have each session end on a cliffhanger and start with a bang!

I do believe that this is inevitable too - almost by definition, in large event based campaigns that take months, the plot, the players and GMs will lose focus, and that will damage the game.

Again in LMoP, by the time everyone has adjusted to the total change of pace and investigated the Thundertree and Old Owl Well tangents in the third act, that’s been maybe 4 or 5 sessions. That could easily be about 2 months in real time! Of course everyone has forgotten about the central premise surrounding Gundren Rockseeker, the Black Spider, and Wave Echo Cave!

Sandbox play

Sandbox play is something we often hear about, and it’s something I wish I could get to work correctly, but I think it requires everyone to fully buy in to an exploration focused game up front. Essentially it places the onus on the players to explore and find their own adventure, and the GM has no sense of what’s going to happen more than one session in advance because the game’s narrative is driven by whatever the players discover and are interested in pursuing.

However, games like 5e fight against this with no real mechanics to support exploration, and plenty of mechanics that actively nullify the challenge that exploration should present. These all combine to make a 5e sandbox game quite the hard sell.

Conversely, if everyone at the table is up for this type of game, and you’ve got a game engine that supports it, then I think that sandbox style play is one solution to the problem of campaign games losing momentum, because there’s no overarching plot to lose track of, and the players have 100% agency over the direction of the game.

I should note, I do not think you can “sandboxify” a linear module. It’s got to be one or the other to maintain player expectations - either the campaign has predefined story beats that the players expect to receive, or the players expect to drive their own story. Any combination of the two creates a contradiction in expectations, and leads to unsatisfying games. Trust me, I’m guilty of this and it doesn’t work.

Episodic Play

OK, I firmly believe that there’s nothing wrong with predefined story beats, and in fact my only criticism of this style is that it’s easy to lose interest when it goes on too long, and this is where episodic play comes in.

Episodic play is best thought of as a series of one shots, kind of like a pre Netflix TV show, where it is understood that a suitable chunk of time has elapsed between each loosely connected episode. In this new zeitgeist, BBEG’s rarely last longer than a couple of sessions, and neither do plots.

It’s a style particularly suited to games where the content is clearly defined up front and a clear resolution is available after just one or two sessions. For example, I have an ongoing Call of Cthulhu game that works like this - the players all know that they’re part of an investigative agency, and when we want to play, I offer them up a choice of one shots that I’m interested in running.

When it comes to game time, I give them some background to say how long has passed since the last adventure, and point out any relevant things that might have happened off screen, then I reiterate what this adventure is about and throw them straight into the action.

When run in this way, I find episodic play has huge advantages:

• Each session starts with a clear hook and players can jump straight into the action and wrap up with a satisfying conclusion.

• Players with conflicting schedules can drop in and out from one game to the next without disrupting the verisimilitude.

• As a GM, you can explore a wide variety of themes, locations, and even BBEGs without being tied to a rigid continuous storyline. You can even seamlessly integrate published one shots.

• Players can try new PCs or revisit old favorites whenever they like.

• PCs don’t have plot armour anymore, and will be played according to these stakes.

• Players get to choose the type of session they want to play next.

• You can even play different games altogether between episodes, there’s nothing complicated to remember regarding a plot so there’s no harm in it.

There is a potential downside though - depending on your groups availability. In order to get a satisfying story in, I find that you have to set aside 5 or 6 hours of play. Of course you can break it up into smaller sessions, but then we run the risk of us all losing the plot and the focus, so perhaps be prepared to play for longer, but less frequently.

Conclusion

If you have GM burn out, or the game lacks focus, or if you just want to try lots of new TTRPGs or adventures, then you should try running episodic style games. You can even use this as a low barrier to entry way of getting new players involved, or for converting players into GMs!

Please reach out with your opinions if you have them, I’m always interested in what you have to say. I’m on Bluesky or you could use my contact form.

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