DM Challenges

[HuskyBoi]

I'm sure we've all been there, at least once. The game has been chugging along for several weeks, or months, and everyone's having a good time. Players have a laugh, and the DM enjoys his time running it too. But maybe the DM's feeling a bit stale. The players kick in the door, kill the monsters, loot the treasure, roleplay with some NPCs, and then do it again, and again, and again, until the DM wonders if he can't shake it up a bit. Or maybe the players are getting a bit too secure in their invulnerability, liable to mouth of to important NPCs, or charge into battles that should be more threatening. Maybe they're metagaming a bit much. Maybe the DM just wishes there were fewer Python jokes, demeaning NPC nicknames, and references to characters' naughty bits.

The game isn't broken. Everyone's still enjoying it, well enough. But the DM is looking for a way to just... shake it up a bit.

Or maybe no-ones ever felt this way and it's just how I was a couple of months back. I don't want to speak for anyone. :smalltongue: But if by chance anyone has felt that way, I hope this thread might be of interest.
I mentioned to a friend, another roleplayer outside our current campaign, that I'd been feeling this malaise a bit as the DM. The game was rolling along, but it felt a bit safe and samey. On top of that, players were messing around a bit more in the game. In particular, our group can be a bit... ahem, infantile, at times, and while that generally doesn't bother me (I'm as childish as the rest of the group, frankly), I wondered if I could shake the players up a bit, try to edge away from that for a while.

And so my friend gave me a challenge. Rather than get all po-faced and serious, he suggested I go the other way. His challenge was thus: Run an encounter- not just an encounter, but a big final end-of-adventure encounter- in which the monster/NPC is absolutely stark naked. And, he said, you can't be coy about it. Make it plain as day to players that their opponent is completely in the altogether. And you must set the atmosphere of the scene such that the players make absolutely no jokes about this fact.

One adventure later (it culminated in a battle with an Efreeti captain at the top of his tower), I was pleased to say that I had succeeded- and better yet, the players said it was one of the best evenings gaming we had recently had. Bouyed up by this, me and my friend took to this idea of exchanging these 'DM challenges' to each other. Every couple of weeks, we will take turns to set a challenge to each other for something to include in the campaign.

TLDR: My friend and I have taken to giving each other 'challenges' of things to include in our adventure design.
This is a thread of challenges to the DM- things to include in your adventure design to shake things up a bit, and edge us out of the comfort zone. And we agreed these felt like something that might be shared with the lovely folks at Giant in the Playground.

Have you ever introduced such a challenge to yourself to shake the game up a bit? What was it? Or could you add a challenge to the list, something a bit interesting and different to affect a change of pace?

Here are some of what we've done so far:


The aforementioned 'As the day he was born' challenge.
Run a dungeon with no monsters.
Make the players afraid of a monster at least four levels below their party level. (Specifically, my party is level 8- my friend challenged me to 'Make them fear a pack of wolves'.
Have the players search a forest. Actually have them search the forest- maintain their interest in the environment. No monsters allowed.
This one in response to players metagaming the combat a bit much: Choose a less-often-used monster from the Monster Manual. When the players face it, do not reference it by name. Your description should be such that the players don't realise what they are fighting (unless the characters recognise it via knowledge checks).


Now, I don't want it to sound like the game is no fun and I'm having to rescue it from the pit of despair. In two months, I've used three of these. But they've proved a lot of fun (mixed success), so I'd like to keep doing them. From here, I turn it over to you, fellow Playgrounders- what challenges might we add (or have you done before) that could put a bit of a spin on familiar adventures?

[ComaVision]

When the players face it, do not reference it by name. Your description should be such that the players don't realise what they are fighting (unless the characters recognise it via knowledge checks).


This is how I do encounters by default, including creatures like goblins and orcs unless the characters already have prior experience with them. Players often misidentify creatures as a result.

I'm kept fairly busy as a DM just because my group is fairly optimized. I have to get pretty creative to provide a challenge without using the same counters multiple times.

When I get a bit bored, or have an idea I really want to use but it doesn't fit in with my campaign, I'll run a one-time session.

[EldritchWeaver]

Here are some of what we've done so far:


The aforementioned 'As the day he was born' challenge.
Run a dungeon with no monsters.
Make the players afraid of a monster at least four levels below their party level. (Specifically, my party is level 8- my friend challenged me to 'Make them fear a pack of wolves'.
Have the players search a forest. Actually have them search the forest- maintain their interest in the environment. No monsters allowed.
This one in response to players metagaming the combat a bit much: Choose a less-often-used monster from the Monster Manual. When the players face it, do not reference it by name. Your description should be such that the players don't realise what they are fighting (unless the characters recognise it via knowledge checks).


I've been thinking about how to actually run these challenges:


Naked enemy: No idea.
No Monster Dungeon is filled with traps only (and bones of those who failed before).
Deadly cannon fodder: Sounds like the Tuckers Kobolds. Use of clever tactics and superior numbers.
No Monster Forest: I suppose, you need to have some environmental challenges alongside of a fetch quest to have them going to the direction you need.
Unusual monsters: That one is obvious.


Maybe as a challenge: Add some cursed items, whose effects aren't obvious at first, and use those in a later encounter. Like having soundless boots, but those simply delay the sound by 10 minutes. Then make the party paranoid with their invisible stalker.

[HuskyBoi]

This is how I do encounters by default, including creatures like goblins and orcs unless the characters already have prior experience with them. Players often misidentify creatures as a result.

I've had a go at it, but my players tend to go "Oh, it's a troll" and break out the fire weapons even just from a description. Hence starting with something a bit more obscure first. I suppose choosing a more recognisable monster could be the next challenge!


[/LIST]

I've been thinking about how to actually run these challenges:


Naked enemy: No idea.
No Monster Dungeon is filled with traps only (and bones of those who failed before).
Deadly cannon fodder: Sounds like the Tuckers Kobolds. Use of clever tactics and superior numbers.
No Monster Forest: I suppose, you need to have some environmental challenges alongside of a fetch quest to have them going to the direction you need.
Unusual monsters: That one is obvious.


Maybe as a challenge: Add some cursed items, whose effects aren't obvious at first, and use those in a later encounter. Like having soundless boots, but those simply delay the sound by 10 minutes. Then make the party paranoid with their invisible stalker.

I love the idea of the boots! That's a great idea for paranoia. I suppose I can tell you how I ran the others:

Naked enemy mainly came down to making plain how much of a threat it was from the beginning. The players walked into a throne room, with a huge iron throne at one end and large-sized weapons of black iron all around on the walls. In the centre was a huge rectangular pool of molten gold- players tried approaching but it was too blisteringly hot to even get to the edge. After exploring the room for a bit and wondering where the big boss fight that they'd been promised was, players were feeling a bit stumped. They were then given a very slow description of the unnamed monster rising out of the pool, stepping up to the edge and striding across the room to the throne, drips of molten gold sliding from his thighs and chest to to the floor, his great member swinging pendulously back and forth, to sit on the throne with his legs spread wide and his arms resting on the sides. The party was already looking concerned, so much so that they didn't stop to make any jokes.

And being PCs, their first move in combat was to cast a fireball. Points for trying, but it didn't work.

Deadly cannon fodder: Players had been lost wandering around in the woods for days. Supplies running low- some had already failed saves against fatigue due to starving. Time limit was also running out. A bigger monster (a high CR ghost) had been picking away at them for days, slowly bringing their party resources down. Party hasn't slept or eaten in days, wizard hasn't been able to prepare fresh spells, expendable cure potions are running low. They find a dark cave to try and rest in, make their way to the back... and then hear the growling.

It was four wolves, and the players were genuinely uncertain whether they should fight them or not. (they did, took a lot of damage, but managed to drive them out and then rest). I gave them a simple monster fight next week to make up for relentlessly bullying the characters that session :smallbiggrin:.

The forest- I apologise, I may not have explained this one well. This one I actually haven't done yet, it's my plan for next week. We have found that forests tend to get a bit samey in games. ("There are trees. There's a stream"), so the idea is to make it more similar to a dungeon, with distinct areas and terrain that the players will have to explore. I've filled it up with 'markers' (a patch of wild strawberries, a storm-struck tree, a broken bridge, a wasp nest), and will treat each marker as a 'room', in easy walking distance of certain other markers. The idea then is to give the players directions at the start (via an NPC), and although they'll have to make survival checks to successfully navigate between markers, the main task is for the players to remember the route- and to explore other routes as they have to search. Tension is going to be upped by... a presence- a quiet, sinister, disturbing presence, a sensation of being watched, which will come from one of the markers (a twisted thorn tree).

[Amphetryon]

This one in response to players metagaming the combat a bit much: Choose a less-often-used monster from the Monster Manual. When the players face it, do not reference it by name. Your description should be such that the players don't realise what they are fighting (unless the characters recognise it via knowledge checks).
How does this actually work for you in practice? I've had Players (usually Players used to the DM chair) who can identify what monster the DM is using based on the combination of basic description + which Knowledge check is called for, and I've had DMs that would ask the Players to guess which single Knowledge check was appropriate to roll, based on their description. I am not sure either was a satisfactory solution.

[ekarney]

My go to challenge is to create a questline so insane that I need to homebrew a whole new set of rules just for it to work mechanically (Not like replacing rules, just for things not covered by wizards), on the topic of solely keeping things spicy what I do is:
Make each questline mechanically different to the last.
For example the first 10 levels of an adventure may be:
QL1: Explore the area, fetch quests, generally spend a lot of time doing skill checks
QL2: They want something different now, so they'll do political intrigue and have to RP
QL3: Enough RPing, a band of Orc chieftains want to challenge the players to duels after they gained political fame.
QL4: Well, they've done a heap of boss fights and 1v1 fights, time for a dungeon crawl, Tuckers and Tactics here we come.


As for the actual topic, my uhh, "Go-to" for this sort of thing where I generally need to put serious effort in would be make a module for my players that requires I invent a whole new ruleset.

Example, and what I did most recently was let my players rampage down a canyon in makeshift tanks.
Obviously, since they designed the tanks, I had to well make rules for building tanks out of field guns, wagons and spider effigies.

[nedz]

Here are some of what we've done so far:


The aforementioned 'As the day he was born' challenge.
Run a dungeon with no monsters.
Make the players afraid of a monster at least four levels below their party level. (Specifically, my party is level 8- my friend challenged me to 'Make them fear a pack of wolves'.
Have the players search a forest. Actually have them search the forest- maintain their interest in the environment. No monsters allowed.
This one in response to players metagaming the combat a bit much: Choose a less-often-used monster from the Monster Manual. When the players face it, do not reference it by name. Your description should be such that the players don't realise what they are fighting (unless the characters recognise it via knowledge checks).

Check: done all of those.

Some of the more unusual ones I've done:

Recreate the Paris Commune in the PC's home city
Acquire a McGuffin, which was part of the crown jewels of a kingdom they were trying to befriend
Set off a WMD
Capture a criminal whom the authorities decide to execute without a trial
Travel along an underground canal through some extensive mines in a boat
Acquire an unreliable artefact which is more trouble than it's worth

[HuskyBoi]

Obviously, since they designed the tanks, I had to well make rules for building tanks out of field guns, wagons and spider effigies.

Ah, the classic field-gun-spider-effigy-wagon tank. Pioneered by the Germans during world war 1, if I remember correctly? :smallwink:


Check: done all of those.

Some of the more unusual ones I've done:

Recreate the Paris Commune in the PC's home city
Acquire a McGuffin, which was part of the crown jewels of a kingdom they were trying to befriend
Set off a WMD
Capture a criminal whom the authorities decide to execute without a trial
Travel along an underground canal through some extensive mines in a boat
Acquire an unreliable artefact which is more trouble than it's worth


I love the idea of an artifact that's causing constant trouble for the players. Adds an interesting dynamic to the adventure of trying to get rid of it as fast as possible! :D

[nedz]

I love the idea of an artifact that's causing constant trouble for the players. Adds an interesting dynamic to the adventure of trying to get rid of it as fast as possible! :D

Hmm, it's one I've done a few times now I think of it.

[daremetoidareyo]

Give everything class levels. That's what i do. I also use a lot of mixed PC race party teams for them to fight. You want the mcguffin? So does the Sour
Rats adventuring guild. And then I acf the heck out of them or grab the iron chef builds to make a themed party and the PCs can look at what the heck the build was after they kill them.