If you want your players to truly become invested in your story, make it make sense. In this article, I’ll explain why this matters and how it makes your adventures more enjoyable for both the players and for you as the dungeon master.
This is fantasy, so I’m not suggesting everything has to follow the laws of physics and realism. What I am saying is that if the party comes across a talking mushroom, there needs to be a reason for that mushroom to have so much to say.
Don’t be Random
There’s a difference between possible, probable, and plausible, and there’s a reason why this matters in your D&D game beyond mere semantics.
First of all, this is fantasy which means anything goes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it should. Or if it does, it shouldn’t be ‘just because’.
If you’ve got goblins living peacefully as servants of a sentient, hyper-intelligent gelatinous cube and its manticore concubine, find a plausible explanation for that bizarre arrangement.
Don’t be random just for randomness sake. If you do something ‘out there’, come up with a reason for it that makes sense.
Dungeons Without Reason
When I started off as a dungeon master back in the early 80s when dirt was young, I’d start designing adventures by drawing maps. The maps rarely made any sense. They’d be a series of rooms, most often square or rectangular with the only variation being their relative size, and then I’d connect them with a series of also seemingly random corridors.
There was no rational explanation for why the rooms were there, why they were shaped that way, who made them, or who spent those countless goblin-hours carving the corridors from the living rock to connect them.
Then, I’d stock the dungeon with a bunch of random items that seemed interesting, but like the layout of the dungeon, they had no logical reason for why they were there.
Example: Against the Giants
When I bought my copy of Gary Gygax’s mega-module, Against the Giants, my mind was blown. It was dense, the scale and scope was huge, and nearly everything had a reason for being there.
It was all still fantastical (since when do giants collaborate with drow elves?) but there was an explanation for it all.
I think that cohesiveness is what took the comprehensiveness and scope of that adventure and made it successful. I think that’s why it was such a joy to play, and a joy to run as a dungeon master.
Players Need to Plan
This matters because players will start to lose interest if what happens in the adventure and what they find in your world is too random. They can’t wrap their head around it, and that quickly inhibits their ability to plan.
If the players can’t plan, or at least have a sense for the ‘why’ behind things, they start to feel like they could have just stayed at home and rolled a bunch of dice on random encounter tables to get the same experience.
Random, disjointed, or implausible people, places and things within a D&D adventure starts to feel like someone’s changing the radio station every few seconds. As soon as you pick up on the beat and start tapping your foot, the music changes and you lose your connection.
Why Is The Mushroom Talking?
If this is fantasy and anything goes, isn’t “making it make sense” counterproductive to the fun? I argue that giving it plausibility makes it even more fun. Here’s why.
When the players come across a talking mushroom, and the mushroom hints that a mad druid is wandering the woods, the players get this “Ah ha!” moment where they have a plausible explanation for the fungal lecture, and more importantly, they have a vector for what to do next: find—or avoid—the druid.
You now have the players invested and enthused about an otherwise bizarre and nonsensical discovery.
What To Watch Out For
Here’s the one thing to watch out for when you create an adventure. Whenever you add something, be it an NPC or an encounter or an object or a place on your map, if it has no ties to other things in your adventure, give some thought to whether it belongs at all.
Are you adding that thing just because it’s fun? Okay, that may be reason enough. But think about also including some sort of reason for it to be there. Does that NPC have an odd accent, different from the others in the area? Maybe they were smacked in the jaw by a mad druid after stumbling upon their sacred grove, thus giving them a permanent change to how they speak.
See what we did there? We added a small yet sort of random element … an NPC that talks kind of funny … we came up with a plausible reason for it … and we tied it to another element we already established earlier, the presence of a mad druid wandering the nearby forest. We also established that it can be dangerous if you go near that mad druid’s sacred grove.
D&D is Fantastical
D&D is fantasy, and it needs to have fantastical people, places, and things. The point of this article is you can’t just add the fantastical purely because it’s fantastical. Give those cool and creative people, places and things an explanation for why they’re there. This is the glue that gives your players a reason to become more emotionally interested in what’s happening.
Much of this article, and similar videos on my YouTube channel, are designed to add to your perspective. When you create encounters, adventures, and campaigns for your D&D group, don’t just focus on the what and how. Give thought to the why as well.
Adding that level of thought to what you create will add something even more important: your players’ enthusiasm and motivation to keep enjoying your game.
