Most of the advice given to DMs says to reveal lore and plot hooks and other details a little bit at a time. You let the players discover these things as they go. I’ve given this advice myself in other articles and videos on my YouTube channel (@ruckerworks). But what if you lay it all out up front, sharing with the players the map and monsters and maybe even the traps?
Here’s why this approach can be a blast in your next D&D adventure.
A Real Scenario
A while back one session at the D&D game I run entailed the six players spending an hour and a half planning their guerilla attack on a horde of 60 hobgoblins encamped along a road. They were able to scout out the horde, determine their composition and likely armaments. The players also identified the location of their objective. They had to retrieve a magic item from the backpack of the hobgoblin captain, who as you can guess, was located in the center of the horde’s encampment.
There are two key elements to this adventure: First, the odds were steep. This was a very difficult challenge and the plan of attack would have to be perfect to prevent a TPK (total party kill). Second, the players had nearly full disclosure and understanding of what they were up against. They spent a lot of time gathering intelligence about the situation, and other than a few trivial details, I shared with them everything they investigated.
The actual guerilla attack went off perfectly. The players weighed their options based on everything they knew, chose the approach that had the best odds, and went for it. It was a very memorable session and the players still talk about it today, more than a year later.
Tricks to Full Disclosure Adventures
The point of the example of six players going against a horde of 60 hobgoblins reveals something profound. Hiding things from players, and letting them discover them as they go works as a device to keep the players engaged and interested. But, revealing up front nearly everything about an adventure can be fun, too.
There’s a few tricks to doing it successfully, though.
The first requirement is that the danger and risk level needs to be high. There needs to be a real challenge, often greater than when things are unknown. Second, and this is an important detail, the players will know most things with this approach but can’t know everything.
Make It Work
Here are some ways you can make this “full disclosure” method work.
First, determine your premise. What’s the goal of the adventure? Three potential ideas are a heist, where the party must infiltrate a known location and steal something valuable; a rescue, where the party sneaks into, you guessed it, a known location to rescue a comrade or some VIP; and third, a recovery mission. Perhaps the party was in a dungeon or castle or temple, got nearly all the way through it and mapped it out, but either lost something or have to go back to finish what they started.
What these all have in common is a known location, likely with a complete or nearly complete map. One exception to this might be a treasure room inside the dungeon. They have a suspicion of where it is likely located, based on well-mapped knowledge of what’s around it, but they didn’t quite find it specifically. Or maybe after exploring the whole dungeon, they found the door to the treasure room but couldn’t get in, so they went back to town, got what they needed, and are heading back. Except now there’s some new danger in their way.
Second, some details need to remain undiscovered. Perhaps that hobgoblin horde has an obvious spell-caster in their midst but the players don’t know if they are a priest or wizard type, and obviously don’t know what spells they can cast. The party should also have uncertainty about the relative strength of monsters. Yes, they know that beast guarding the treasure room door is a dragon, but they don’t know which dragon or how powerful it is.
Known Locations
One way you might combine the idea of a known location with the concept of discovering new things is to let the party obtain a map of a location they’ve never been to. The map is complete or nearly complete, but leaves some details out. For example, the party’s mission might be to visit abandoned ruins and return them to civilized ownership. Their research has provided access to a complete map of the location and its inner layout, but they have no idea what creatures have since occupied it.
That map may even indicate the presence of traps. But what it won’t reveal is how to disarm them.
A final discovery item will be treasure. The players learn that a treasure horde exists within the ruins, in one of two or three possible locations, and the rumors of what’s in that treasure have them salivating over it. But, they don’t know for sure the true extent of the treasure, which complicates their planning for how to get the treasure back to civilization. And, there might be a small surprise of what’s guarding the treasure.
Best Practices And When To Break Them
As a DM, there are multiple ways to provide an engaging experience for your players. Know the rules and best practices so you know when to break them. Revealing lore a little at a time is a best practice, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to have a fun game. Reveal a lot of lore, but leave out some details so there’s at least some uncertainty, while jacking up the danger level so that your players have something to plan around.
In my experience, I’ve seen these planning-type of adventures be a ton of fun for the players, as well as for me as I run the game. It’s fascinating to see what dangers the players take seriously and which ones they dismiss, or see the creative approaches they come up with to solve problems. It’s a blast, actually.
