Monster Checklist

Okay, so you’re writing up a monster entry.  Run through this checklist to make sure that you haven’t missed anything.

#1. The concept should be unique, compelling, and communicable.

You probably have a lot of concepts in your head, but which ones make for good monsters?

You want something that is different from what your players have already encountered (unique), you want it to be cool enough to hold their attention (compelling), and you want it to be something that you can describe (communicable).

Like, a lot of Lovecraftian monster concepts will fulfill the first two requirements, but if you can’t describe how it looks and fights, it’ll just be a blob of hit points to your players.  (Minis assist with, but don’t negate, this requirement.)

It may also be worthwhile to think about the monster will be described by you at the table (and by other DMs).  The best monsters are the ones that can be conceptualized in a single sentence, even though you can spend additional sentences embroidering it.

Lub Glubs from Adventure Time
(They look like drifting pool floaties until they get close.)

#2. The monster must be fun to fight.

We’re talking about monsters, so combat is likely to be involved.  Your monster must be fun to fight.  This comes from (2a) abilities, but also (2b) tactics, (2c) environment, and (2d) weaknesses.  Each of these is worth a fuller discussion, so I’ll talk about them in their own sections below.

So let’s return to talking about the things that make combat fun.  Abilities, tactics, environment, and weaknesses.

#2a: Abilities should be appropriate, novel, and dynamic.

By ‘appropriate’, I just mean that the mechanical representation should match the fiction.  At a basic level, fire breath should do fire damage, but does a ghost hammer deal bludgeoning or force damage?  What’s the best way to handle a lich that drains your life?  Level drain, Con damage, reducing max HP, exhaustion, or reducing hit dice?

You have a lot of leeway here, so get creative.  Players appreciate when a mechanic is especially cutely appropriate, but it’s not a requirement.

By ‘novel’ I mean that you should try to give them something that they haven’t seen before.  If you’re writing an adventure, you need to make sure that there is good differentiation between your concepts.  (If you’re writing a monster manual, you can have some similar monsters, because it’s not like the DM is going to make the players fight all 7 dragon varieties in a row.)

And by ‘dynamic’, I just mean that the abilities should push players into interesting decisions.  Fire breath is cool and threatening, but it’s not dynamic.  The players just take the damage and keep on trucking–there’s no choices to make.  Wall of Fire is more dynamic, because now the party is split and they have to make interesting choices about whether or not to jump through the wall of fire, or wait for it to dissipate.

#2b: Tactics should also be appropriate, novel, and dynamic.

You don’t need cool abilities to have a cool encounter.  I wrote a post about how tactics can make for fun differentiation between mechanically identical monsters.  I won’t rehash it here, except to say that different monsters in your dungeon should have different motivations for opposing you (food?  defense?), different roles within combat (hit and run? blind aggression?), different combat goals (eat you?  rob you?  escape?), and different levels of commitment to combat (morale).

Simple things like modes of movement and attack can also suggest interesting tactics.  For example, a flying skeleton archer doesn’t need any special abilities, because you already know that the players will have to come up with new tactics to defeat them (compared to fighting regular skeletons).

#2c: Environment should also be appropriate, dynamic, and/or interactive.

You could argue that this belongs in the adventure design section instead of the monster design section, but the two are interrelated.  Combat should never take place in a featureless white room, and certain monsters are more likely to be found in certain locations.

The environment for flying skeleton archers might be a lonely clifftop where sky burials were practiced.  Or it might be an ancient bridge where the bird cult threw sacrifices off.  Or it might be deep in the catacombs, with bone “nests” built high up on the walls.

Interactivity comes from hazards and difficult terrain, but it also comes from advantages.  Cover, chokepoints, hiding places.  Also explore verticality: stairs, levels, half-levels, ladders, pits, steep slopes (“scrambles”) and pools.

Also consider how the environment affects an encounter.  A low roof makes a flying skeleton archer much easier to defeat.  Conversely, if the room has a high ceiling and is bisected by a pit, flying skeleton archers are much more threatening.

#2d: Every monster needs weaknesses (either implied or explicit).

If none of the monsters have any weaknesses, the players will use the same offensive tactics to kill them every time.  This can be implicit, like how a flying enemy is “weak” to ranged attacks and nets, or how a stupid enemy can be baited into a trap.

Or a weakness can be explicit, like scarecrows being weak to fire.  I’m not a big fan of hard lock weaknesses that require a specific material or spell.  “Immune to damage from non-silver weapons” or “Possession can only be ended by casting protection from evil”.  If the party has a silver dagger there’s no interesting decision to make–you just use the dagger.  And if the party doesn’t have a silver dagger, they just run away and there is again no interesting choice to make.  (Hard locks like this can sometimes be useful as metroidvania-style keys, where a certain monster is impassible until the party can come back with silver weapons, but that’s still a weaker use case, in my book.)

I prefer soft lock weaknesses.  “This enemy takes double damage from silver weapons” or “possession can be ended by protection from evil, holy water, or unconsciousness”.

Best are versatile weaknesses, that allow players the most flexibility in how they are approached.  “This monster’s brain is exposed, and it takes triple damage when attacked from above” or “100% food motivated” or “scared of loud noises” or “killed by falls”.  However, you’re a little more limited in these, since you have to use options that all parties have access to, so you shouldn’t only use versatile weaknesses–you should have some soft lock weaknesses in there, too.

Also remember that weaknesses can take the form of buffs to the party.  A flying monster with a ranged attack is pretty threatening but if it gives everyone within 50’ the ability to fly, it provokes a new set of tactics and risks.  Similarly a monster that is blind and has a terrible sense of smell allows for players to effectively “turn invisible” when they’re fighting it, which also allows for new and interesting tactics.

#2e: Consider threats besides "it kills you". Consider solutions besides "you kill it".

Murder is a common language in tabletop. A fight to the death is instantly interesting, and it is a common focus of game mechanics. But please, step outside of that box.

I talked about alternative types of threats up in #5, but also consider that the players might "win" the combat through other victory conditions:

• Prevent the monsters from fleeing and raising the alarm.
• Avoid breaking the priceless vases in this room while the monsters try to kill you.
• The monster is a sage.  Every round, you can ask a question that the left head will answer truthfully.  Meanwhile the right head (and the rest of the monster) is trying to kill you.  Stay alive and think of good questions.
• The monster is treasure, but only if you kill it in a specific way.

This is also why we have monsters with specific weaknesses--to force players away from their regular tactics.

• This monster can only be killed by silver (or salt, or fire, or song, or whatever).
• The monster cannot be killed while it is in contact with the earth.
• This monster can only be drowned.
• This monster will only die if it is physical removed from its tomb.
• This monster cannot be harmed by anything crafted by the hands of men.

Usually, you want to tell the players the weakness early on, and then let them figure out the best way to solve the problem.  If you want to throw your players at a monster without letting them know how to kill it, at least let them escape easily.

#3.  The monster should support interesting dungeoncrawling.

If you haven’t played an OSR game, you might be used to having combat start once the players walk into the room.  But there’s a huge potential for interesting (hostile or non-hostile) interactions to occur before initiative is rolled.

This includes things like roleplaying and faction play.  But it also includes things like:

• Bone needle men prevent all rest in a dungeon.  The party could hunt them down and silence their rattling skulls.

• Goblins have tiny crawl tunnels they use to move between rooms.  The party could block them off, or strip off their armor and crawl through themselves.

• Through the keyhole, you can see an owlbear sleeping.  Ferocious, but known to be easily distracted by a large enough piece of meat.

This is where you can get really creative, and where the most interesting OSR-style problems can be inserted.  However, these sorts of things are usually buried in the monster write up.  The rattling of the bone needle men is probably obvious to a reader since it’s listed under monster abilities.  But the crawl tunnels of goblins might only get a brief mention under the Ecology section, where it’s easily missed.  And while the monster entry might mention the rapacious hungers of owlbears, that type of interesting situation is often missed by the monster manual, and left for the people who write adventures.  (Which is a pity.)

This one is probably the hardest to address, since it doesn’t map well to any of the normal sections of a monster entry.  Still, you should give it some thought.  A monster has the potential to be a lot more than a stack of hit points and abilities.

Some places where a monster could interfere with dungeoncrawling:

• It's a member of a larger faction.
• It blocks off part of the dungeon.  Optional: it's probably big enough to TPK the party.  Optional: it has a weakness, discovered elsewhere in the dungeon.  (Basically just a lock and key.)
• Literal lock and key: once it is killed (or appeased) a new path unlocks.  The water level falls.  The necropolis opens.  
• It interferes with a resource:
• Light
• Rest (e.g. no resting or eating lunch)
• Healing (e.g. all healing is halved)
• Magic
• Loot (e.g. the treasure is cursed until you kill the mummy)
• Senses (e.g. no noise is possible in the Halls of Silence)
• It burrows between the rooms, creating new tunnels.
• It has an easy line of communication and/or observation, and can speak to the party as they navigate the dungeon.  It may want to scare them away, want the party to release it, etc.
• It can generate illusions.
• Curse of the Dao: all fall damage is doubled.  (And the monsters know this.)

#4. The monster should fit into the world.

The monster needs to fit into the world in a way that makes sense.  This usually gets glossed over–if you are designing another undead then everyone already knows that it was created by a necromancer, or arose spontaneously from some sort of restless spirit. If it's alive, you should spend a second to think about where it eats, sleeps, and hunts.

But maybe your design is something more novel.  Your monster is the angry anti-ghost of the unborn.  Or maybe something that is too specific for the DM to just drop it in the dungeon without an explanation, like a squad of humans who fight with grenades.  In those cases, you need to spend some time explaining the context for this monster.  

It’s tricky because you may be torn between providing a specific explanation (“These are Malthusian grenadiers, servants of Witch Mountain.”) or a general one (“Grenadiers are commonly employed by mercenary forces.”)  Because we want our written words to sound authoritative, we often just pick one–but of course there’s nothing stopping you from giving 2 or 3 contexts that your monster might exist within the game world.

Also, consider giving your monster actionable connections to the world. A mated pair of owlbears should imply valuable babies nearby. The presence of the dandelion knight is proof of an alliance with the fairy princes (so the party should be extra wary of them). This vampire has the sword of St. Vipera--is this the Saint herself?

Even something small like a group of orcs, where one incongruent orc is wearing a brand new set of armor, raises interesting questions (and connections) with a single detail.

#5 - The monster should be threatening.

Sure, your monster has attack rolls and it deals damage.  It certainly poses a threat to HP totals.

Attacking HP is the oldest and most comfortable way to threaten the players.  It’s also the one that is always approved by the implied social contract of the table.  (Players don’t object if they take 17 points of damage.  But depending on the game, they might object if their sword gets rusted away since it feels unfair.)

The mnemonic for this is “attack all parts of the character sheet”.  Abilities scores are usually fair game.  Inventory is usually a possible target, too, except in very protective 5e games.  XP/Level Drain is an option, but can be deployed with care.  Character abilities and skills are usually off-limits, but you can still tamper with them in ways that are fun.  In 5e you can have monster abilities that attack inspiration, hit dice healing, proficiency, ideals, etc.

But also remember that you can attack the out-of-combat resources, too.  Time is a big one.  Noise can attract wandering monsters.  A monster like a carbuncle might have a valuable gem on its back that goes down in value after each round of combat.  Killing these (murderous, frenzied) dwarves might ruin your reputation with the (friendly, chill) dwarves in the next cave.

Threat is one of the biggest ways that a monster can engage your players, so think about it carefully.

#6. The monster should surprise.

I’ve touched on this before, but you want your encounter to be dynamic.  It should force the players to change their plans a little bit.  

Ideally, you want to push the players into at least three interesting decisions.

A simple example of this might be:

1. There’s a giant golem in the next room.  How do we kill it and/or get past it?

2. The giant golem is being controlled by little dudes inside of it.  How do we kill the little dudes inside this big dude?  Can we make a smoke bomb?  Can someone fit inside?

3. One of the little dudes is running for help.  Should we chase him down?  Who will go?

Without any surprises, the party will use the same stale tactics.

#7. The monster should reward.

XP is a boring reward.  Literally the worst.

Getting past the monster is often a sufficient reward on its own, if there is more cool dungeon to explore.

But also think about the other possible rewards that the players could get out of this encounter, and perhaps include some.

• A new ally.

• Information.

• Delicious monster parts to eat.

• Useful weapons and tools.

• Valuable gold or monster eggs.

• Weird consumables like potions and acid sacs.

• A new shortcut in the dungeon.

The Werewolf Rule

Ever since the nose-blind apes succeeded in driving them away, wolves have carried their hatred in their guts, like a cold embryo.  

Humans are slow, stupid, and nearly deaf and blind.  And yet they outhunt the master hunters.  Time and time again, packs have been driven away from their ancestral homelands.  They are a living refutation of all lupine virtues--the idea that weakness can yield success on the hunt.  

It is an ancient hatred.  Humans were anathema long before they adopted their role as tempters and corruptors, who were able to twist the bodies and souls of noble wolves into the half-human abominations called dogs.

Wolves have sometimes debased themselves as well, performing horrible acts of desperation.  In one example of this, they prevent their elders from venturing on after death, by hiding the path to the Great Hunting Grounds.  Instead, the spirits are forces to assist the living in their own hunt.  

Living so close to death, wolves are natural necromancers.  Some say that they were the first.

Worgs

More rarely, they invite demons into their bodies, creating the gestalt known as a worg.  Worgs grow larger the more that they eat, and they learn whatever their prey knew.  (This is why worgs always know the speech of men.)  They are only harmed by iron and by flint.  Their howl drives horses mad, and causes dogs to turn on their masters (along with most domesticated animals).

Worg stats: as a wolf, except keep adding HD and adding fire damage to their bite.

They are too canny to be tracked, to alert to ever be surprised.  The only way to ever kill a worg is to lure it into a hunt--and they will always scent a group.  Vulnerable bait, precious bait, must be used.

from Bogleech

Werewolves

Another technology developed by wolves is the werewolf.  The original word is "weregild", which translates to "man-price", referring to the price that wolves would pay to rid themselves of a man.  It's a kenning referring to damnation (as wolves would phrase it).

The Werewolf Rule

If the party is ever fighting wolves, and there is only one wolf left, and the last wolf bites someone, that person must save vs. lycanthropy.  If they fail, the wolf's body is dragged to hell and the wolf's soul infests their own.  Only a desperate, hateful wolf ever invokes the werewolf curse.

The demon-wolf spirit can make one attempt to possess a character once per session or once per month (whichever is more frequent).  The wolf (DM) chooses when to invoke this check.

The character gets +4 to this save if it is during the day or in a village.  However, they get -4 to this save if they are in a dungeon, or if it is night during the week of the full moon.  In direct moonlight, no Save is allowed.  The demon wolf-spirit watches from behind your eyes--it is canny enough to bide its time in order to cause the most grief.  

Each session or month (whichever comes first) this increases to 2x per session/month, up to a maximum of 3x per session/month.

When you turn into a werewolf, the transformation lasts for 10 minutes (in a dungeon), until dawn (outside of a dungeon), or until you are reduced to 0 HP.  You immediately burst your clothing and armor, and gain +2 HD and a claw attack that deals 1d6+2 damage.  The touch of silver drives you away if you fail a Cha save.  While transformed, you are completely under the control of the DM.  Transformation (in either direction) takes 1 round.

Once you've survived a few transformations, it is difficult to hide what you are.  Scars form along the seams of your skin, where it has burst and regrown.  (Skin tends to tear along the softer lines.  Armpits and inner arms will rupture before shoulders will.)  And the skeletal plasticity quickly bestows a distinct deformity upon the face and lower legs.  A cloak and hood could hide it, but nothing less.

When possessed by a demon-wolf spirit, it is best to avoid your acquaintances.  Once the demon-wolf knows who you love the most, it will seek them out to destroy them.  If it is discovered that you are a werewolf, most people will seek your death.  The kindest souls might instead allow you live only after you've removed all of your teeth (which deprives the werewolf of its greatest weapon), but even this is ill-advised.  The wolf inside your heart is cruel and motivated, and every story of a werewolf is a story of tragedy inflicted on innocent lives.

There is no known cure for lycanthropy.  Those afflicted usually exile themselves to the loneliest corners of the world (where they are shunned by wolves, who know what they are).  Among the barbarian tribes, werewolves seek to die bravely in battle.

The spirit of the wolf lives in the vitality of the heart, or the quickness of the eye.  Scholars have theorized that the spirit of the wolf could be removed if the relevant organs were removed quickly, while the wolf spirit still lingered there.  Machines have been built that remove these organs quickly and efficiently.  Although you will die from this, you will at least be allowed to be buried in the churchyard.

DM Note: feel free to add a cure to your game, something that the players can quest for.  It shouldn't be a dead end unless you want it to be.

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It's not an RPG book--it's fiction that walks the line between between fairy-court fantasy and Sci-Fi generation ship.  If you aren't stealing your ideas from Patrick, you've only ever been robbing the poor.

Check it out.

Lessons from Elden Ring, Part II

This is a continuation from this post.

Anyway, here are some more things you can do to make your tabletop game more like Elden Ring.

DO Give Players The Element of Surprise

When you’re playing Elden Ring, you usually see the enemies before they see you.  

This is especially true for powerful enemies.  It’s common to see a badass crucible knight standing on a cliff alone, doing some stargazing.  He’s not even patrolling.  He’ll just stand there forever until you choose to engage with him.

And when you finally do attack that crucible knight, you'll get a free hit.  You'll smash him with your best attack.  And then you'll die, because crucible knights are bastards.

This is very different from how most combats are run in D&D.  It's more like an old Final Fantasy game.  The party is walking along when OH FUCK ROLL INITIATIVE!  Here are some skeletons!  Please drop your minis on the map.  You lost initiative?  The skeletons move before you do.

(OSR players: yes, you play with reaction rolls, so you might end up talking instead of fighting, but my point is the same.  You're suddenly dropped into a situation--you don't get a choice of whether to engage or not.)

So why is this the norm in tabletop games?

1. It feels more exciting to throw a combat at the players.  "BOOM!  THE UMBER HULK BUSTS THROUGH THE WALL AND PUMPS HIS SHOTGUN!"  This is part of the reason we give monsters a surprise chance.

2. It's more "realistic".  If you can surprise the monsters, they should be able to surprise you.  This is the other half of the reason why we give monsters a surprise chance.

3. It forces the players to engage.  There's a worthy debate to be had about whether the DM should rely more on hooks (which force the player to engage) or lures (which tempt the players to engage).  It's a complicated question, but I will say that the best case scenario is when you're able to use lures that your players happily engage with, because they're intrinsically interested in the outcome.

Threatening your characters with death (e.g. "these goblins are trying to kill you; what are you going to do about it?") creates immediate stakes and an immediately dynamic situation.  (Dynamic = forces the players to come up with a new plan of action.)  It's a cheap and easy way to drive engagement.  Even the guy who was on his phone will start listening when you call for initiative.

4. It moves the game along faster.  This one is more debatable, but some DMs (slash game designers) don't want the players to sit around waffling about how to deal with the goblins in the next room--they want the clash of steel on steel.

These are arguments for allowing monsters to surprise the party, but allow me to suggest. . .

Alternate Rule: Monsters Never Surprise

The party is never surprised, as long as they are (a) moving at dungeoncrawling speed (1 room every 10 minutes of in-game time) and (b) they don't do anything stupid or risky.

Discussion:

I've actually removed monster surprise from my games a while ago.  It's great.  I don't miss the old days.

Exploration feels more fair, since they can choose when to engage in a fight.  Running away is a lot easier when you're never ambushed.  (We can debate what type of dungeoncrawling "feels fair" and for what type of players, but that's a separate blog post.)

Players get more agency, since they can more reliably choose to enter combat on their own terms.  And when you have a chance to scheme up some advantage before entering combat, it turns the combat into more of an OSR-style problem, and less banging numbers together like a brute.

Note that this rule still allows you to bait the players into taking risks.  See below.

Alternate Rule: Momentary Initiative

In addition to (a) players surprise, (b) enemies surprise, and (c) roll for initiative, there is now a fourth way that combat can be initiated: momentary initiative.

When the players have momentary initiative, they surprise the enemies, but only if they take an action immediately.  The characters effectively get a special half-turn in which to take actions.  They don't have time to fire a bow unless they are already holding a bow.  It is not enough time to cast a spell.  For most situations, this means that the players can do a half-distance charge attack.

Discussion:

This rule exists in order to create quick actions, but more importantly, it forces the players to take quick risks.

Players that choose to charge in get to make a free attack roll with advantage, but they don't have time to get a full description of their surroundings.  The archetypal situation is one where the players choose to ambush a couple of orcs dicing in an intersection of hallways, only to be counter-ambushed by a third orc who was sitting out of sight.

Elden Ring does this all the time.

And it's an interesting decision, each time.  Do I charge in and take the free attack?  Or do I proceed more cautiously?

Alternate Rule: Stealth Party

If a party is entirely composed of Thieves, they always surprise their enemies.

Discussion: 

Yes, this is a pretty big departure from our baseline.  

Try it anyway.  I bet it'll be fun.  (And maybe necessary, too.  If the party has no fighters or wizards, they'll need every advantage they can get.)

Videogames: Open and Constrained

Elden Ring is not exceptional in this regard.  In most video games, you'll see the enemy before they see you.  The player almost always holds the initiative.

You especially get free initiative when you're playing a spy/assassin game: Assassin's Creed, Deus Ex, Batman.  You also get free initiative (but to a lesser extent) in open world games like Elden Ring, Witcher, and Breath of the Wild.

These games are relatively open.  You have a lot of different ways to approach combat, both positionally and with interesting tools.  If you die, you can experiment and try new tactics.  This is "where the game is".  A big part of combat takes place before blows are exchanged, when you are planning how to initiate combat.  This aspect of those games feels very OSR-ish.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have games that are more constrained in how you handle combat.  You are plopped into combat, with minimal opportunities to engineer your circumstances and tools.  Street Fighter, Doom, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, and the boss battles of Elden Ring.  It's not that these games don't have tactics of their own, but these tactics (skill expression) falls along the lines of (a) reflexes, (b) memorization, (c) precision in executing a rehearsed set of actions.

These things are fun, too!  It's fun to be an arcane mage in World of Warcraft and successfully pull off your giant mana ramp-thing.  Or to watch yourself do some extremely accurate shooting in Doom.  These are fun things, but they're a different type of fun than the chaotic schemes you can attempt in Breath of the Wild.

And these types of games demand different types of systems.  In an open game, you want lots of approaches and tools that interact organically (e.g. a physics engine).  In a constrained game, you want interlocking mechanics that skilled players can exploit (e.g. combos).

I'm generalizing a lot here, but you get the point.  The fun comes from different corners.

Like when you're able to cheese a boss in Elden Ring by tricking them into jumping off the arena--that's a feature, not a bug.  The designers could've put up an invisible fence to prevent this from happening, but they instead chose to leave the opportunity open.

Elden Ring x Ghibli
by Omnileaden

DO Modulate Enemy Positions

All games tend to have you fight increasingly difficult enemies as you progress, but lots of games do this in a boring way.

Breath of the Wild had a painfully small enemy roster, but it also ramped up enemy difficulty in the worst way possible: increasing enemy stats and changing the color palette.

First you fight red bokoblins.  Then you fight blue bokoblins, who are exactly the same except they have bigger numbers in their stats.  And so on, and so forth.

Yes, it is often good to have some degree of enemy repetition in a game so that players can build up a level of knowledge and expertise.  But there was a lot of enemy repetition.

Elden Ring does it a bit better.  You might encounter a sleeping rune bear, then an alert rune bear, then a rune bear with some wolf buddies, and then a rune bear that has a sword for some reason.

Or you might encounter a huge knight in an open field before you encounter a huge knight in a tiny room with no room to maneuver.

Elden Ring tends to modulate the arena more than it modulates enemy stats.   (Yes, BotW does this, too.  But ER does it better.)

So

1. Re-use enemies as much as you want, as long as you change up the environment.  

2. Use enemies in mixed pairs.  (This makes for small-but-often-interesting decisions.  Should you kill the manikin spearman first?  Or the manikin archer?)

3. You can use high level enemies in low-level dungeons as long as you put them at a big disadvantage.  (E.g. the purple worm is sleeping.  The rune bear is too big to go down the stairs.  The death knight is standing where he can be easily backstabbed.)

4. You can use low-level enemies in high-level dungeons, as long as you play to their strengths and the players know what those strengths are ahead of time.  (E.g. On level 1, you fought a minotaur with knockback.  On level 4, you fight two minotaurs on a narrow ledge.)

MAYBE Create Areas Where Surprise and Schemes are Impossible

Elden Ring definitely has many encounters where the player can engineer the encounter to their advantage.  They can lure the enemy into terrain where they are at a disadvantage, attack from elevation, or launch devastating surprise attacks.

But there are many places where the player cannot engineer the encounter.  This is most clearly seen in the boss encounters.  You walk through the golden fog, and you're in the boss room.  The boss is immediately aware of you, and begins attacking.]

A lot of DLC bosses begin attacking immediately, giving you no time for summons.  You start the fight on your back foot.

Elden Ring does this in order to create arenas where you are forced to play straight combat.  No stealth, no bullshit.  Just dodge rolling, blocking, and attack windows.

Like I said before, the difficulty of Elden Ring doesn't translate well to the tabletop arena, since it's based on memorization, fast reactions, and iterative refinements to your tactics.  So, I'm not sure I recommend throwing your players into a strict boss fight, where stealth and schemes are intractable.  That's more viable in a 5e game, but less viable in an OSR game (where the real combat is the stuff that takes place before anyone rolls initiative).

DO Give Players Maps

When you reach a new area, one of the first goals is always to find the map for the area.  This is true for both Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild.  In both games, you can easily see where a map can be obtained.

There’s really two halves to this: (1) getting a map, and (2) having a map.

(1) The goal of “get the area map” usually exists alongside the other goals you’ll have in an area.  When you get to a new area, this is a new local navigation goal.  (Now that you're here, it's a new goal.  Kinda like a quest, except it feels more organic.)

It's kinda like getting a new quest, except you don't have to belabor it.  And it's never essential, so the players never feel forced.  And lastly, it's an organic goal because the value of a goal is simple and understood--you don't need to explain why a map is useful.  It's also ubiquitous--every area has a map that can be obtained.

(2) Yes, I know that having players do the mapping is one of the sacred calves of the OSR.  But hear me out.

A map is a much faster way to communicate an area.

A map doesn't have to be complete.  In fact, incomplete maps are preferred, since you still want players to have some sense of discovery.

A map immediately gives players new navigation goals.  As soon as players see a map, they'll want to visit some of the more evocatively named locations.  Part of the challenge of DMing a mostly-verbal game is that the players don't always know where they can go.  A map helps with that.

A map allows for a sense of completion.  Once the players know (roughly) how big the dungeon level is, they'll know that they aren't done exploring the level until they visit all of the areas described in the map (at a minimum).

A map also prevents players from getting lost.  Yes, I've played in some games and had fun being the mapper.  And yes, mapping accurately can absolutely be one of the skills that is tested when dungeoncrawling.  But the time spent mapping could also be spent doing other stuff, which can be more fun, and test other aspects of player skill.

Elden Ring has great maps.  They helped me mentally conceive of the game space.  They were evocative and big, so that each time I got a new map fragment, I pored over the map for new interesting spots to visit.  And they omitted a lot of interesting areas--I was constantly stumbling across interesting stuff that wasn't marked on the map.

There's also hidden features in the Elden Ring maps.  Details that are difficult to notice.  Sometimes when I’m struggling to reach an area, I’ll look at the map and realize that the path was there for me to see all along, if only I’d looked a little closer.  (This is very analogous to the OSR gimmick of "notice a blank spot on your map and realize that there must be a secret room there.)

Variant Rule: Map Dude

Whenever you get to a new dungeon area/level, you’re likely to bump into a graffito that says “MAPS →”.  There are 1-3 of these in each dungeon area/level.  They lead to the dungeon cartographer, who sells maps.

The maps are incomplete and do not list all of the rooms.  However, they usually show the extent of the dungeon level, in the sense that they show the most distant rooms.  If you visit all of the rooms on the map, it’s fair to say that you’ve probably explored the whole level (except for any secret areas).

Recommended Map Dudes (d6): 1 magical frog statue, 2 magical piggy bank, 3 a weird man-child dressed like an elf, 4 a big nerd bug whose wife misses him, 5 a machine that you stick a body part in to download the map into your brain, 6 a greedy little tree.

DO Have Tons of Secrets

I’ve always enjoyed putting lots of secrets and secret areas in my dungeons.  But after seeing how many secrets are jammed into Elden Ring, I’m starting to think that I don’t add enough.  

There are small secrets, big secrets, and entire secret areas.  Actually, From Soft games are notorious for hiding entire zones –people have discovered massive areas on their tenth playthrough.  Millions of players have walked past nondescript little holes in the ground that lead to huge dungeons with cool bosses at the end of them.  Millions of players have completed the game and never got to experience that content.  Elden Ring doesn't give a fuck.  You missed it?  Fuck you.

This is antithetical to most game designers, who want to design content that players will experience.  And so lots of games are designed so that all content (areas, quests, and major items) are signposted in a way that’s impossible to miss.

So why does From Soft take the opposite approach?  

To make discovery feel genuine.  

If I know a game is going to hold my hand, I won’t necessarily search the areas very carefully.  In Elden Ring, I search areas vigorously because I know there is a real chance that I'll miss something cool.  

A good counter-example is World of Warcraft, where every objective is heavily signposted.  There’s virtually no secret items to find, and I don’t even have to read quest text since I can just follow my quest tracker.  I have signposts on my minimap telling me where to go next.  Exploration isn't valuable or fun.

DO Bypass HP

In Elden Ring, there are lots of ways to die besides losing all of your HP.  The two most common ones are (1) falling to your death, and (2) succumbing to status effects.

Being killed by status effects is interesting, because it bypasses your HP bar entirely.  The most interesting one is Deathblight since it’s a little bar that fills up and when it’s full, you instantly die.  It drops naturally over time, though, so it’s almost like a second HP bar that regenerates.  This is great because it bypasses the normal defenses (armor and HP) making it threatening at a wider range of levels.  (It’s possible to have so much armor and HP that physical hits become non-threatening.  It’s hard to do the same to deathblight.)  Additionally, since Deathblight heals itself, it allows you to place some intensely dangerous enemies that drop deathblight, since you know that it will heal itself.  It's acutely hazardous, without causing any long-term attrition in our dungeoncrawlers.

Tabletop RPGs don't usually include situations where player characters can be shoved to their deaths.  Not a lot of minotaurs on catwalks.

This is because a minotaur attempting to shove you off a catwalk is functionally just a save-or-die effect.

I'm a fan of save-or-die effects, but I believe that you need to be very careful in how you deploy them.  The danger needs to be clearly signposted, and the players need to give informed consent.  

Compared to other forms of save-or-die (deadly poison, petrification, death magic), shoving a PC to their deaths is a lot more organic, and it has simpler countermeasures.  (A party can protect themselves against Pushy the Minotaur by chaining themselves together.  What's a good countermeasure to death magic?)

Anyway, threatening players with a death-shove is rad and we should probably do it more.

Alternate Rule: Curse Men

Lvl 3  Def chain  Sword 1d6+curse

Curse men wear oily black leather armor, lashed to their narrow limbs with string.  Their skin is similarly dark and oily.  Around their waists, they wear the old heads, tied by their hair.  Atop their shoulders, they leer at you with their new heads, which are not like heads at all, but if a comparison must be made, they are a bit like a man's head that has been squeezed into an imitation of an ibis.  They sleep together in crevasses, and stain the earth with their tears.

Death Curse - If you are struck three times with a cursed nail, you die.

Curse men wield swords that resemble a single large nail.  Anyone who is struck by this nail develops a black spot at the site.  A second blow causes black spots to erupt all over the body.  A third strike is instant death.  

Cursed nails are not the only things that give the death curse.

Discussion:

How long does the death curse last?  

Well, to be most analogous to deathblight, it should fade after combat.  It's an immediate threat (that bypasses HP and regular healing) but it is only a short-term threat--it doesn't impact your dungeon crawling.

You can make the death curse last longer, but then you're drifting further away from Elden Ring.

If the death curse fades at a rate of 1 per hour, then it's a soft limit on exploration/combat appetite.  This has some impact on your dungeon crawling.

If the death curse fades with the touch of sunlight, then it imposes a hard limit on how much exploration is possible in a day.

If the death curse is a full curse, and requires a priest, etc to remove, then this represents a permanent reassignment of goals, and you're doing something else.  <-- This is not what Elden Ring does.

Alternate Rule: Poison Swamp

In this dungeon, characters take poison damage constantly.  Poison damage can come from the air (unavoidable) or it can be linked to a sludge on the floor (which can be avoided if you can get above it). 

Bonus points if you tie it to both in-game time and IRL time.  For example, 1d4-1 (min 0) poison damage every 10 minutes of in-game time, and 1d4-1 (min 0) damage every 30 minutes of IRL time.

Discussion:

Miyazaki's poison swamps are another element that feels horrible, but actually isn't that hard.  When I think back to all of the places where I struggled, none of them were poison swamps.  It's another example of a gameplay mechanic that feels harder than it is.

What the poison swamps actually do is force players to move faster and take risks.

Normally, I explore dungeons at a crawl, looking around every corner for imps and skeletons.  But when I'm taking damage every second, I'm sprinting to the next safe location.  If I see an enemy, I am going to dodge past it, while planning where and how I'm going to turn around and kill it.  

It's a risky, unpleasant way to play, because the game is forcing you to sprint into areas where enemies will see you before you see them.  However, the enemies you meet in these areas (e.g. Swamp of Aeonia) are slow enough that you can usually dodge them, even though it feels nerve-wracking the first time you go there.

I haven't tried writing a poison dungeon yet, but you can bet your ass I'm going to.

DO Make Your NPCs More Independent (and More Tragic)

NPCs in Fromsoft games also have their own characteristic flavor.  Generally, they tend to:

1. Have their own quests.

1A. Elden Ring NPCs are usually pursuing their own goals.  Sometimes these goals overlap with your own, and then NPC might ask you to do a task for them (this is the classic quest-giver structure).

1B. Sometimes, the NPC has a private quest that is actually at cross-purposes to your own.  You might bump into them in a couple of places, and then on the third meeting, they attack you.

1C. And sometimes they just have private quests that are completely orthogonal to you.  You might meet them in three or four places throughout the game.  Each time, they're kinda just doing their own thing.  Unless you use guides, you'll frequently meet an NPC a couple of times, but then never find them again.  You never find out how their story ends (which can feel unsatisfying).

Why does Elden Ring eschew the classic questgiver structure (1A) in favor of the other two types?  Well, I think it's because they want the world to feel more alive, and to de-emphasize your character's centrality in the world.  They also want to have more hidden aspects of the world, to either reward people who explore exhaustively, or to give you some different experiences in different playthroughs.

Lots of games suffer from the "main character is the only character" syndrome, where everything seems to revolve around you, and your character is at the center of the universe.  You're drawn into the center of every story, and every story has a satisfactory ending.  When NPCs go their way, it can feel more natural.

Or, it also feel unsatisfying, to hear only the first half of a story, but to never find out how it concludes.

2. Don't just place NPCs in logical places.

Drop NPCs everywhere.  Drop them into the weird little rooms at the end of the dungeon.  Don't worry if it doesn't make perfect sense.

NPCs are like treasure chests.  They're rewards for exploring and interacting.  So put them anywhere you would put a treasure chest.  

3. Give NPCs Tragic Endings.

In most games, when you do all of the tasks that an NPC asks of you, there is a positive resolution for the NPC and the player character.  The NPC gets a happy ending, and the player gets a quest reward.

Elden Ring subverts this.  Frequently, doing quests for NPCs results in their tragic deaths.  

The reason for this is that (1) the NPCs are frequently just following their own agendas, often working at cross purposes to each other and the great forces at work within the world, but also (2) the world is a tragic one.  It is spoiled, and possibly past saving.  Your friends all die halfway through the game so that the endgame is more desolate and desperate, and there are fewer things distracting you from your destiny.  To become Elden Lord, you've had to leave behind many allies--and kill a few.

You never really get much of a safe haven in Elden Ring.  All you can do is forge onward.

Discussion:

I actually urge moderation with this one.  More than one commentator has noted that if you love the NPCs in Elden Ring, you should avoid completing their quests, since so many quest lines end tragically.  Personally, I've noticed that when players feel like they can't do anything to protect their favorite NPCs, it tends to disengage them from the game.  If players don't feel like they can help the NPCs that they want to help, they may stop trying altogether.  The lure of "learn more more" or "see another ending" doesn't hold much value in tabletop games.

MAYBE DO the Lore Thing

From Soft games have a very particular way that they dispense their lore.  Players will encounter a central story that has a lot of gaps.  You’ll also see traces of side stories, but these are thin on details.  Nearly all of the events take place before the game starts.  The game feels post-apocalyptic, usually with layers of loss and tragedy.  

The fascinating thing about Fromsoft games is that a player who digs deeper will find more bits of lore, which is all (1) internally consistent, and (2) also thin on details.  And although you’ll uncover large parts of the history, many of the most fundamental questions are never resolved.  Who is the Gloam Eyed Queen?  What’s up with the walking mausoleums?  

In this way the backstory becomes another treasure that you must work to earn.

This approach may or may not work with tabletop games.  I'm actually kinda leaning toward "no, it won't".  Except with certain groups.

If you want to attempt to drop lore in the Elden Ring fashion, you'll need a motivated audience.  If your players aren't interested in piecing together the history of the world through obtuse fragments, it'll never work.

Next, you'll need some obtuse fragments.  Handouts are perhaps best, since they can sit in a folder and players can review them for connections as curiosity prompts.

Also, be prepare your lore in a way that it leaves large holes.  Perhaps it's best to create a large thing at the center of your lore (the Crucible, the origin of divinity, etc) and then only ever allow the players to learn about things adjacent to it.  Never let them learn the full story that sits at the center of it all--only stories around the periphery.

This will require NPCs who are mad, ignorant, or reluctant to talk.

Don't deceive your players.  NPCs in Elden Ring are nearly universally honest in their assertions.  I can't think of a single instance where one NPC directly contradicted another NPC.  Since the player knows that they can trust the NPCs, they can ignore questions of veracity and instead focus on what the hell the NPCs are trying to say.

Use environmental clues.  Use repetitions in architecture to create links between locations.

Use out-of-place enemies to tell stories.  What is this knight doing in the necropolis?  He's a Son of the Dogstar, so normally he would be an ally to the Gravekeepers.  However, the Death-Melting Halberd that the carries implies that he must be an assassin, here to kill the Ancestors.

Create implications through parallels.  Marika is an Empyrean and has a double.  Therefore, the other Empyreans should also have doubles.  Who are the doubles?

This will unfortunately require you to do a lot of work figuring out the backstory beforehand, breaking it into the smallest possible chunks for dispensing to the players, and then finally finding a way to present that information with some degree of ambiguity (small or large).  

Alternate Rule: Item Descriptions

Whenever the players find a significant item, give them a card with the item on it.  The card has the items descriptions, stats, but more importantly, it has a bit of lore.

How did the party learn this lore?

Someone in the party heard about the item once.  Now that they've seen it, they're reminded of it, and they share they're knowledge with the party.

Don't overthink it.  (I actually encourage you to run high-knowledge games, where the PCs are given as much information as can be rationalized.)

Lessons from Elden Ring

I know I’m late to the From Soft party, but I’ve finally beat the Elden Ring DLC and after a couple hundred hours in that game I finally have enough opinions for a blogpost.

Many people have written posts about how to adapt Dark Souls to tabletop RPGs, but I intend for this one to be the most comprehensive.  The thoughts in this things that I recommend if you want to adapt as much from Elden Ring (or Dark Souls) as possible, but not necessarily things I advocate for every OSR table (although there's a lot of overlap).

I figure I can write this as a list of DOs and DON'Ts.

Let's start with the DON'Ts, because that's probably the most important.

Tanith and Rya
by Dane Celestia

1. DON’T Fixate on Difficult Bosses

I’ve been trying to beat the DLC boss for a couple of days now.  It’s a brutal fight, but I’m improving.  I got the boss down to about 20% last time.  The fight is fun because (1) I eventually memorize the attacks, (2) learn how to dodge them, and (3) learn the timing.  (UPDATE: I beat him.  Black Steel Greathammer + Cracked Hardtear.)

These things (1 memorization, 2 active defense, and 3 timing) do not translate well to tabletop games.  

(1) Actions take a lot longer in a tabletop game, so repeating a challenge until you memorize it is not fun.

Fighting Messmer for the 60th time and slowly learning how to counter his attacks is fun.  But if you asked me to fight a boss even 3 times in a tabletop game, I would sigh and collapse into dust.

(2) Elden Ring is fun because the bosses force you to play defense.  You can't just brute force your way through bosses--you have to learn to defend before you can learn how to attack.

Active defense isn’t usually desirable in a tabletop game.  For most games, the paradigm has been Active Defense and Passive Defense.  You actively choose your actions and your attacks on your turn, and then make your rolls.  But when it’s not your turn, you don’t have choices to make.  The DM makes a few rolls and tells you if you take damage or not.

The reason for this is that there are many ways to neutralize a monster (e.g. "How are you going to get past this hostile troll?") and a much more limited-and-relatively-boring list of defensive actions (e.g. "The troll attacks you with his club!  How do you defend?")

Some games flirt with reactions.  (5th Edition has reactions.)  You could decide that you are going to attempt to emulate Elden Ring as much as possible, and give characters stamina points that regenerate every round, and ask them to split it between offensive and defensive actions . . . but that would make for slow, mechanically heavy combat.  Some people will like a game like that, but I wouldn't want to play in it.

(3) Timing cannot be easily adapted into tabletop.  It’s just a different medium.  It has different strengths and weaknesses.  When I’m fighting a Dark Souls boss, I’m paying a lot of attention to recognize the different attacks before they are made, and I’m trying to figure out if I have time to make a heavy attack before I need to dodge again.  These are exciting calculations–I’m paying a lot of attention.  However, this doesn’t translate into a tabletop game.  It can’t.  There’s no analogue, because there’s never any ambiguity in the enemy’s actions, and once the best defense/attack is known, it can be selected every time.

So what do we do instead?  OSR games have plenty of tense moments, but they have to come from a different source.  Focus on those strengths.

And if you want more interesting boss battles, then. . .

Alternate Rule: Dynamic Bosses & Telegraphed Attacks

I’ve written about this before, so I’ll refer you to these posts about bosses and (especially) dynamism.

In a nutshell: if you’re worried about combat being boring, stop trying to make combat challenging and try to make combat interesting.  “Challenging” is one flavor of “interesting”, but not the only one.

The best way to make combat interesting is to make it dynamic.  This means that the players will often have to revise their plans, possibly from round to round.  If the players know how to win the fight on the first round, then it’s a little boring to just have to execute it across 3 rounds.  Better to have the combat finish in 1 round (since the players are executing the best tactic) or to have the situation change after 1 round, so that the players need to reassess and re-strategize.

A simple example is to just have your bosses telegraph their ultra-attacks.  A dragon begins inhaling at the end of its turn.  On its next turn, it’ll exhale, incinerating the party.  The party will have to pause whatever scheme they had in order to death with this immediate threat.  (Bosses do this pretty often in Elden Ring–wind up for a big attack.  Sometimes you have 3+ seconds before it lands–an eternity in combat.  Do you heal, attack, or flee?  It’s an interesting choice, and you have to make it quickly.)

2. DON’T Do the Death and Resurrection Thing

You die a lot in Elden Ring / Dark Souls.  But that’s okay, because you come right back to life at the bonfire/grace.  There’s an in-game reason for it: you are the “chosen undead”, etc.  But that’s something baked into the experience–that you’ll die, learn from your mistakes, and then come back again.

I don't recommend this for your tabletop game.

There are obvious narrative issues if you want to give characters the ability to automatically resurrect upon death.  It’s hard to have characters that are “just normal people” if they come back each time you cut off their head.  I mean, you can still do it, but it requires the player characters to be exceptional and inhuman.  And your plots will have to revolve around inhuman pivots.

So you’re already limited in what type of game you can play.  It’s tough to have a game about saving a village when the party is composed of immortals at level 1.  It also excludes you from a lot of published adventures, and makes some big impositions on the setting.  There's also the potential for a lot of misunderstandings about how/why the resurrection works.

That's the setting/fiction reason why your characters shouldn't be chosen undeads.

There's another reason to avoid the death-resurrection gameplay loop, and that is that it's just not that fun to do in a tabletop game.  I already mentioned some of this up above, when I was talking about boss difficulty.

OSR games don't need to have character resurrection because, in a way, they already do.  Think of this way:

Dark Souls games can employ self-resurrecting characters because they aren’t character driven games.  Your character doesn’t have a backstory.  They barely have a name.  I've completely forgotten what my character looked like under the helmet.  The games are entirely setting-driven.  It’s about exploring the world, conquering the dungeon, and learning the world’s history. 

Not the main character’s history.  You don’t have a history.

This is the same as most OSR games.  It's not about the characters.  It's about the dungeon, the dragon, the world.

And in both games, death is not much of a barrier.  The only difference is that you’ll return as a new OSR character, instead of the same one.  You could actually have this occur in Elden Ring, too, except you’d have to explain how the new guy picked up all of the dead guy’s equipment and quest lines.

This isn’t really a problem in the average OSR game, though, since the party provides continuity for dead players.  They’ll pick up the dead person’s gear and give it to the new person.  The rest of the party creates continuity.

So in a very real way, OSR games are already providing the Dark Souls experience.  Die, learn from it, and come back quickly to try again.

Side Discussion: How Punishing Should Death Be?

In many games, you drop your XP upon death.  Unless you retrieve it before your next death, it's lost forever.  In Dark Souls 2 (the only Dark Souls game I’ve played), your maximum HP goes down with each death, until you use a rare consumable to regenerate it (which later on becomes plentiful).  And in Sekiro, your deaths don’t matter mechanically, but they cause a disease to spread, impacting the NPCs (but not you).  

The weird thing about these death mechanics is that they're basically designed to feel bad without impacting your effectiveness too much.  Losing your souls/XP is honestly a pretty minor setback in most cases.  The dragonrot thing tugs at your heartstrings, but that's it.  It's almost a paradox.

None of these punishments really make you less effective at killing things.  They’re well-designed mechanics designed to make you fear death, while simultaneously reducing it's impact.  

This aligns somewhat with OSR games, which promote the idea of "Roll up a new character and jump back into the action", but sometimes the loss of levels can be pretty brutal.  

So if there is a lesson to take from the Fromsoft games, it would be that death should hurt, a little, but it shouldn't affect your efficacy in combat.

Alternate Rule: Avenge the Dead

After you die, you make a new character who is in some way related to the dead character.  A brother, a friend, or ally.  New characters are given a task that they must accomplish to avenge the dead character.  They are “born with a mission”.  

The quest is just something in their heart.  They know it innately.

Typically, the quest is just to kill the creature that killed the dead character.  However, if that creature is already killed, the quest is normally to fully explore that area of the dungeon, or to clear the floor.

Once you avenge the dead, you instantly gain a level.  Thereafter, you earn XP at double the normal rate, until you are the same level as the dead character.

You can only avenge a dead character who is level 2 or higher.  No one cares when level 1 characters die.

Alternate Rule: Soul Drain

Instead of draining a level, the monster drains your soul.  You lose a level, drop to 0 HP, and fall unconscious.  The soul drinker teleports back to its nest.  It will take the soul drinker 1d4+1 days to digest your soul.  If you are able to kill it before then, you can recover your lost soul.

The goal here is to create an alternative to level drain.  Now, you have a chance to regain your lost level!  All you have to do is come back and get sweet revenge.  It also creates a new objective the next time the players are deciding what to do in the dungeon: get the soul back.  

The reason the soul drinker teleports away after draining a soul, is to give the party space to retreat safely.  The character is unconscious, so it may be an opportune time to retreat, regroup, and strategize.  Yes, it’s giving the players an easy exit (since the monster teleports away) but honestly, losing a level is a decent punishment on its own.  And of course, you could always just have multiple soul drinkers in a single combat.

Remember that losing a level and being knocked unconscious is a pretty brutal punishment.  Be sure to signpost it so that players know what they are getting themselves into.

DO Give Local Navigation Goals

In Elden Ring, it’s pretty common to walk into a new area and see a cool place you can’t reach.  Or alternatively, a cool item sitting outside of obvious reach, prompting the player to look for the path.

Stuff like this has two purposes.  One, to motivate you to explore.  And second, to give you some information: until you obtain that item, you haven’t fully explored the area yet.  (It’s kinda similar to the DM telling you “nah, you haven’t found all the treasure in this area yet” which is very motivating for players to keep searching.)

These can also be thought of as “Dynamic Navigation Goals” because they weren’t part of the players' goals when they entered an area.  "Dynamism" is just how I refer to "it wasn't part of the player's original goals, but now that they're here, their plans have inflected around this new feature".  They didn't have a quest to loot that item, but now that it's staring them in the face, they're going to want it.

However, local navigation goals don’t typically exist in tabletop games.  There are two reasons.

(1) First, tabletop is primarily a verbal medium.  Because of this limitation, we tend to have simple environments. Lots of small square rooms with 1-3 things in each.  This is almost a requirement, since more complex rooms become harder to describe and harder for the players to hold in their imaginations.  Imagine trying to describe the Haligtree verbally, with its maze of 3D branches curving above each other, and you will realize that tabletop games just don’t have the bandwidth for complex environments that video games do.

You can still do it, though.  Give clear, accurate information about items that they can expect to find in a particular dungeon.  Give them local goals, like a treasure that they can’t immediately reach on the other side of a pit, or behind a portcullis that they can’t yet raise.  Show them a place/treasure that they can’t reach yet.

(2) The second challenge is that the players are very mobile.  If you put a balcony above them, the players will grappling hook over to it.  If you put a ledge down below them, they’ll tie their ropes together and climb down.  Put an interesting ledge on the far side of the pit and they’ll traverse the wall and anchor a rope with pitons.

This type of extreme mobility is not possible in Elden Ring.

Which brings me to my next point.

DO Limit Mobility

I’ve spoken before about the need to limit players in dungeons.  In my games, I’ve removed all darkvision, flight, teleportation, water breathing, and (most recently) spider climb from my games.  It allows me to keep the practical limitations of dungeons in place, & it allows for players to interact with the dungeon organically.

Right now, I can challenge my party with darkness, verticality, and underwater tunnels.  As soon as darkvision, flight, and water breathing become available, those challenges are reduced to “do we have the right races/spells for this?” instead of the more interesting problem of navigating an area with underwater tunnels.

It stops being an OSR-style problem and starts being a resource management problem, which is a lot less interesting.

Elden Ring uses all of these things to make dungeons exciting.  That fall will fucking kill you.  Deep water is utterly impassible.  Darkness requires you to bring a light source (I loved the Darklight Catacombs).  And if you hold the button for the torch, your character holds the torch up higher, illuminating the area a little bit more.  Wonderful.  It feels organic.

Verticality is used extensively in Elden Ring.  Tons of dungeons use verticality instead of walls, in order to prevent movement but still show you that it’s possible to reach a certain area.  Verticality is also used a lot in the DLC world map, where there are often weird little valleys (Rauh, Abyssal Woods, Finger Ruins) below you that you desperately want to reach, but are unable to since you cannot climb down a sheer cliff face.  Instead, you have to scour the map, looking for whatever nearby tunnel will provide a means of accessing that weird little valley.  They made the overworld into a 3d dungeon, with levels and hidden stairwells.  I haven’t seen this in a game before, but I love it.   All of the navigation challenges of dungeoneering are now translatable to overworld exploration.

Actually, the idea of "use verticality instead of a wall" is great because it allows you to see down into areas you can't immediately reach.  It's a non-magical version of an invisible wall.

In the Elden Ring DLC, there’s even one part of the map that I only was able to access after I looked carefully at the map, planning out the direction I would have to come from in order to reach that area, and then looking for a nearby “blank spot” that I hadn’t yet explored.  It’s directly analogous to mapping in an OSR game, when you map out all of the rooms and notice that there’s a blank spot in the middle of your map, probably indicating a hidden room.  I don’t think I’ve seen this is video games before.

Anyway, a lot of these navigation challenges are impossible in your average D&D game.  Even without flight, teleportation, and spider climb, characters are broadly assumed to be excellent athletes capable of climbing up walls and down into steep valleys.  Creating cliffs that are utterly impassible is a good way to make the map more interesting (and more dungeon-like). 

Side Discussion: Organic Interaction

When I say "I want my players to interact with my game organically", I mean something specific.  By 'organically', I mean that players already show up to the table knowing how things interact.  It doesn't require any special instructions or table-wide agreement.  

We all know (more or less) that a wooden door can be chopped down with an axe, that a person who has been underwater for more than a minute is in real danger of drowning, that a person can throw a grappling hook onto the roof of a two story building, et cetera.  

I don't have to explain these things.  They're already known.

However, as soon as we start talking about magic, counterspells, hacking subsystems, teleportation mishaps, the shields on spaceships, whether demons are killed or merely sent back to hell. . . I'm now doing something else.  I have to (1) explain the system (and the world) to the players, and they have to (2) remember it and (3) agree.

All three of those points are potential stumbling blocks for tables.  This is where disagreements can arise.  People might say "What?  I didn't know that would happen!" or worse "Well, if I had known that, I wouldn't have done that!"

Plus, even if you have attentive players with good memories and the best of intentions, you still have to stop the game to explain exactly how a counterspell counters another counterspell.  Even when it feels immersive, it's still extra work.

Which is why I like to use organic obstacles when possible.  A moat full of crocodiles is an organic obstacle.  It takes one sentence to describe, and then even a brand-new player can start thinking about how to overcome it.

A prismatic wall is a deeply inorganic obstacle.  Even after I explain what it is and how it works, new players wouldn't necessarily know how to overcome it.  Anti-magic fields are another deeply inorganic feature.  What exactly counts as magic?

Variant Rule: No Rope

Rope doesn’t exist in this world.  

That’s it.  That’s the whole rule.  

Maybe the necessary plants don’t exist.  Or maybe cordage does exist, but it’s too weak and heavy to be useful for adventurers.  This has major implications for delving and sailing, but we’ll make it work.

A 20’ climb (up or down) is now a non-trivial problem, since everyone will have to make climbing checks to descend.  A 40’ drop is probably more than can be managed safely.  (And honestly, based on my very limited experience with caving, I wouldn’t even want to fuck with a 15’ climb inside a cave.)

The value of this rule is that you can build dungeons that are more like Elden Ring dungeons.  You can’t just grapple onto the battlements of Castle Sol–you need to navigate through it.  

You might even be able to start implementing steep slopes that function like the one-way drops that Elden Ring loves (which function like one-way doors), but that’s almost a separate conversation.

DO Use One-Way Doors

One-way doors are all over the place in Elden Ring.  None of them are literal doors, though.  Instead you have: (1) short drops that you can jump down, but can’t climb back up, (2) stone coffins you climb into, (3) weird alcoves you fall asleep in, (4) teleport traps, and (5) boss fog that prevents you from retreating.

Why so many one-way doors?  Because it’s exciting.  You know that you’ll be stuck without an easy way to retreat.  If you’re in an underground dungeon, you can’t use your fast-travel.  You’ll have to find a new way back.  It forces you to commit to your decision, even when you aren’t 100% sure what you’re committing to.  Even if the environment is perfectly safe, my heart rate goes up when I know I can't retreat.

(Although retreating is a big part of OSR gameplay, so maybe don't go crazy with one-way doors.  Or when you do, leave a place for players to retreat to, even though it might not be the way that they came.)

Let’s just focus on #1 for a second: the short drops that function like one-way doors.  

These are wonderful little bits of game design because they force you to commit to a direction.  There’s no going back!  And the permanent nature of this decision is (usually) 100% transparent to the player.  You can see that you’re committing to a one-way trip before you make the decision.  The game respects your agency.

In most of these cases, the player can see that they are committing to some weirdness before you actually engage.  A save point right before a huge empty room?  Probably a boss room.  A stone coffin that I can climb into?  Something weird is probably going to happen.

The teleport traps are the clear exception to this, but even those are rare

So, I just looked up how many teleporter traps there are in Elden Ring.  There's less than I thought, and the only shitty one is the Sellia Crystal Tunnel one.

However, the shitty one is typically the first one you find.  Which then leads you to being scared of teleporter traps for the rest of the game.  (I know I was.)

This is similar to how Elden Ring handles dying.  The game wants you to be scared, but the threat is mostly illusory.  The game actually works pretty hard to protect player agency.  With the exception of Sellia Crystal Tunnel, the game doesn't yank you anywhere you don't want to be.  

You chose to go into that teleporter blindly.  You chose to attack the sleeping dragon.  You chose to jump in the hole without knowing how you would get back up.

A lot of DMs could learn from Elden Ring.

Some additional ways to implement one-way doors in your game:

• Water currents.
• Literal one-way doors.
• One-way teleporters.
• One-way elevators.
• Magical boats.
• Collapsing floors.  (Tough to make obvious/informed, though.)
• Steep, slippery slopes.  (Just do it.  Too muddy for iron spikes.)

Side Discussion: Fast Travel

You have fast travel in Elden Ring.  You can't use it when you're in combat, or when you're in a dungeon (like Sellia Crystal Tunnel), but it's available at all other times.

Can you implement this in a tabletop game?

Well. . . yes.  It's as simple as the players saying "we want to go to this place we've been to before, along a path that we've been on before" and then the DM says "okay, you're there."

The game still works.  

It's basically how it works in Elden Ring, too, since you can run away from nearly every overworld combat on your horse.  The game doesn't force you to engage with anything you don't want to.  Besides, once you get to your destination (some variety of dungeon), you'll have to fight your way through, laboriously, carefully, on foot.

However, Elden Ring's fast travel feels a lot like teleportation.  How long does it take?  In Elden Ring, we don't really care, since the game has no calendar or clock.  (And in fact, the timelessness of the setting is a plot point.)  But in an OSR game, strict time measures are (often) part of enforcing a living world, and honoring player actions.  So, I would advise against adopting the easy, instantaneous fast travel of Elden Ring. 

I guess the lesson here is to avoid belaboring travel.  When the characters move from Point A to Point B along a known route, roll up a minimal number of encounters.  Just enough to make it feel like time is passing.  (And you can reinforce the passage of time in your narration.  Talk about how the wineskin was empty after the first week on the road, etc.)

So don't spend a whole session travelling.  The destination is typically more fun than the journey.

(But also disregard that advice if your game is different, and the journey is actually more fun than the destination.) 

Part II

This post is long enough, so I'll stop here for today.

But I owe you a Part II.

I have some thoughts on how From Soft does lore, but it'll take me a second to articulate it.