At the beginning of each scene, one player becomes the Game Master, another plays the Boxer, while the others take the supporting characters around him. When the scene ends, those roles change.

This means that every player enters each scene from a different position. For example, the player who framed a conflict as Game Master may later have to deal with its consequences while playing the Boxer himself.

Obviously, what has already happened in the previous scenes remains true in the next ones.

Every choice adds something to the Boxer’s life, and when another player takes control of him, they inherit all of this. They can push the Boxer in a new direction, but they must show how that direction grows from the person the group has created so far.

The same applies to the Game Master. Each new GM receives a story already in motion. Their job is to find the next crucial moment inside that history and give the Boxer something meaningful to face.

Supporting characters work in the same way. A trainer introduced in one scene may return later under another player and his previous actions still matter, becaus its relationship with the Boxer has already begun.

This rotation is what makes the Boxer a genuinely shared protagonist. Scene after scene, each player receives the life created by the others, adds something to it, and passes it on. By the end, the Boxer’s life is the result of all those different hands.

I’ve just published The Stormlight Borderlands, a system-neutral fantasy setting designed for old-school and OSR games.

As a thank-you for following my work here, Substack subscribers and followers can get it at 50% off through the link here.

Additional writing by Mr. Alessandro Colella.

Cover Art by Thomas Cole in Public Domain.

Interior Arts in Public Domain.

I hope you enjoy exploring the Stormlight Borderlands.

Boxing career usually becomes a way to explore how the boxer’s life has been shaped by the choices to resolve conflicts.

This is the concept for The Champ: a small indie rpg about shaping a boxer’s life together, one decisive moment at a time.

The Champ follows one central character through five scenes that represents the key turning points of the boxer's life while authority moves between players. One player portrays the boxer, then another takes over in the following scene. The other roles change as well, allowing the group to build the same life from different perspectives.

Each scene can leave the boxer bound by one or more Obligations. The next player must decide whether to honour them or break them. That choice carries the past into the next scene and gives the game new tension.

At the end, the group looks at the boxer’s Legacy, that is the result of five parts of the boxer’s life. Those parts increases and decreases through the choices and the results of rolls during the scenes. Glory and Money show what the career gave him, Health shows what it cost, while Bonds and Integrity reveal what remains of the person behind the fighter.

For now, this the core of The Champ. In the coming weeks, new articles will move closer to the game's mechanics and how to run it.

Starting from the main elements I think a fantasy pantheon must include, I've developed a few random tables I want to share with you.

A pantheon is the whole group of deities that are revered by people belonging to the same nation, ethnicity, or faith.

Usually, in a pantheon each deity represents a specific trait, such as love, war, deceit, trade, and many others, but the deities in a pantheon should represent the main values, fears, customs, traditions, questions, and needs of the people that believe in them. A pantheon might have more than one afterlife, whether it’s as simple as heaven and hell or more complicated, where different deities have conceived different rewards and punishment and oversee them personally.

To be consistent, a pantheon needs at least two of three features: how it is organized, the extent of its influence in the world, and a myth that describes its origins.

Pantheon Organization

The organization of a pantheon reflects the relationships between the deities. For example, they may be hierarchically organized with a supreme deity and lesser ones that have sworn fealty to it. Many real-world pantheon, like the greek or norse ones, have a chief deity that rule, more or less effectively, over the others. Many pantheons can be made by deities that have family ties, again as in the greek and norse ones. Other pantheons can be flat with no clear ruler and with all the dieties that have the same importance, while others may have conflict-ridden relationships, such as good vs evil or law vs chaos.

Influence of a Pantheon

The influence of a pantheon in the world defines how the how the deities interact with the world and how much they shape it. For example, a pantheon can be guide their followers through direct intervention (miracles, extreme natural phenomenons, ...) or be beyond the mortal reach, letting the followers alone to gain the reward of an afterlife. Another pantheon could allow the deities to literally walk among the mortals and interact with them, another could strictly forbid it, and another one would use use supernatural (angels, demons, ...) and/or mortal (priests, prophets, ...) agents to spread the will of the deities.

Myth About The Pantheon's Origins

A myth about the pantheon helps to define the reason why the deities are collectively revered. For example, in the most common myths, the deities created the world or one or more sentient species that populate it, while in others the deities made an alliance to fight against another group of deities or other supernatural creatures, or have gifted the mortals discoveries like the fire, some technology, or magic.

Further Information

The number of deities in a pantheon varies according to your needs and those of the population of your fantasy world. If you really need to determine how much deities are in a pantheon roll 4d4. The sum of the numbers rolled represents the number of the deities in the pantheon.

A pantheon can be of many kinds and more than one may exist at the same time in the same fantasy world. If you need to know how many pantheons are in your world, roll a d4. The number rolled determines the number of pantheons. If there are two or more, then use the tables featured in this book for each kind of pantheon.

Random Tables

Main Element 1d10

1 The pantheon is strictly hierarchical

2 The pantheon is made by deities that have family ties

3 The pantheon is made by deities that struggle among themselves for supremacy

4 The pantheon is divided in two or more factions

5 The pantheon is made by a cooperative group of deities

6 The pantheon is ruled by a council of the most important deities

7 The deities of the pantheon collectively make decisions that are binding for every deity

8 The pantheon is made by deities that have different shapes among themselves

9 The pantheon is made by deities that share the same shape

10 The deities of the pantheon have very distant and formal relationships among themselves

Secondary Element 1d12

1 The pantheon has sworn to avoid to meddle in mortal affairs

2 The pantheon actively promotes its deities' own agendas through priests and prophets

3 The pantheon uses the mortals and the world as its deities' playground

4 The pantheon's main concern is to guide mortals into the afterlife

5 The pantheon rarely cares about the mortals and their pleas

6 The pantheon's main concern is to help mortal species to realize their full development

7 The pantheon allows its deities to literally walk among the mortals

8 The pantheon shows favor or displeasure to mortals through extreme natural events

9 The pantheon uses the mortals as an help in a fight against powerful supernatural creatures

10 The pantheon forbids any direct interaction with mortals

11 The pantheon's main concern is to mantain the balance (good vs evil, law vs chaos, ...)

12 The pantheon's main concern is to increase the number of their followers

Main Struggle 1d8

1 One or more deities are plotting to subvert the organization of the pantheon

2 People are losing faith in the pantheon

3 One or more deities are planning to gain much power at the others' expenses

4 People are turning their faith to technology rather than the pamtheon

5 People are turning their faith to magic rather than the pantheon

6 The deities of the pantheon are losing interest in the world and its population

7 The pantheon is at war with another pantheon or equivalent enemies

8 A deity that is not part of the pantheon is gaining a foothold among the followers of the pantheon

• B/X

• BECMI

• AD&D 1e

• AD&D 2e

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Monte Cook 2003

The Select Group

The Introduction immediately defines who the DM is:

“You’re a member of a select group. Truly, not everyone has the creativity and the dedication to be a DM. Dungeon Mastering (DMing) can be challenging, but it’s not a chore. You’re the lucky one out of your entire circle of friends who play the game. The real fun is in your hands. [...] It’s good to be the DM. The DM defines the game. A good DM results in a good game. [...] the whole tenor of the game is in your hands. It’s fun, but it’s a big responsibility.” (p. 4)

Once again, a DM is presented as a member of a group apart from the rest of the players. After 25 years since AD&D 1e, however, the idea becomes even more explicit, because it's officially stated that not everyone has the creativity and dedication required to be a Dungeon Master.

The DM carries great responsibility because the success of the game ultimately lies in their hands. Yet that burden is balanced by a reward: the “real fun” of the game.

I do not know exactly what the authors intended with that phrase, but it seems to suggest that one cannot fully experience D&D unless one is the DM, just like the deepest pleasure of the game could belong only to the person who runs it.

The Role of the DM

The guide states clearly what the DM is expected to do at the table and during preparation:

“Dungeon Mastering involves writing, teaching, acting, refereeing, arbitrating, and facilitating.” (p. 5)

This is one of the clearest definitions of the DM’s role up to this point.

Writing

Writing is central because:

“Your primary role is to present adventures in which the other players can roleplay their characters.” (p. 5)

The DM is now explicitly described as the person who presents adventures for the other players.

Writing is so important that chapter 3 is entirely dedicated to Writing an Adventure. The DM can write original adventures, but can also use those skills to adapt published adventures that do not fully fit the group’s needs or tastes.

Teaching

For the first time, the DM is clearly charged with teaching the game to newcomers. This is presented as a valuable opportunity to grow the hobby, but again the responsibility rests on the DM’s shoulders.

“Those who are taught by a good teacher who runs a fun game are more likely to join the hobby for the long haul.” (pp. 5–6)

Acting

This is also the first time the guide clearly states that the DM should act.

While that is an important turning point, curiously, however, the idea is not developed much further in the book. There are only a few suggestions that point in that direction:

“Other ways DMs can create an atmosphere are [...] adjusted lighting, and even sound effects.” (p. 7)

And:

“Another element many DMs employ and many players enjoy is for the DM to use different voices when speaking ‘in character’. [...] Occasionally a little miming of actions can supplement a game that otherwise exists only in your imagination.” (p. 7)

So acting enters the official definition of DMing, even if the guide treats it lightly. The DM is now expected not only to judge and prepare, but also to perform.

Refereeing, Arbitrating, and Facilitating

Oddly, the book does not give separate detailed sections on refereeing, arbitrating, and facilitating.

Still, the whole chapter contains advice that points toward the same main goal: the DM must keep the players engaged and ensure that everyone has fun.

The text says this directly:

“the onus must ultimately fall upon the DM to keep the game moving, maintain player interest, and keep things fun.”

This perspective also shapes the advice on creating a game world:

“The setting is everything in the fictional world except for the PCs and the adventure plot. A well-designed and well-run world seems to go on around the PCs, so that they feel a part of something, instead of apart from it.” (p. 6)

The same idea appears in the advice on rulings:

“Good DMs know not to change or overturn a published rule without a good, logical justification so that the players don’t rebel.” (p. 6)

And again in the advice on keeping play moving:

“Remember that keeping things moving is always more important than searching through rulebooks to find the exact details on some point or spending time in long debates over rules decisions.” (p. 6)

The DM must also manage attention at the table, even when the group becomes distracted by jokes or side conversations:

“There are always funny things to be said, movie quotes, good gossip, and other conversations that crop up during the game, whether they’re inspired by what’s going on in the session or completely extraneous. Decide for yourself (and as a group) how much is too much. Remember that this is a game and people are there to have fun, yet at the same time keep the focus on the actions of the characters, so the whole playing session doesn’t pass in idle chat.” (p. 11)

Fudging and Invisible Control

To keep the game interesting, the DM can also ignore rolled outcomes. The guide addresses this directly:

“Do you cheat? The answer: The DM really can’t cheat. You’re the umpire, and what you say goes. As such, it’s certainly within your rights to sway things one way or another to keep people happy or keep things running smoothly. It’s no fun losing a long-term character who gets run over by a cart. A good rule of thumb is that a character shouldn’t die in a trivial way because of some fluke of the dice unless he or she was doing something really stupid at the time.” (p. 18)

So, it is stated that the DM cannot really cheat, because the DM is the authority that defines what happens.

However, this power must remain invisible:

“...an important issue, however, is whether the players realize that you bend the rules. Even if you decide that sometimes it’s okay to fudge a little to let the characters survive so the game can continue, don’t let the players in on this decision. It’s important to the game that they believe their characters are always in danger. If the players believe, consciously or subconsciously, that you’ll never let bad things happen to their characters, they’ll change the way they act. With no element of risk, victory will seem less sweet. And if thereafter something bad does happen to a character, that player may believe you’re out to get him if he feels you saved other players when their characters were in trouble.” (p. 18)

This continues and strengthens a trend we have already seen in AD&D 2e. The DM should secretly alter outcomes to preserve the game, but the illusion of danger must remain intact.

The players must believe the risk is real, even when the DM sometimes protects them from the full consequences of the dice.

Game Balance

Since the origins of the game, keeping balance has always been one of the DM’s main duties. In 3.5, however, the guide defines balance more explicitly than before:

“But what does ‘game balance’ really mean? All game balance does is to ensure that most character choices are relatively equal in terms of their chances for success. A balanced game is one in which one character doesn’t dominate over the rest because of a choice that he or she made (race, class, skill, feat, spell, and so on). It also reflects that the characters aren’t too powerful for the threats they face; yet, neither are they hopelessly overmatched.” (p. 13)

This definition introduces a new and important conception of balance.

Earlier guides mainly treated balance as the relationship between the party and the challenges they faced. In 3.5, balance also becomes a matter of equality among player characters. The DM must make sure that one character does not dominate the rest because of choices made during character creation or advancement.

This is directly connected to the DM’s duty to preserve fun for everyone. If one player’s character constantly takes the spotlight, the others can become bored or frustrated.

How is balance maintained? The guide gives two answers.

The first is careful DM management:

“A DM who carefully watches all portions of the game so that nothing gets out of his or her control helps keep the game balanced. PCs and NPCs, victories and defeats, awards and afflictions, treasure found and treasure spent—all these aspects must be monitored to maintain balance.” (p. 13)

The second is trust between DM and players:

“If the players trust you—and through you, the game system—they will recognize that anything that enters the game has been carefully considered.” (p. 13)

And once that trust exists:

“If this degree of trust can be achieved, you will be much more free to add or change things in your game without worrying about the players protesting or scrutinizing every decision.” (p. 13)

Knowing Your Players

The guide also introduces the concept that a DM must know the players.

This is almost like the zeroth law of DMing.

In order to make the game enjoyable for everyone, the DM must understand that players have different tastes and expectations.

“The best way to accomplish this [a good result of the game] is by learning what the players want and figuring out what you want as well. Many styles of play exist...” (p. 7)

The guide does not provide rules or procedures to help the DM learn the players’ preferences, but the idea itself is important.

In some ways, this is one of the roots of what we now call Session 0.

Conclusion

The 3.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide presents the broadest definitions of the DM’s role so far.

The DM writes, teaches, acts, referees, arbitrates, and facilitates.

Two elements stand out. First, invisible control becomes explicit: the DM may bend the rules, but players should not see it. Second, balance now also means balance between player characters.

Stronger than before, In 3.5, the DM becomes a full manager of the play experience, in many ways very similar to the modern conception of the role.

• B/X

• BECMI

• AD&D 1e

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e, David “Zeb” Cook, 1989

Choices

According to the foreword by David “Zeb” Cook, the core of the DM’s role lies in making choices.

“By now, you should be familiar with the rules in the Player’s Handbook. You’ve probably already noticed things you like or things you would have done differently. If you have, congratulations. You’ve got the spirit every Dungeon Master needs.” (p. 2)

And then, even more clearly:

“As you go through this rule book, I encourage you to continue to make these choices. Choice is what the AD&D game is all about.” (p. 2)

The DM must constantly make choices, and through those choices shape a personal version of the game.

Cook makes this explicit when he writes:

“At the beginning of the first Dungeon Master Guide, Gygax stressed that each of us, working from a common base, would make the AD&D game grow in a variety of different directions. That is more true today than ever.” (p. 2)

At the same time, each choice must be weighed carefully. Caution and moderation remain essential.

“Don’t be afraid of experimentation, but do be careful. As a Dungeon Master, you have great power, and ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’ Use it wisely.” (p. 2)

So the DM’s freedom is real, but being absolute, it must be always tied to judgment and wisdom.

Introduction

The Introduction expands this idea and makes the DM’s responsibility fully explicit:

“The DM has the primary responsibility for the success of his campaign, and he must take an active hand in guiding it.” (p. 9)

That is a strong statement. The success of the campaign, and by extension of the fun of all the players, rests primarily on the DM.

Because that active role extends to the rules themselves, the DM is expected to know them thoroughly:

“Along with this are examinations of the pros and cons of changing the rules to fit your campaign. [...] The better you understand the game, the better equipped you’ll be to handle unforeseen developments and unusual circumstances.” (p. 9)

Again, moderation is central:

“The only thing that can make the AD&D game ‘right’ for all players is the intelligent application of DM discretion.” (p. 9)

The book then names other qualities essential to the role:

“The Fine Art of Being a DM. Being a good Dungeon Master involves a lot more than knowing the rules. It calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing—among other things. Most of us can claim these attributes to some degree, but there’s always room for improvement. Fortunately, skills like these can be learned and improved with practice.” (p. 9)

This is important because the DMG of 1e raised for the first time the question that DMing was whether art or a science. Ten years later, DMG 2e finally gives us the answer.

DMing is an art and requires more than technical knowledge. It calls for correct timing, style, presence, and judgment. The language itself has shifted. Some terms belong more naturally to theatre and performance than to rules and procedures.

Curiously, the book does not actually teach those skills in detail:

“But you won’t find them in the Dungeon Master Guide. This is a reference book for running the AD&D game. We tried to minimize material that doesn’t pertain to the immediate conduct of the game. If you are interested in reading more about this aspect of refereeing, we refer you to Dragon Magazine...” (p. 9)

So, though the DM's role is clearly expanded, and the skills for that role are grown in numbers and specialization. However, some of those parts are left outside the book, to be learned elsewhere.

Fun, Balance, Moderation

Across the book, three concerns appear again and again: fun, balance, and moderation.

Players must have fun. The game must stay balanced. The DM must use moderation in every important decision.

This pattern appears in many chapters, like those about character creation, experience, treasure, magic items, and encounter design.

For example, in chapter 1, the book warns against allowing players to exploit character creation:

“A problem arises, however, if players are allowed to exploit the rules, or your good nature, to create a character who is much more powerful than everyone else’s characters. At best, this leads to an unbalanced game. At worst, it leads to bored players and hurt feelings.” (p. 10)

The answer is prudence and fairness:

“...every player in your game should start out using the same method.” (p. 11)

The same structure appears in the rules for creating new playable races:

“Adventurous DMs and players may want to experiment with characters of other races...” (p. 24)

Then comes again the warning:

“Unrestricted or ill-considered use of non-standard races can easily and quickly destroy a campaign.” (p. 24)

And finally the solution:

“In creating a new nonhuman or demihuman player character race, the rules and guidelines below should be followed to preserve game balance.” (p. 24)

The pattern is always the same. Freedom is allowed, even encouraged, but the DM must beware that freedom without moderation is dangerous.

The same is true of money and equipment:

“Controlling the flow of money is an important way of balancing your campaign. Too much—or too little—money can ruin the fun of your game.” (p. 48)

And of experience:

“If the DM consistently gives too little experience to players, they become frustrated. Frustrated players don’t have fun and, usually, quit the game... On the other hand, players can be given too many experience points too quickly... They quit trying to be inventive and clever, and they just get by.” (p. 66)

Again, the logic is clear. Too little reward discourages the players and too much of it destroys the game. The DM’s task is to keep almost everythingin the middle, where challenge and satisfaction would coexist.

Encounters and the First Shift Toward Story

This same logic reappears in chapter 11, on encounters:

“Any time the DM feels his adventure is dragging along or that characters are getting over-confident, he can declare a random encounter. Likewise if he feels that a random encounter would hurt the adventure, he can ignore one that’s called for. Good judgment and story considerations are more important than slavish devotion to procedure.” (p. 138)

This passage is important for two reasons.

First, we find again the already familiar old idea that the DM may ignore a random encounter if it would damage the session.

Second, and most important, for the first time, this is justified not only in terms of fun, but also in terms of story considerations.

That is a significant focus shift. The encounter is no longer judged only by whether it helps or harms the immediate experience of play, but also by whether it serves the story being told.

There is another shift here too. The book says the DM may declare a random encounter. That verb matters because it implies a direct decision by the DM, not only the result of a procedure. Random encounters are no longer fully random. They can now be used deliberately to affect the pace and shape of the adventure.

This becomes even clearer when the book explains how to fix an encounter that has gone wrong:

“Fixing Things in Play. Sometimes, for all the good intentions of the DM, encounters don’t work out right. Correcting problems in play can be difficult, but there are times when it’s unavoidable.” (p. 141)

The suggested solutions are revealing:

“The DM has accidentally pitted his player characters against a group of creatures too powerful for them... To fix things, the DM can have the monsters flee in inexplicable panic; secretly lower their hit points; allow the player characters to hit or inflict more damage than they really should; have the monsters miss on attacks when they actually hit; have the creatures make grievous mistakes in strategy...” (p. 141)

This is a major change in the role of the DM.

While in the 1e DMG, Gygax had already allowed the DM to omit an encounter before it entered play, according to the 2e DMG instead, the DM may secretly alter the encounter while it is happening in order to protect the game, the party, or eventually the story.

If I am not mistaken, this is one of the earliest clear signs of what, in the podcast Nuovi Draghi, Vecchie Cantine, we call “illusionism”. I think that deserves a full article of its own in the next future.

Adventures and Campaigns

One last point is worth noting.

For the first time, this book contains no real guidelines, procedures, or even clear hints for creating an adventure or a dungeon.

Though at first sight that seems odd, in fact, it is perfectly coherent with the role the book assigns to the DM.

The authors seem to assume that a DM can create anything, provided that the result keeps the players engaged and the game balanced. Longer than concerning about how to build an adventure step by step, now the most important thing seems how to govern the play experience once the adventure exists.

Conclusion

The 2e Dungeon Master Guide marks a turning point in the evolution of the DM’s role.

The DM is now, more than ever, the one who chooses and balances, protecting both fun and story. Now what matters more is the intelligent use of discretion in any aspect of the game.

Using it correctly preserves the balance of the experience and increasingly the story itself.

The seeds of many later ideas of DMing are already here.

Unfortunately, we don't know if these seeds appeared there as an answer for helps by the DMs of the previous edition or if the authors simply tried to codify what many DMs were already doing in their games.

However, one question becomes unavoidable: if 2e already allows the DM to secretly protect the flow of play, how far will later editions push that power?

That is where the next article will begin.

• B/X

• BECMI

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1e, Gygax 1979

“Is Dungeon Mastering an art or a science?”

The foreword of the Dungeon Masters Guide, written by editor Mike Carr, opens with this question.

By framing DMing as either an art or a science, Carr places it on a different level from ordinary play. Rather than being just one role among the others at the table, DMing is viewed as something more complex and more specialized.

Carr suggests that DMing can be seen as an art because of

“...the pure creative aspect of starting from scratch, the ‘personal touch’ of individual flair that goes into preparing and running a unique campaign, or the particular style of moderating a game adventure...” (p. 2)

In other words, DMing is an art because it depends on the DM’s creativity and personal way of conducting play.

Since those qualities are highly subjective, the text implies that every DM has a different style.

At the same time, Carr says DMing can also be viewed as a science because of

“...the aspect of experimentation, the painstaking effort of preparation and attention to detail, and the continuing search for new ideas and approaches...” (p. 2)

This points toward another image of DMing, which is one of labor, method, trial and error, and constant refinement.

The idea is reinforced throughout the foreword:

“...one thing is for certain — Dungeon Mastering is, above all, a labor of love. It is demanding, time-consuming, and certainly not a task to be undertaken lightly...” (p. 2)

So DMing is described as something costly in time, effort, and energy. It is also not meant to be easy, and it is not presented as something one does for immediate reward.

Why, then, should anyone do it?

The foreword gives also an answer to that question:

“But, as all DM’s know, the rewards are great — an endless challenge to the imagination and intellect, an enjoyable pastime to fill many hours with fantastic and often unpredictable happenings, and an opportunity to watch a story unfold...” (p. 2)

The rewards are purely intellectual and emotional. The DM accepts the burden of that role because it offers a very particular kind of satisfaction.

The foreword then adds a final warning:

“Dungeon Mastering itself is no easy undertaking, to be sure. But Dungeon Mastering well is doubly difficult.” (p. 2)

Not only is DMing difficult, it is also something one can continuously improve.

“There are few gamemasters around who are so superb in their conduct of play that they could disdain the opportunity to improve themselves...” (p. 2)

So the DMG presents DMing as a difficult practice, one that requires a solid set of skills, time and effort, and the will of continuously self-improving.

Preface

Another crucial passage appears in the preface written by Gygax.

Very early on, he sets out his view of the DM’s role:

“What follows herein is strictly for the eyes of you, the campaign referee. As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another.” (p. 7)

The explicit point is that every DM is the final authority within their own campaign. The rules are only a framework and each DM is meant to use that framework to shape a personal milieu.

More interesting, to me, is what the passage implies.

By speaking from one DM to another, Gygax creates a separate social category: the DMs. The DM stops to be just a player with a different task and becomes member of a special distinct group, with its own language.

This is reinforced elsewhere in the book:

“You will order the universe and direct the activities in each game, becoming one of the elite group of campaign referees referred to as DMs in the vernacular of AD&D.” (p. 86)

Note the phrase “elite group”. By saying so, the DM is part of a select body of referees entrusted with maintaining and shaping the game.

The Keeper of Boundaries

The preface also defines another key aspect of the role: the DM as the keeper of boundaries.

Gygax writes:

“...what is aimed at is a ‘universe’ into which similar campaigns and parallel worlds can be placed. With certain uniformity of systems and ‘laws’, players will be able to move from one campaign to another and know at least the elemental principles which govern the new milieu, for all milieux will have certain (but not necessarily the same) laws in common.” (p. 7)

According to Gygax, the game's core principles such as races, classes, ability scores, spells, and magic items should work according to create a common structurefrom campaign to campaign. That common structure allows both players and DMs

“...to carry on a meaningful dialogue and exchange of useful information.” (p. 7)

Keeping the boundaries is important because crossing them could be very dangerous:

“... [you] must avoid the tendency to drift into areas foreign to the game as a whole. Such campaigns become so strange as to be no longer ‘AD&D’. They are isolated and will usually wither.”

So, although these boundaries can be interpreted differently from DM to DM, they matter a great deal. They are what keeps a campaign recognizably AD&D. The DM has creative freedom, but that freedom is expected to remain within a common framework.

Gygax makes this even clearer:

“Variation and difference are desirable, but both should be kept within the boundaries of the overall system. Imaginative and creative addition can most certainly be included; that is why nebulous areas have been built into the game. Keep such individuality in perspective by developing a unique and detailed world based on the rules of ADVANCED D&D. No two campaigns will ever be the same, but all will have the common ground necessary to maintain the whole as a viable entity about which you and your players can communicate with the many thousands of others who also find swords & sorcery role playing gaming an amusing and enjoyable pastime.” (p. 7)

AD&D is then imagined as a shared framework held together across many campaigns by the discipline of DMs.

What Are Those Boundaries?

Gygax offers one of his clearest statements about those boundaries when discussing monstrous player characters:

“ADVANCED D&D is unquestionably ‘humanocentric’, with demi-humans, semi-humans, and humanoids in various orbits around the sun of humanity. Men are the worst monsters, particularly high level characters such as clerics, fighters, and magic-users — whether singly, in small groups, or in large companies. [...] The game features humankind for a reason. It is the most logical basis in an illogical game. From a design aspect it provides the sound groundwork. From a standpoint of creating the campaign milieu it provides the most readily usable assumptions. From a participation approach it is the only method, for all players are, after all is said and done, human, and it allows them the role with which most are most desirous and capable of identifying with. From all views then it is enough fantasy to assume a swords & sorcery cosmos, with impossible professions and make-believe magic.” (p. 21)

So AD&D's fantasy has a specific center: humanity. That is one of the boundaries the DM is expected to preserve.

Introduction

The introduction connects these ideas with play at the table.

Gygax places strong emphasis on momentum and engagement:

“Material included was written with an eye towards playability and expedition. The fun of the game is action and drama. The challenge of problem solving is secondary. Long and drawn out operations by the referee irritate the players. [...] If you will do your best to keep the excitement level of your games at a peak, you will be doing yourself and your participants a favor which will be evident when players keep coming back for more.” (p. 9)

This becomes especially clear when he discusses wandering monsters:

“[...] cut portions as needed to maintain excitement. For example, the rules call for wandering monsters, but these can be not only irritating — if not deadly — but the appearance of such can actually spoil a game by interfering with an orderly expedition.” (p. 9)

At the same time, Gygax insists on fairness. If the DM decides to include an encounter, it should be handled honestly:

“Rather than spoil such an otherwise enjoyable time, omit the wandering monsters indicated by the die. No, don’t allow the party to kill them easily or escape unnaturally...” (p. 9)

The DM can shape events for the sake of play, but once an event is allowed into the game, it should retain its proper force.

The Qualities of a DM

Gygax highlights three essential qualities.

The first is deep rules knowledge:

“Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. To become the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot.” (p. 9)

Rules knowledge is again ppart of that the common ground within the boundaries where all DMs and players can find themselves at home.

However, beyond that, the DM also needs cleverness and imagination:

“Being a true DM requires cleverness and imagination which no set of rules books can bestow. Seeing that you were clever enough to buy this volume, and you have enough imagination to desire to become the maker of a fantasy world, you are almost there already! Read and become familiar with the contents of this work and the one written for players, learn your monsters, and spice things up with some pantheons of super-powerful beings. Then put your judging and refereeing ability into the creation of your own personal milieu, and you have donned the mantle of Dungeon Master.” (p. 9)

Gygax draws a clear line: only few people are suited to “don the mantle” of DM. By saying so, DMing is again treated as a distinct vocation within the game.

Moderation

The rest of the book contains countless details about what a DM is expected to handle during play, between sessions, and in campaign preparation. I do not want to summarize all of that here, becauseetter bloggers than I have already done so.

What matters for this series is what those sections imply about the role of the DM, which seems to me the Balance Keeper

Gygax also places great emphasis on balance, especially in treasure, challenge, and magic items.

“The judgment factor is inescapable with respect to weighting experience for the points gained from slaying monsters and/or gaining treasure. You must weigh the level of challenge — be it thinking or fighting — versus the level of experience of the player character(s) who gained it.” (p. 84)

And:

“Just as it is important to use forethought and consideration in placing valuable metals and other substances with monsters or otherwise hiding them in dungeons or wilderness, the placement of magic items is a serious matter. Thoughtless placement of powerful magic items has been the ruination of many a campaign.”

Above all, the DM is expected to exercise moderation:

“This is in part the fault of this writer, who deeply regrets not taking the time and space in D&D to repeatedly stress the importance of moderation.” (p. 92)

That connects directly to the role of the DM as keeper of boundaries. Through moderation, the DM keeps the game within the frame of AD&D.

Conclusion

In AD&D 1e, the DM belongs to a special group of people who truly understand the larger structure of the game.

That special status is tied to a specific duty. The DM is the keeper of the boundaries of AD&D. Creativity is encouraged, variation is welcome, but both must stay within a shared framework. A campaign may be unique, yet it should still remain recognizably AD&D.

That is why moderation matters so much in this book. Treasure, magic items, encounters, and even randomness itself must be handled with restraint. The DM's main task is to judge with fairness and preserve measure.

In this sense, the AD&D 1e DM is above all a guardian of the campaign’s balance and of the game’s boundaries. By succesfully doing so, a DM maintains the shared identity of AD&D itself.

BECMI, Mentzer 1983–1986

Basic and Expert Boxed Sets

There is already a major difference from B/X.

In the Basic boxed set, one booklet is reserved for the DM alone. As in 1st edition AD&D, which I will discuss in the next article, a clearer separation now appears between the Dungeon Master and the other players. In B/X, all the rules were in the same books, and in theory anyone at the table could read them. From this point on, however, there is a booklet meant for the DM’s eyes only.

That really matters, because from now on the game states that some rules and suggestions are meant to be read only by the DM, or by someone preparing to take on that role.

The preface makes this even clearer:

“...one person must first learn how to be the DUNGEON MASTER — the person who runs the game — and the others will be the players. You must know how to be a player before learning how to be a Dungeon Master. For now, if you only wish to play and not run games, then — DO NOT READ THIS BOOKLET”.

This passage reveals that the DM no longer simply plays the game like the others. The DM runs the game. The choice of that verb matters because it places the DM in a distinct position at the table, one above and apart from the others.

Then the text states that the DM must first know how to play as a player before trying to run the game as a DM. The role is presented as an advanced one, something to grow into rather than something immediately available to anyone.

For the rest, the procedures the DM is expected to follow remain broadly similar to those in Moldvay’s Basic and Expert books, and so do much of the advice and general structure. The social role of the DM, however, feels more explicit:

“Beginning players often need help in learning to play. When running a game for beginners, the DM should encourage them by saying such things as ‘Do you want to search for secret doors?’ or other suggestions [...], such clues can be very helpful to beginners. You may wish to allow some ‘automatic success’ situations to encourage the players. Those who never find secret doors will soon stop looking for them.” (p. 14)

This makes it clear that the DM is also expected to act as a teacher. The DM should guide beginners by facilitating play and showing them how to engage correctly with the game. The text even encourages the DM to grant some automatic successes in order to reinforce the habits of play.

The Expert Set returns to a single rulebook, since the second booklet is an adventure. Again, most procedures and advice remain close to the Moldvay version. What becomes more visible, though, is the concern with balance, that works in two directions.

On the one hand, the DM should avoid awarding too much treasure or too many magic items. Since treasure grants experience, too much of it means characters advance too quickly. Magic items, meanwhile, can make many challenges trivial.

On the other hand, balance also concerns the scale and difficulty of encounters:

“Encounters should be scaled to the strength of the party and should be in harmony with the theme of the adventure. The DM may choose a number within the given die range rather than roll for the amount of damage, number appearing, etc. This may be necessary to allow for a more enjoyable game; heavy damage early in the game may spoil some of the fun.” (p. 25)

So, the DM is expected to shape the game in ways that preserve enjoyment for all.

Companion Boxed Set

The DM’s booklet in the Companion Set introduces a new range of procedures. Here we find rules for managing dominions, the first clear treatment of the multiverse and of adventures on other planes.

Again, the strongest advice concerns balance and the avoidance of frustration. The DM’s task is still to avoid situations that are too easy or too deadly.

For example:

“When you create adventures, try to estimate the difficulty. Only characters who can match the challenges should play them; too powerful PCs will find play unchallenging, while too weak PCs may all die. You can also create an adventure for a specific character or group. This is more difficult in some ways. You must select monsters, traps, and treasures to match the characters’ level, and then put them together in a story that makes sense.” (p. 2)

And again:

“The Adventure Planning method gives you an organized way of designing challenges equal to specific character levels. However, be prepared to change the Rate of Progress. That number is a goal, and represents proper rewards for good play. If mere bad luck interferes with success, try to compensate by placing extra treasure on the next adventure. Watch for unexpectedly deadly situations; the monsters may do better than you think. Don’t penalize the characters if your designs are too powerful for them, but do not make things too easy for them, either.” (p. 3)

This vision of DMing focus on a DM that constantly plans to balance and manage experience.

MASTER BOXED SET

The DM’s book in the Master Set introduces the map of the Known World, along with many more procedures and rulings. To me, the most important part is the Encounters section (pp. 7–10).

The first major idea there is that the DM should provide goals for the players. Adventures and campaigns should have goals that are clear to the group, because without them the game risks boredom and frustration.

The manual says:

“Goals give the players and the DM something to strive for, and provide all with a sense of reward and accomplishment once completed. Without goals, the most exciting adventures imaginable are just simple exercises. The best and longest running D&D games are those that have definite objectives. Without a greater purpose, players quickly lapse into boredom.” (p. 7)

And again:

“A question that the DM must answer for everyone is: why are characters adventuring? The Dungeon Master should offer several levels of goals and several options for each goal. By presenting possible goals, the DM can keep control of the campaign while leaving freedom of choice in the hands of the players, where it should be.” (p. 7)

And then:

“In creating dungeons, wilderness encounters, and other game elements, always consider the various goals of the campaign. Design for a specific purpose.” (p. 7)

At the same time, the manual insists that the final goal at the table remains fun:

“Having goals doesn’t prohibit light-hearted adventuring. If humor is not well-represented in the game, the DM and players are taking it much too seriously. Make jokes, toss out puns, and set up purely frivolous and ridiculous situations. Enjoy yourselves! But, in the long run, adventures are far more satisfying, and more interesting, if there are well-defined goals to strive for.” (p. 7)

Again, the following pages return to balance and players engagement. There are suggestions for judging whether an encounter is balanced, for modifying monsters, and for adjusting the world so that challenge stays meaningful without becoming frustrating.

For example:

“You may change details [of the monsters] to suit the needs of your campaign or a specific adventure. Unexpected changes add new levels of excitement and mystery. However, use change only rarely or else the element of surprise is lost, and players may become frustrated because they cannot learn what to expect and how to respond.” (p. 7)

And:

“In low-level play, wandering monsters help to maintain alertness. At high levels, they no longer serve that purpose but should still be encountered to provide entertainment.” (p. 8)

And also:

“Whenever an encounter seems too easy, consider omitting it entirely or summarizing it to save game time (a quick glimpse, a monster’s scream, and the patter of running feet...). Try to avoid the easiest solution — the appearance of only powerful wandering monsters. Characters would start to wonder where the lesser creatures went!” (p. 8)

Finally:

“...the impact of the encounter can be estimated in advance. If the DM sees that the likely result is not desirable, the number appearing or their hit points may be modified. There are many good reasons for modifying existing details (often called ‘winging it’). If the hour is late, the DM might wish to avoid a long, involved encounter. If the party is heavily damaged, the DM might want to avoid killing characters. If the party has been remarkably unlucky in finding treasure during the adventure, the DM might want to add more, with a corresponding increase in danger.” (p. 10)

All of this reinforces the same image: by watching from above the whole game, the DM judges its flow and adjusts events when needed.

Yet one of the best pieces of advice in the entire BECMI line appears not in the DM’s booklet, but in the afterword to the Master Set’s Player’s Book:

“No set of rules, however complete, can give you all the information you need in a role-playing game. You know by now that additional reading can provide inspiration for your games. [...] Read further on the topics that interest you. It matters not whether you prefer fact to fancy, or modern to ancient themes. I started reading science fiction, myself, and shifted to fantasy. Ideas abound in works of all kinds and times. Using the bits gleaned from your reading, develop a campaign precisely suited to your taste and to that of your players.” (p. 33)

This adds another element to the role of the DM: preparation through reading and through active engagement with the wider culture. It also strengthens the idea that the DM is responsible for creating a campaign suited not only to personal taste, but also to the tastes of the players.

The manual develops this point a little further:

“Discuss the game regularly to stay aware of their [the players’] likes and dislikes. Most problems can be avoided or solved through simple discussion. The game encourages creativity for all, especially players. Listen to their ideas; it’s their campaign, too.”

And then:

“As the neutral arbiter of all game details, encourage your characters’ success even as you deploy their opposition.”

By reinforcing the idea that the DM must ensure a satisfying experience, that final sentence is also interesting because it slips into a telling confusion between players and characters. That confusion will become even stronger in later editions, and will reach its peak in DMG 5.5.

Conclusion

Reading BECMI today gives us a more complex picture of the DM than many people might expect or remember.

Certainly, the old idea of the DM as a neutral referee is still there and the procedural core of dungeon and wilderness design remains strong. While just implicit in B/X, from this edition explicitly the DM becomes a teacher, a planner, a manager of balance, a provider of goals, a guide to the tone of the campaign, and, increasingly, the person held responsible for the enjoyment of the whole table.

For the same reasons, the role of the DM seems to be becoming more separate from that of the other players. The existence of DM-only material, the role of “running” the game, and the growing expectation that the DM should balance and adjust for the sake of it everything already prepared all widen the gap.

The DM is now the one who must shape that world so that the campaign works by being continuously enjoyable and maintaining engaged players.

Well see what this will lead to in the following posts.

Over fifty years of Dungeons & Dragons, have these elements changed? If so, what changed, and why?

As an amateur historian, I trust documents. I look for answers in written sources and in the language people used at the time. In RPGs, this matters even more, because many terms and concepts remain fluid. People often use the same words in different ways and assume a shared meaning that does not really exist. Manuals and rulebooks still offer the clearest common ground.

With this article, I begin a series in which I will examine what the various authors of Dungeons & Dragons wrote, across its many editions, about the role of the DM.

Basic and Expert Set Rules (B/X), Moldvay 1980–1981

Both manuals include a part called Dungeon Master Information, which “gives a step-by-step design of a sample dungeon level plus tips to help the referee.” (Basic Manual).

The idea of the DM as a referee is reinforced in the Basic manual through the Definitions of Standard Terms on page B3, where the DM is defined as “one person that acts as a referee.”

On pages B51 and X51 begins the section titled Dungeon Master Information. It is essentially a set of instructions and procedures that the DM must follow to create a dungeon and draw its map in the Basic and Expert manuals, and also to create a wilderness in the Expert manual.

This section also tells us something implicitly. In Basic play, adventures begin when the party enters the dungeon and end when the party leaves it. That matches the definition of adventure given on page B3. Activities outside the dungeon, including interactions with NPCs, appear only at Expert level.

So far, the DM emerges as a player with a special role: the referee of the game, the one who follows procedures different from those of the other players, and the one who must prepare the game alone before the session starts.

To modern readers, this sounds very old-school, which is exactly what we would expect.

Then the final two pages of each manual change the picture quite a lot.

They are titled Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art. The word “art” suggests that good DMing requires study and practice, and that reaching a high level of skill takes effort. It also implies that not every player will automatically become a good DM.

The Basic manual opens this section with a sentence that pushes the idea even further: “The success of an adventure depends on the DM and his or her creation, the dungeon.”

This statement places responsibility for the success of the gaming session entirely on the DM.

The following paragraphs in both manuals then offer advice for handling situations that may arise at the table during the session. Since these books were published only a few years after the birth of the game, it is easy to imagine that the authors were responding to the most common problems early DMs reported at conventions, by letter, or through Dragon Magazine.

It is striking how familiar many of those problems still feel. In some ways, these pages read like the script for a modern online video by an RPG influencer that tells how to handle difficult moments at the table.

Some of the advice emphasizes improvisation. For example: “It is very important for the DM to be flexible.” (B60)

Some of it focuses on disputes at the table: “...the DM may make a temporary decision and talk it over with the players when the adventure is over. If a player disagrees strongly enough, he or she may quit the game.” (B60)

That line is especially curious, because here the text clearly distinguishes between the DM and the players, as if the DM were not a player at all. That seems to contradict the wording on page B3.

Other passages assign the DM a social role tied to the enjoyment of the group:

“The DM should make the adventure seem as ‘real’ to the players as possible. All should avoid getting stuck in long discussions about rules or procedures. The game should move along with humor, as well as excitement.” (B60)

And even more directly:

“It is up to the DM to create an adventure the players can enjoy.” (B60)

Other parts stress balance and caution against letting randomness dominate play:

“The DM should try to maintain the ‘balance of play’.” (B60)

And in the Expert manual:

“A common mistake most DMs make is to rely too much on random die rolls. An entire evening can be spoiled if an unplanned wilderness encounter on the way to the dungeon goes badly for the party.” (X59)

As well as:

“Part of the art of expert DMing is to keep the campaign challenging for the players. Much of the rest is dealing with balance problems...” (X59)

Conclusion

Reading B/X today offers a surprising amount of insight into DMing.

Some modern statements about old-school DMing seem shaped by imperfect memories, or simply by the fact that many people never went back to read the rules closely.

Even only a few years after the birth of the game, many groups had probably already developed their own versions of D&D, passing them on through verbal tradition rather than through the manuals themselves.

In that sense, much of what many players now consider normal DMing was already present at the very beginning of the game.

If the problems at the table remain largely the same more than forty years later, another question follows naturally.

Are the solutions proposed then, and the ones proposed now, actually useful? Are these truly problems at all? Or are they simply permanent tensions built into the role itself?

We will see in the next articles whether later editions faced those questions in the same way, or chose different answers.

They entered my life in childhood, when my parents told me folklore stories at night. Naturally, when I first DMed in 1993, at the age of fourteen, my first great boss monster was a giant.

I am clearly not alone in that fascination. D&D has made giants one of its most iconic monsters across the years.

But where do giants come from? Have they changed in D&D over time? And if they have, how, and, above all, why?

Giants: The Origins of the Myth

Giants appear in the myths of many cultures. Norse and Classical Greek mythology are the best known, but giants, for example, also appear in Basque and Slavic traditions, in Indian and Iranian myth, and even in Chinese and Japanese culture.

Across these myths, giants often share some recurring features.

They usually belong to an older world. Their stories often represent the transition from a former cosmic order to the present human or divine one.

They are builders of ancient ruins. Megaliths, barrows, hill figures, and strange rock formations are often explained as the work of giants. That is one reason they are tied so strongly to the ancient landscape.

They are huge and strong. This is one of their most widely shared features. Giants throw boulders, wield enormous weapons, and smash walls, ships, and fortresses. In some traditions they also command primordial forces such as fire, thunder, ice, or earth.

They are often brutal. In much European folklore, giants are cruel and dangerous. Greek mythology already gives us giants as monstrous enemies of order.

They are often stupid. Many folktales present giants as beings the human hero defeats through cunning rather than force.

They are often proud and rebellious. Their strength and ancient glory make them arrogant, and many giant myths involve conflict with the gods or with the established order.

They can also be helpful, or at least sympathetic. This is less common, but it exists. Some giants are not pure monsters. They are simply beings whose world and nature differ from our own.

In conclusion, mythic giants can be complex, but, even when they are noble, they remain distant, unsettling, and larger than human life. T

Now let's see how D&D treated giants throughout the various editions.

BECMI

In BECMI, giants clearly draw on European and, to a lesser extent, Norse traditions. This edition also lays down many of the traits giants would keep in later versions of the game.

Giants are differentiated either by location or by elemental association. There are Hill, Mountain, Sea, and Cloud giants, but also Fire, Frost, Stone, and Storm giants. They usually live far from civilization, alone or in small communities.

The rules divide them into lesser and greater giants. Hill, Frost, Fire, and Stone giants are crude and ugly. Cloud, Sea, Storm, and Mountain giants are more human in shape and nature.

However, the giants still feel distinct from humans. They live apart and are territorial. They can negotiate, and some greater giants may even greet adventurers as guests, but they remain powerful outsiders who can raid settlements and respond violently to intrusion.

This balance is important. BECMI giants already have some variation and some room for behavior beyond pure violence, yet they still feel like beings of another order, part of the dangerous world.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1e

In AD&D 1e, giants are in some ways reduced.

There are now only six giant types. Mountain giants and sea giants disappear from the Monster Manual, and cyclopes disappear as well.

With that loss, the old distinction between lesser and greater giants also disappears. Giants keep many of their older traits, but the descriptions now emphasize greed. The text even says they may join an adventuring group if treasure is involved.

This edition also includes Against the Giants, one of the most famous adventures in the game’s history. That adventure shows clearly how giants are treated at this stage. They are foes, dangerous powers to be fought and defeated.

Giants are still proper antagonists. They are huge, strong, threatening, and morally distant enough that adventurers can confront them without much ambiguity.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e

This edition brings a real renaissance for giants.

The amount of space devoted to them increases dramatically. Each giant type now receives a full page of description. Mountain giants, sea giants (now called reef giants), and cyclopes return. New giant-related beings appear as well: desert giants, jungle giants, fog giants, wood giants, fomorians, firbolgs, and verbeegs.

This broader treatment makes giants more varied and more culturally distinct. Each type now has more identity and more space to feel different from the others.

Then comes Giantcraft in 1995. Although written for the Forgotten Realms, it introduces ideas that later influence giant lore more broadly.

Two are especially important.

First, giants once ruled much of the world through the empire of Ostoria and lost a great war against dragons. This is a very strong mythic move. Giants belong to an older age. They were powerful, they fought and fell, and now they survive in isolation.

Second, giants are united by the Ordning, a strict divine hierarchy established by their god Annam. Storm giants stand at the top, and all giantkind is ordered beneath them.

From just a monster type, now giants start developing into a people with a common origin and a structured history.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 / 3.5 and 4e

3.0 and 3.5 give giants less space again. The game returns to the six traditional giant types and presents them more briefly.

Giants still remain recognizable and effective, but less rich.

4e changes direction more sharply. It reduces the giant roster to four main types: hill, fire, storm, and death giants. These giants feel less like a full mythic people and more like embodiments of combat role and cosmological force.

They are ancient and powerful, yes, but they also feel like war engines, especially in an edition built strongly around combat roles.

In one sense, this flattens them. In another, it restores some of their strangeness by making them less like a society and more like forces to survive or defeat.

D&D 5.0 and 5.5

With 5e, giants return to major importance.

The six classic giant types return in force. The Ordning becomes central to their common lore. Volo’s Guide to Monsters expands them further, and Storm King’s Thunder places giants and giant society at the center of a full campaign.

This is where the modern transformation becomes unmistakable.

In earlier editions, even when giants had culture, they still felt like mythic dangers. In 5e, giants increasingly become a noble ancient civilization. Their rivalries, ambitions, social order, and moral differences receive much more emphasis. They become easier to understand and easier to sympathize with.

Volo’s Guide to Monsters pushes this strongly. Giants receive Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws. They begin to be less like monsters and more like a people one could imagine as player characters.

Glory of the Giants goes even further. Giant heritage, giant magic, gismt runes, and giant-themed player options place giants closer to patrons, allies, and sources of identity than to fearful monsters, remnants of an ancient world.

The 5.5 presentation follows naturally from that evolution. Giant descriptions focus heavily on habits, culture, society, and personality. Many giants appear peaceful by default and, if ever present, their violence often comes from individual motives (i.e. greed, conquest, pride, survival, …) rather than from the broader monstrous quality that older giants often carried. It is not by chance that all giants have lost their ability to hurl boulders in their statblocks.

The Problem of Humanized Giants

At first, giving giants more culture, history, and internal logic seems like a good idea. It makes them richer and more coherent.

However, modern D&D giants have become so humanized that they often lose the quality that once made them feel like giants. They no longer stand clearly at the edge of the human world as ancient and half-mythic beings. They begin to look too much like another civilization, with customs and motives very close to those of humans themselves.

At that point, a problem appears.

If giants are simply a noble people with their own traditions and understandable feelings, then what exactly happens when adventurers kill them?

In older D&D, the answer was easier. Giants were territorial threats, brutal powers, or monstrous remnants of an older age. Fighting them felt natural because they stood as a real danger.

In modern D&D, many giants feel so sympathetic and so human that the old adventuring logic starts to weaken. The more the game insists on their full personhood, the less simple their role as iconic enemies becomes.

And if that logic weakens too far, the adventurers themselves begin to look like the aggressors.

Final Thought

So are giants in D&D still the same?

In one sense, yes. They are still huge, powerful, proud, ancient, and tied to elemental or regional identities.

In another sense, no. Over time they have moved from mythic adversaries toward humanized fantasy peoples.

I am not sure it made them better giants.

The Tower of the Standing Stones, my short adventure site for Dragonbane, is now available on DriveThruRPG.

I originally wrote this adventure for the first Dragonbane Gathering, held in Milan in September 2025. It was designed as an additional location for Secret of the Dragon Emperor, but it can easily be placed in almost any Dragonbane campaign.

It is a compact site of exploration, written to be easy to bring to the table, for a 3-4 hours of gameplay.

You can find it here.

Thanks a lot for you support.

At the moment, I am writing a D&D 5.5 Ravenloft adventure that will soon be published on DMsGuild, and I inevitably chose to set it in the domain of Falkovnia, with zombies as the main antagonists.

After drafting the adventure’s structure, I looked at the official zombie statblock in the Monster Manual and realized that it lacks some traits and features that feel central to the modern idea of the zombie.

What Is a Zombie?

In Vodou, a zombie is a dead person revived after burial and compelled to obey the will of the one who raised them, often for criminal acts or hard manual labor. The figure emerged among enslaved people in Haiti in the seventeenth century, mixed with stories of black magic. In its original form, the zombie myth expressed the fear that slavery might continue even after death.

Cinema introduced zombies in the 1930s and 1940s, most notably in White Zombie (with the famous Bela Lugosi) and I Walked with a Zombie. In those films, the zombie remains very close to the original Haitian myth.

In 1968, George A. Romero changed everything with Night of the Living Dead. He took the Haitian zombie and mixed it with elements drawn from Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954). Romero’s creatures are driven by a hunger for human flesh, and their condition spreads when the dead rise again after being killed. Curiously, Romero himself refers to them as “ghouls.”

From that point on, almost every zombie film in some way follows, develops, or reacts to Romero’s model.

Today, most zombies in popular culture have many, if not all, of the following traits:

• They are human bodies with little or no consciousness.

• They are usually dead, even if many twenty-first-century films replace death with infection.

• They spread their condition through contact, especially bites, blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids.

• They are often slow and clumsy, although more recent films sometimes portray them as fast and agile.

• They are usually quiet and can approach humans unnoticed.

• They tend to appear in large numbers and overwhelm survivors through sheer mass.

• The head or brain is usually their weak point.

Now let us see whether these features appear in D&D zombies, and how that monster has changed over fifty years of editions.

BECMI

In BECMI, the zombie is described as a mindless humanoid creature risen through the power of evil clerics or magic-users, who use it as cheap labor or as a guard. It makes no noise, but it is clumsy: its movement is only one-quarter that of a standard PC, and it always loses initiative. It is also fairly tough, with an average of 9 hit points, meaning that a fighter usually needs about two successful hits to kill one. Zombies appear in fairly large numbers, with an average of five in dungeons and fourteen in the wilderness. Because they are mindless undead, they are immune to charm and sleep spells.

This version is still very close to the original Haitian myth. After all, Romero’s zombie had only appeared a few years earlier.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1e and 2e

In the Monster Manual for both editions, zombies are essentially identical. The main differences from BECMI are these:

• They are now also immune to cold-based spells.

• They move a little faster, at half the speed of a standard PC.

• Their description no longer says that they are silent.

Even here, however, the zombie still lacks most of the features associated with zombie movies.

D&D 3.0 and 3.5

At this stage, the zombie begins to move away from the Haitian myth and starts to absorb some features of the modern cinematic zombie.

Its speed now matches that of a standard PC, and it can win initiative. However, it still cannot move and attack in the same round unless it charges.

It is also more resilient, since it gains damage reduction 5/slashing and the Toughness feat.

Its immunity to sleep and charm seems to disappear, but this is because those protections are now handled in the descriptions of the spells themselves rather than in the statblock.

Curiously, the zombie can now see in complete darkness thanks to darkvision out to 60 feet.

D&D 4e

In 4e, the zombie is classified as a Brute, which the Dungeon Master’s Guide defines as a monster specialized in dealing melee damage, with low defenses but high hit points. They do not hit as often as other monsters, but when they do, they hit hard. They also tend not to move around much.

These qualities appear clearly in the zombie’s statblock. It is immune to disease and poison, gains resilience from necrotic damage, and becomes vulnerable to radiant damage.

For the first time, some clearly cinematic zombie elements enter the statblock.

Its weak point appears through zombie weakness, which causes a critical hit to drop the zombie immediately to 0 hit points. Its zombie grab feature partially reflects the image of zombies overwhelming a victim by seizing and restraining them. One of the suggested tactics even recommends that at least one zombie always try to grab a PC.

D&D 5.0 and 5.5

The zombie in these editions clearly descends from the 4e version. It has fewer hit points, especially in 5.5, but its weak point is now represented through Undead Fortitude. When reduced to 0 hit points, a zombie is destroyed outright if the attack was a critical hit or if it took radiant damage. Otherwise, it makes a Constitution saving throw, with the DC based on the damage dealt, to avoid falling.

It has lost the zombie grab feature, and compared with earlier editions, the 5.5 zombie is the version that feels least connected both to the original Haitian myth and to the zombie of modern cinema.

Why Are Most Zombie Features Missing from D&D?

Why do zombies in D&D not create more zombies, for example? Why is there no official statblock for a swarm of zombies?

Part of the answer is mechanical. In D&D, zombies are usually expected to attack the PCs directly. If even a single wound could turn a PC into a zombie, then that monster would become almost impossible to use fairly.

Part of the answer is thematic. The game does not naturally support many of the themes that define zombie fiction.

Most zombie films are stories of siege. Survivors are trapped in enclosed places, trying to hold out or escape, while zombies gather outside. Standard D&D, by contrast, usually assumes that the party enters dangerous places in order to fight monsters and recover treasure.

Moreover, in zombie films, other humans are often the real danger. The collapse of order leads to selfishness and violence. That is where the true disaster often lies. Standard D&D campaigns only rarely focus on that theme.

Finally, zombie films often rely on recognition: a friend, a lover, or a family member has become one of the monsters. Destroying it is necessary, but emotionally devastating. D&D generally lacks mechanics meant to support that kind of emotional conflict.

Conclusion

In the end, the zombie in D&D has never really been the zombie of modern cinema.

It began close to the Haitian myth, then gradually absorbed a few elements from film, especially toughness and head weakness. Even so, it never took on the feature that now feels almost inseparable from the popular idea of the zombie: the power to spread its condition and turn the living into more of its kind.

That is the gap my upcoming adventure wants to fill: bringing into D&D 5.5 the kind of zombie horror the game has usually left at the margins.

We were reading and commenting part of the Chapter 2: Running the Game of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, specifically the section about Travel, which gives a detailed procedure to “add excitement to a longer trek”. It even provides a Travel Planner to help the DM to track and follow that procedure.

That Planner and the DMG procedure reminded me of the Progress Sheet of the Ironsworn RPG by Shawn Tomkin, and its Travel procedure, and immediately I started making comparison between the two systems.

In the last few days, then I've been thinking about the meaning of a journey in RPGs, with some precious hints by Enrico Romeo, another member of the podcast, which helped me to focus better on that feature.

What does this system want the journey to do?

Ask these questions when you are approaching a journey in your game.

• Does it want the journey to consume resources?

• Does it want the journey to create the chance of something unexpected?

• Does it want the journey to open space for an interaction between characters?

• Overall, does it want the journey to generate play, or simply connect one part of play to another?

In short, the game we are playing should tell us what to do with the journey.

That is exactly where Ironsworn and D&D 5.5 part company.

The Ironsworn's Approach

In Ironsworn, the journey is one of the main engines of the game.

There are four moves related to a journey: Undertake a Journey, Resupply, Make Camp, and Reach Your Destination.

The first, Undertake a Journey, is the most important. Once settled the difficulty of the journey, each time this move is rolled something happens: progress in travel, supplies lost or consumed, waypoints reached, or dangers encountered. If the fiction doesn't clearly manifest what should happen, then the Ask the Oracle move can be used, while the Pay the Price move is used to introduce a complication.

The Resupply and Make Camp moves can be used to manage resources (in this game ideally summarized in “supply”), and the latter can also be used to let some interactions between characters.

For this system, travel is a way to generate the real adventure. Risk and uncertainty gives the journey narrative force through emergent play. Neither GM and players know what the journey will bring to the game when it starts.

The D&D 5.5's Approach

On the surface, the Dungeon Master’s Guide gives a lot of weight to travel. There are rules on fast and slow travel, and how they affect awareness. Terrain affects the DCs of check and the travel's pace. Resources are still consumed.

Yet, all these elements matter only if the DM wants it. The Dungeon Master's Guide clearly states that the DM should prepare each element of the characters’ journey in advance, including obstacles and encounters with monsters. The Guide's authors have fully taken the advice of influencers like Ginny Di who says that the best random encounters are those prepared in advance.

It's not by chance then that this Dungeon Master’s Guide is the first guide in 50 years that doesn't have a section about random encounters and how to manage them.

It becomes clear then what the system wants from travel. It has to bend to the flow of the story. At worst it is simply a connection between two chapters of the story. Otherwise, it might be used to introduce new elements of the story (an NPC, a villain, an event, …) or to reinforce an already known one (for example, an encounter with some minions of the main villain).

The amount of structure in the D&D 5.5 serves only to help the DM handle whatever they decide to place on the party’s path. It helps regulate movement, perception, environmental difficulty, and travel conditions. For example, a DM decides that it might be interesting having the characters suffer from extreme heat during a journey through the desert and to have them combat there, D&D 5.5 has rules for it. Otherwise, another DM decides that the same journey should focus more on meeting a new NPC, and plans a social interaction between that NPC and the party, avoiding the rules about extreme heat.

Why This Matters

Then, the question is what those travel rules are there to do in a RPG.

In Ironsworn, the journey creates uncertainty and produces fiction.

In D&D 5.5, the journey gives shape to material that is already determined in advance by the DM. That means the road in D&D 5.5 is still be dangerous and interesting. It can still contain strong scenes, and memorable moments.

Yet those moments come from authorship and do not come from the journey itself as a generative procedure.

Conclusion

That is why, in the end, the real question of travel is about what kind of play a game wants to create.

And once we see that, even something as simple as the connection between two places starts to reveal the soul of a RPG game system.

Look at the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide. It begins by building a world.

That choice matters. A game that starts from worldbuilding is already saying that, instead of being just a backdrop for a plot, the setting is the context that generates the adventure.

Following the Dungeon Master’s Guide chapters you will eventually create a world full of ruins, wilderness, factions, and places to be explored. A world like this naturally pushes the campaign toward exploration, that becomes one of the main engines of the game.

This approach is perfect for an OSR sandbox because in a game like this the GM needs a solid world where the players can move in many directions, and the GM’s reactions have to stay coherent with that world.

Bloggers and designers (Rob Conley and Justin Alexander for example) more famous and overall better than me have repeated this point for years: player freedom only works when the GM understands the setting well enough to answer choices consistently.

The Principia Apocrypha, the most important OSR manifesto, states the following principles: Reveal The World, Bring The World To Life, See Your World As Real, and Make Your Details Matter.

The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide fits that model much more than people now remember.

It begins by creating the world, and then, once that world exists, the book gives the DM tools for dungeons, wilderness areas, settlements, random elements, treasure, NPCs, and encounters. That is not the structure of a tightly plotted story game. It is the structure of a campaign built from movement through space, reaching determined places, and facing the dangers or the obstacles in each of those places.

Exploration Rules

The 2014 PHB and DMG give real weight to movement with concrete procedures. Travel pace changes what the party can do. For example, a fast pace reduces perception, while a slow pace supports stealth and careful searching. Again, forced march pushes risks exhaustion and rifficult terrain slows movement.

That is another old-school feature.

Random Encounters

In old-school play, random encounters are used to create pressure, drain resources, interrupt plans, and remind the party that the world keeps moving. The same principle is visible in 5e’s exploration tools. The Dungeon Master's Guide highlights random encounters as a core part of making travel meaningful, and the example it presents (a forest random encounters table) includes outcomes that can badly damage the party’s safety.

Dungeons

The same logic applies to dungeons.

The 2014 DMG places major emphasis on building dungeons and wilderness areas to explore, and it leans heavily on random tables as tools for creating those spaces. That reliance on random generation is also very close to old-school design. Random tables give the DM procedures for producing surprise and emergent play. The official 5e ecosystem repeatedly points back to those tables as tools for filling out the world.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide Result

If you actually build a campaign world by following the 2014 DMG’s priorities, the natural result is not a scripted heroic arc. As stated at the beginning of this article, you will create an open world, very close to a sandbox, and highly suitable for a West Marches style of campaign. The world exists first. Dangerous places sit inside it. Players choose where to go. The campaign's story grows from those choices.

An OSR Look to the Player’s Handbook

The Player’s Handbook also points to some old-school features.

First of all, it treats multiclassing and feats as optional rules. It states this explicitly. Chapter 6 contains “two optional sets of rules for customizing your character: multiclassing and feats,” and the DM decides whether they are available. It also presents dragonborn, half-elves, half-orcs, tieflings, and some other races as less common adventurers than humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings.

That tells us something important about the game’s original core. The game did not require feats, multiclassing, or a very broad fantasy mosaic in every campaign.

That choice tell us that the 5e basic campaign model can function perfectly well without the customization layers that many later players came to treat as essential.

That choice is very old-school. Although it was restricted to non-human races, multiclassing had been part of the core rules since the first edition of Advanced Dungeons&Dragons.

Combat also feels old-school more than people often admit. The official 5e rules for critical hits and instant death leave real room for lethality. A CR 1 creature can roll enough damage on a critical hit to drop, or even instantly kill, a low-level creature especially when random encounters due to exploration has already consumed resources like hit points and spell slots. Remember that the Dungeon Master’s Guide states that the typical adventuring day expects 6-8 medium or hard encounters.

Why do many players not recognize these old-school elements?

Part of the answer is simple: many people never really read the rulebooks closely. Many DMs treat the DMG (of any edition) as “the book of magic items.” Many groups inherited their version of 5e from prior habits, older editions, liveplay expectations, friends, or influencers (remember that Ginny Di stated that she read the 2014 DMG only in 2024) rather than from the books themselves.

I made a small experiment (one in 2024 and one nowadays) with two major Italian RPG content creators: La Cosa nel Dungeon e Caotico Pigro.

In long conversations about RPGs and D&D, I eventually told both of them the same thing: “You never played D&D 5e.” They were surprised. I then offered to help them build a campaign world and related adventures by following the DMG’s criteria and using only the core rules of the Player’s Handbook.

They both arrived at the same conclusion.

“You were right, Marco. I had never really played D&D 5e before.”

Part of the answer lies in WotC's choices: many original designer of D&D 5e departed soon after its release or were put aside (Robert Schwalb and Mike Mearls for example) and of the many campaigns published throughout the years, in my opinion, only Princes of the Apocalypse and Tomb of Annihilation fully responds to the Dungeon Master’s Guide procedures, while Storm King's Thunder and Curse of Strahd do it only partially.

So, the original intent of 5e 2014 was soon abandoned in favor of a more plot-focused campaign, and 2024 5.5 edition is the result of that choice.

Conclusion

A lot of tables played 2014 5e as heroic fantasy with modern habits layered over it. The 2014 core books, though, still preserve another vision: a world first, dangerous to cross, full of dungeons and wilderness, supported by procedures, random encounters, and open-ended choice.

That is why I still think the 2014 5e edition was much more OSR at heart than people usually admit.

And you?

Have you ever really played D&D 5e that way?

Officialy, it never was. Through various editions and companies, Greyhawk kept the same names and geography, but Its mood, instead, changed. Each major phase highlighted different aspects of the setting, offering a different Greyhawk.

The First Greyhawk

The earliest Greyhawk grew from Gary Gygax’s home campaign in 1972-1975. As his campaign grew outside the dungeon of Castle Greyhawk, he needed to develop at first the city of Greyhawk and then the surrounding areas (See “Founding Greyhawk”, Dragon Magazine Annual N°2, 1996).

These ideas were expanded, organized and then published with the World of Greyhawk Fantasy World Setting (1980), and the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting (1983) boxed set.

The Greyhawk presented there still shows parts of its wargames’ roots. It's a world where war, geography, migration, and political power matter. The manual gives a general overview of the setting, and lets to each DM the duty and fun to develop in detail smaller areas, so there's plenty of room for adventurers to explore the world, find treasures, and fight monsters. Magic exists, but ordinary life is still closer to a harsher late-medieval world than to modern high fantasy.

2e Changed the Mood

With the advent of the 2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons&Dragons, Greyhawk was shaken up. The war boardgame Greyhawk Wars (1991) was used to update and advance the Greyhawk's timeline. The new boxed set, From the Ashes (1993), describes Greyhawk just after the end of the wars of the boardgame.

The world is different now. It is darker, politically unstable, still recovering from the heavy damage of wars. Suspicion and fear divide political entities and races. Carl Sargent's tastes are clearly evident here. His previous works for Warhammer Fantasy Battle RPG influenced his many works for Greyhawk.

The world is also more detailed, thanks to some sourcebooks, like Iuz the Evil (1995), that focus on smaller areas.

In conclusion, early Greyhawk and postwar Greyhawk share continuity, but they do not produce the same feeling at the table.

The Long Pause

With 3.0 and 3.5 edition, Greyhawk was used only as a background setting for RPGA adventures. I didn't play them, so I can't tell directly what had happened to the setting. Surely, Greyhawk was ignored in 4e and 5.0, until the advent of 5.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide, which uses Greyhawk as a reference model for creating a setting.

What 5.5 Greyhawk Is Doing

The 5.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide brings Greyhawk back as a customizable, ready-to-use default setting, and also as a reference model for creating a setting. This means that this version of Greyhawk has to serve many customers at once. It has to welcome new players and contemporary to attract old fans. It has to support dungeon crawls, political games, heroic fantasy, urban campaigns, wilderness travel, faction play, and almost any style a modern D&D table wants.

While that is understandable, I am not sure it is the right idea, because usually when a setting has to support almost everything, it risks becoming less itself.

Let's take a look to 5.5 Greyhawk. It keeps the external signs: the map, the names, the Free City, Iuz, the Circle of Eight, the famous places. At the same time, Greyhawk's core is weakened. Using Greyhawk as a broad default world, means smoothing the older tensions that made the setting feel specific. The result can satisfy many possible tastes in outline, while giving fewer tables a strong reason to feel attached to this world in particular.

It is risky, because it might disappoint older fans that don't recognise their idea of Greyhawk, and simultaneously might not enter in the hearts of new or younger players, because often they need a a setting with a strong atmosphere to be connected with.

This is why I think the 5.5 treatment creates a difficult paradox.

It makes Greyhawk easier to enter, but also easier to be forgotten.

What's Future For Greyhawk?

Luke Gygax and Wizards of the Coast recently announced a guide to Greyhawk, with Luke also working on Greyhawk adventures. Public details remain limited, so firm conclusions would be premature. Still, the project might be signal a move from broad overview toward more focused Greyhawk material.

That would help. Greyhawk had changed during time and had survived. However, its core had been always preserved. My concern is that 5.5 Greyhawk may have kept the face and thinned the soul.

The next Greyhawk books will show whether Wizards wants only a usable default world, or a setting with its old pressure restored.

That becomes especially clear when comparing Daggerheart and D&D 5.5. I take these two games as example because I recently created campaigns with both systems and because their are the most popular games in 2026.

Daggerheart Is Based on Identity

A Daggerheart campaign frame begins by defining its identity. It asks what kind of campaign this is. What tensions define it? What tone holds it together? What sort of experience should the players feel at the table, session after session? The campaign begins by clarifying its nature.

D&D 5.5 Is Based on Premise

A D&D 5.5 campaign begins by defining its premise. It asks what the campaign is about. What is happening in the world? Why are the characters involved? What adventures can grow from that starting point? The campaign begins from a situation that can then expand outward.

Why This Difference Matters?

Though it might seem small, this difference has big consequences in game.

When a campaign begins from identity, the sessions usually feel more unified from the start. The GM already has a strong sense of what belongs in the campaign and what does not. Encounters, locations, NPCs, and conflicts tend to reinforce the same core pressures. Even when the story moves in unexpected directions, the campaign often keeps a recognizable shape. It knows what kind of experience it wants to create.

From the first sessions, the players usually understand what kind of world they are moving through and what kind of choices matter most.

When a campaign begins from premise, the sessions often feel broader. The GM has a starting point, but not always a sharply defined dramatic identity. The campaign has room to stretch. For example, new themes can enter more easily or the tone can shift as the characters move from one situation to another. The larger shape often emerges through the accumulation of adventures rather than being sharply declared at the beginning.

The Strength of Both

The openness of a campaign based on premise is its real strength, because it allows a campaign to grow with the decisions made at the table. In that sense, premise often gives a campaign more room to evolve.

On the contrary, a campaign built around identity gives to each session a stronger snd commoner center. The players don't just ask and look for what happens next. They also learn, very quickly, what this campaign is about at a deeper level. The game begins to establish its own rhythm, and certain types of scenes gain more weight or certain kinds of problems return.

That changes the table experience.

In an identity-first campaign, sessions often feel less like separate adventures linked together and more like variations on a common dramatic thread. Even if the party travels widely or the immediate goals change, there is usually a stronger sense of thematic continuity.

In a premise-first campaign instead, sessions can feel more modular. One adventure leads to another, and the overall campaign gains shape gradually. The party can discover what the campaign really is while they are already playing it. That usually creates a different pleasure: not immediate coherence, but gradual expansion.

Difference in Rhythm

So the difference from campaign's preparation expands to campaign's rhythm.

Identity usually produces campaigns that declare themselves early and then deepen, while premise usually produces campaigns that begin more openly and then gather shape over time, and that, in the end, is the real difference.

Daggerheart encourages the GM to define the campaign’s tone early, so the sessions feel tied together by a common pressure.

D&D 5.5 encourages the GM to establish a starting idea and let the campaign expand and develop through adventures and choices.

Put simply, Daggerheart asks: what kind of campaign are we playing?

D&D 5.5 asks: what is this campaign about?

Though close, but these questions are different, and once the campaign begins, that difference should be felt in every session.

Do These Systems Deliver What They Promise?

In my opinion, Daggerheart's rules and procedures provide the tools to create a strong campaign focused on identity, while D&D 5.5 lost the strong coherence based on premise that 5e had.

Through next articles, I'll explain broadly my point of view.

Most of the time, that causes no real problem, since in casual speech, the distinction hardly matters.

In narratology, though, the two are not identical, and once you start thinking about RPGs, the difference becomes very useful.

This difference explains why some adventures feel alive and flexible, while others feel brittle.

Story and plot are different

The simplest distinction is this: story is what happens, and plot is how what happens is arranged and revealed.

Story is the sequence of events in the fictional world. It is the underlying chain of causes and consequences.

Plot is the way those events are presented. It is the order in which they are discovered, emphasized, and experienced.

Basically, story is about events, and plot is about structure.

Let's take a murder mystery as example.

In the fictional world, someone is killed, the killer hides the evidence, witnesses notice fragments, and the truth is uncovered later.

That is the story.

But the audience may encounter those events in another order: first the body, then the investigation, then a false lead, then the motive, and only at the end the real sequence of what happened.

That is the plot.

In fiction, story and plot often blend together

In novels and movies, story and plot are often so tightly joined that people do not bother separating them.

A good novel or film usually fuses them smoothly enough that the audience simply follows the narrative without needing technical vocabulary.

So most people, even GMs or RPGs designers, tend to ignore this difference. However, RPGs expose this difference in a very direct way.

RPGs split narrative control

In a novel, the author controls both story and plot, deciding what happened, what matters, and when the audience learns each piece.

In an RPG, that control is divided.

The GM prepares the world, the secrets, the factions, and the pressures beneath the surface. Then the players decide where to go, what to pursue, and what becomes important.

That means the GM can prepare story-material, but the plot of play only really appears once the session begins.

The GM usually prepares story-material

What a GM prepares is often much closer to story than to plot, because the GM knows what happened before the session started: who committed the murder, why the relic was stolen, what lies below the ruined temple, or what the duke plans to do next.

All of that belongs to the underlying movement of the world.

Players do not experience the game as pure story

Players do not encounter the material prepared by the GM in neat chronological order. They find fragments of it. For example, they follow some leads and ignore others, they misunderstand some clues and ignore others. They can also focus on details the GM thought were minor and miss the ones that seemed central.

So what they experience is never just the raw story-background.

What they experience is something shaped by timing, omission, emphasis, and choice.

In other words, what they experience is plot.

Plot emerges through play

One of the most interesting things about RPGs is that plot is not fully written in advance. It emerges from the meeting between preparation and player action.

The GM maybe knows that the abbey was built over a forgotten shrine, that the abbot made a pact decades ago, and that the recent disappearances are tied to old seals breaking.

But the plot depends on what the players actually do.

Do they investigate the disappearances? Do they get lost in local politics? Do they trust the wrong witness? Do they descend too early? Do they leave, and return after things have worsened?

The same prepared material can produce very different plots.

That is why two groups can run the same scenario and come away with experiences that feel completely different.

Confusing story with plot

A lot of adventures and sessions run into trouble because they mistake one for the other.

They begin with a solid premise at the level of story, then they build the scenario as if the players must move through a fixed sequence or to force them to do something or to discover something.

Whole that can work in a novel, it is much more fragile in an RPG.

This does not mean plot is a bad thing. A game still needs rhythm, revelation, escalation, and shape. For example, mysteries depend on the handling of information, and horror games often depends on timing. Even a sandbox benefits from tension and movement.

So the answer is not to reject plot. The answer is to stop treating plot as something that must be fully imposed.

Prepare situations, not plot

The stronger approach is usually to prepare a situation.

That means motives, tensions, locations, clues, dangers, and likely consequences.

The GM knows what is at stake and what happens if the players do nothing. Then the plot forms through decisions at the table.

This kind of prep is sturdier because it survives surprise at the game table. If the players skip the obvious path or pursue something unexpected, the scenario still holds together.

Situations make GMing stronger

Understanding the difference between story and plot makes prep more flexible.

Reducing the urge to railroad makes improvisation easier. It helps the GM react naturally when players do something strange, which they almost always will.

It also leads to better consequences. If the world has logic beneath the immediate scene, then failure, delay, success, and misjudgment can all push the game forward in believable ways.

Not every table wants the same balance

That said, not every group wants maximum openness. Some players prefer clearer direction and some scenarios maybe work better with stronger framing: A one-shot mystery is not built in the same way as a open-world sandbox.

Different styles of play create different balances between prepared structure and emergent plot.

So this is not an argument for total looseness.

It is an argument for knowing what you are actually preparing.

RPGs are distinctive because plot is lived

This is one of the reasons RPGs are such a distinctive gaming (or narrative?) form.

The GM can prepare the past, the active tensions of the present, and the likely future.

The players determine what becomes visible, and central.

By doing this correctly, the players are an active part in creating a plot.

That is why the distinction between story and plot matters so much in RPGs. More that a simple literary concept, it is a practical way to think about prep and structure of play.

Conclusion

So yes, story and plot are different.

By creating the condition for plot to emerge, a good RPG scenario or session usually works better as a living situation than as a pre-written script.

If magic seems to do whatever the story needs in the moment, without limits or consequences, the world around it loses coherence.

That is why consistency matters.

Since, at its core, magic is a force that shapes events and alters reality through mysterious or supernatural means, magic doesn’t need to be explained down to the smallest detail, because mystery is often part of its appeal.

However, even mysterious magic should feel as though it belongs to the world. It should seem to come from somewhere, exist at a certain scale, and occupy a recognizable place in the thoughts and fears of those who live alongside it.

Magic is also almost always ambivalent. Through magic, great wonders can be achieved, but great disasters can also be unleashed. It can heal, reveal, protect, and transform. It can just as easily corrupt, consume, distort, or destroy. A world with magic should feel marked by both of those possibilities. If magic can accomplish extraordinary things, then it should also carry extraordinary risks and consequences.

To make magic feel consistent, I think a fantasy world needs at least two of these three features to be clearly defined: where magic comes from, how widespread it is, and how it is perceived by society.

1. Where Magic Comes From

Nothing comes from nothing.

If magic exists in your world, it should come from something or be caused by something, even if most people inside the world do not understand that cause.

The people of the setting do not need to know the truth. In fact, it is often more interesting if they do not. Priests, scholars, rulers, and common people could all hold different and contradictory ideas about what magic is and where it comes from. Whole religions and political systems could be built on mistaken assumptions.

However, at a worldbuilding level, there should be a real answer, even if it remains hidden.

That answer matters because it gives magic a foundation. Once you know where it comes from, you can start asking better questions. Who first learned how to use it? Who controls access to it? Does it have a will of its own? Is it stable, or is it changing? Can it be exhausted, corrupted, interrupted, inherited?

With an underlying cause, magic feels like part of the setting’s deeper logic.

2. How Widespread Magic Is

The second major question is how much of magic there is.

This has enormous consequences for the shape of the world. The more common magic is, and the more people are able to use it, the less the setting should resemble ordinary historical life with a few enchanted details scattered over the surface. If magic is common, then travel, labor, war, medicine, religion, architecture, and social hierarchy should all bear its mark.

A high-magic world should feel like a place where reality has been bent by magic's regular presence.

On the other hand, if magic is rare, difficult, secretive, or dangerous, then its effects would be be much narrower. It can exist at the edges of ordinary life, surfacing only through strange individuals, cursed places, forgotten relics, and rare moments of terror or wonder. In that kind of world, magic often feels more numinous because it is exceptional.

Neither approach is better on its own. What matters is that the worldresponds accordingly. If many people can use magic, the world should look different. If almost no one can, it should feel different for that reason too.

3. How Society Sees Magic

The third point is how magic, and those who wield it, are perceived.

If magic has obscure origins and very few can master it, many people will likely see it as mysterious or dangerous. If magic is widespread and woven into everyday life, it could be treated more as a practical tool, however mysterious it remains.

The opposite can also happen, and that is often where worldbuilding becomes more interesting.

Rare magic could make its users seem holy, gifted, chosen, or almost god-like. By contrast, common magic could not be admired at all. It could be regulated or resented. It could be seen as a crutch that weakens skill, patience, craftsmanship, or independent thought. A society steeped in magic does not necessarily love it.

This is worth thinking about because social perception shapes everything around magic. It affects many aspects of life like law, education, religion, warfare, and class. It determines whether magic users are hidden, celebrated, monopolized, persecuted, employed, or worshipped. It also helps turn magic from an abstract force into something that actually lives inside society.

Magic Does Not Have to Be Singular

It is also worth remembering that a fantasy world does not need only one kind of magic.

Several kinds can exist at the same time. Divine miracles, arcane formulas, ancestral spirits, occult bargains, living runes, natural enchantments, and forbidden relics can all coexist within the same setting. In fact, many rich fantasy worlds become more interesting when they contain several magical traditions rather than one universal system.

The important thing is that every kind of magic couldn't follow identical rules. It is that each one has a place in the world’s logic. If there are multiple forms of magic, each should still feel rooted in something, distributed at some scale, and shaped by social meaning. Otherwise the setting risks becoming a pile of disconnected wonders rather than a coherent world.

Consistency Comes from Consequences

In the end, consistent magic is about consequences:

• Where magic comes from changes how people explain the world.

• How common magic is changes daily life.

• How magic is perceived changes laws and culture.

A Simple Tool for Building a Magic System

In order to sketch a magic system quickly, begin with a few guiding questions. What is the source of magic? How present is it in the world? How do people respond to it? And what tensions has it created?

The following tables are meant to help you with exactly that.

Roll or choose from the Main Element table to define what magic fundamentally is, then do the same once or twice from the Secondary Elements table to establish how widespread it is or how it is viewed. Finally, use the Main Struggle table to create the central tension around magic in your world.

Together, these results can give you the bones of a magic system that already feels more grounded and more consistent.

Main Elements

Roll 1d10 or choose.

1. Magic comes from the dreams of living people.

2. Magic was created by the gods and gifted to mortals.

3. Magic is an arcane force woven into the world’s natural laws, like gravity or fire.

4. Magic comes from the remains of dead gods that sank into the land at the dawn of the world.

5. Magic comes from powerful alien devices scattered and hidden throughout the world.

6. Magic comes from the souls of the dead.

7. Magic is an echo of the songs of primordial species now long extinct.

8. Magic comes from, and is fueled by, people’s beliefs. The more they believe, the more powerful it becomes.

9. Magic comes from the inner spirit of each person.

10. Magic is a form of energy that comes from the stars.

Secondary Elements

Roll 1d12 or choose.

1. Magic is very rare and mostly unknown.

2. Magic is very common, and most people use it in everyday life.

3. Magic is rare, but everyone is aware that it exists.

4. Magic is viewed as a gift, and its users are usually considered people of high status.

5. Magic is considered dark and dangerous.

6. Magic is seen mainly as an oddity.

7. Magic users are viewed as bizarre and unsettling figures.

8. Magic users are revered as deities or near-deities.

9. Magic is uncommon and has little effect on the lives of ordinary people.

10. Magic is seen as a dangerous force that must be regulated.

11. Magic is rare and gives obvious advantages to those who master it.

12. Magic users are viewed with suspicion and hatred.

Main Struggle

Roll 1d8 or choose.

1. Magic behaves strangely at unpredictable times.

2. In some places, and at some times, magic simply ceases to function.

3. Scholars of magic are close to discovering its true origin.

4. More and more people are turning to magic to improve their lives.

5. More and more people are turning to technology instead of magic.

6. The source of magic is drying up.

7. Magic users are fighting, openly or in secret, to control the sources of magic.

8. Magic is being abused by one or more groups of magic users.

Reading those pages today, it is different that approach is from a lot of modern play. For Gygax, the challenge came from uncertainty and incomplete knowledge, that generally leads to think that space itself can't be fully trusted. For example, a corridor might not lead where it seems or a secret door might turn an apparently empty area into the heart of the level. The effect is immediate: exploration becomes tense because the players cannot assume that what they see is the whole truth.

Those early dungeons were built to make players slow down, pay attention, compare notes, and test ideas. However, Gygax also understood that this kind of design needed restraint. In the same sample map, he warns that some combinations are “really vicious” and not something to use lightly. He wanted danger and pressure, but he also talks about keeping a reasonable chance of survival.

A lot of those old instincts are easier to see if you look at a game like Dragonbane. Its dungeon procedures and philosophy bring back many of the things Gygax cared about.

Dragonbane presents those ideas in a more modern way, but the lineage with Gygax’s philosophy is strong. The dungeon is still a test for players. In that sense, Dragonbane carries forward a lot of old-school wisdom without needing to imitate every rough edge of the 70s and 80s style.

The real value of Gygax’s dungeon design is that he knew how much excitement comes from partial understanding. Players remember the hidden route that suddenly recontextualized half the level or the moment when they realized the dungeon had been misleading them for an hour. That is the kind of memory strong exploration creates.

I realise that some of Gygax’s methods can feel severe now, and some are best softened for modern tables. Even so, the core lesson still holds. Dragonbane shows how alive those ideas still are, When the dungeon keeps players attentive and slightly uneasy, exploration starts to matter again. That is a very old lesson, and still a good one.

Sources: Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons, Vol. 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (TSR, 1974).

A city does not become memorable only because of conspiracies, cults, assassins, or subtle political matters whispered in hidden chambers. More often, it comes alive through ordinary people in the street: someone selling something from a rough stall, someone talking a bit too freely about something they shouldn't, someone passing along a rumor they are completely convinced is true, or someone blaming about politics or important people. That is when a setting starts to feel real.

That is exactly the kind of moment Free City of Greyhawk: Encounters & Rumors is meant to help create.

For this example, based on D&D 5e and 5.5e, I rolled up a street merchant using the commoner stat block. The merchant was selling food and drink, and their attitude was Friendly. That alone was enough for the scene to snap into focus. I could immediately picture a busy corner, a rough wooden table, a few steaming pies or skewers, cheap ale, and a merchant with an easy smile calling out to people as they passed.

The players do not have many options here, and that is part of the charm. They can stop and buy something, or they can keep walking.

It is a small choice, but those small choices are often what make a city feel alive. Remembe: not every encounter needs danger, nor every scene has to open into a subplot. Sometimes the point is simply to make the world feel inhabited.

In this case, if the characters buy something, the merchant shares a rumor. If they do not, the moment passes, and the city keeps moving around them.

I rolled the rumor and got this result: the master of the Thieves’ Guild keeps a rich mansion in the High Quarter, full of wealth. Then I rolled to see whether it was true.

It came up false.

That is the part I really like.

Because now the merchant is not handing the party a neat adventure hook. They are doing something more interesting than that. They are adding to the background noise of the city: gossips and secondhand stories, the kind of thing people repeat because it sounds too good not to be true.

And to me, that feels exactly right for a fantasy urban campaign.

A false rumor does real work at the table by reminding the players that information is everywhere, but not all of it can be trusted. It makes the city feel less like a machine built for the party and more like a place where people talk, speculate, exaggerate, and sometimes simply get things wrong.

At the table, I would play it simply. The merchant hands over the food, gratefully thanks the characters, lowers their voice a little, and mentions that they have heard the Thieves’ Guild master keeps a fine mansion in the High Quarter, stuffed with silver and jewels. That is all it takes.

One group might laugh and move on. Another might start asking questions, and even spending half a session chasing a rumor that leads nowhere.

All of those outcomes are good.

That is why I enjoy this kind of encounter design so much. The starting point is almost nothing: a friendly seller on the street with something hot to eat. But once you add an attitude, a small player decision, and a rumor that may or may not be worth anything, the whole scene starts to breathe, and becomes part of the city’s rhythm.

That is one of the core ideas behind Free City of Greyhawk: Encounters & Rumots. I wanted it to be a tool GMs could use quickly, while still getting results that felt grounded, flexible, and alive in play. You do not need pages of preparation to make a city memorable. Sometimes you just need a merchant, a snack, and a rumor that probably should not be trusted.

And more often than not, that is exactly the sort of thing players remember.

Free City of Greyhawk: Encounters & Rumorsis available on DMsGuild. If you enjoy city adventures and random tables that turn quickly into usable scenes during a session, this is the kind of book I wrote for you.