How To Run A Dungeon - Fixing The Lost Mine of Phandelver

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap, who’s having to write this on his wife’s laptop because his broke :(

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TL;DR:

Lost Mine of Phandelver gives you dungeons but no guidance on how to run them well. Good dungeon play needs urgency, resource pressure, meaningful time tracking, and dynamic encounters. This post breaks down classic and modern dungeon crawl procedures; from Justin Alexander’s traditional dungeon turns, to The Angry GM’s Tension Pool, Goblin Punch’s Underclock, and Dungeon Masterpiece’s encounter tables — and then shows how to use them to make Phandelver’s dungeons tense, reactive, and actually fun to run.

Introduction

Are you trying to run Lost Mine of Phandelver? I ran it recently. Have you noticed how (despite being a ‘starter set’) it does absolutely nothing to teach you how to run a dungeon? Bummer right?! Literally - there’s arguably five dungeons in this module, and it doesn’t show you how to run them at all. In fact, the closest it comes is the final dungeon where it even acknowledges how boring it’s going to be, and weakly suggests rolling for random encounters on a d20 table as and when you feel it’s appropriate.

Do better, Lizards-Ate-My-Toast.

You see, if you don’t know what you’re doing with dungeons, they can very easily turn into this very boring, very samey experience, with your players meticulously checking every tile for traps as they move from room to room, occasionally interrupting monsters that have apparently been sat there for an eternity - waiting to meet the PCs! Meanwhile the PCs have been long resting every couple of encounters to make sure they’re at maximum power all the time. And my God, I’m bored just thinking about it!

The chief cause of this dry experience is that there's no urgency or risk management. So how do you get that, I hear you ask? Damned fine question if I may say so myself, pat yourself on the back. You my friend, should read on, because unless you’re particularly looking for a simple linear gauntlet of pre-defined encounters, you probably need a “Dungeon Crawl Procedure”.

What In The Name Of Sweet baby Jeebus Is A Dungeon Crawl?

Here’s the problem, if you grew up in the 90’s or later, and have only ever played 5e - it’s likely that your only detailed point of reference for what a dungeon experience is like comes from video games - maybe something like Zelda (Ocarina of Time - best game ever made. Fight me!) The issue here is that they teach the player that a dungeon is this linear place, to be solved in a set way, with battles in predefined places. It works in a videogame because of the spectacle and hand eye skill involved.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate well to TTRPGs I’m afraid and these games bear little resemblance to what a D&D dungeon is supposed to be.

The fact that people try to emulate these video game experiences is why they fall flat at the table. It’s why your players probably don’t like dungeons, and it’s why you probably don’t like running them.

So, What’s missing?

To run a better dungeon, I advocate for the following components:

• There should be no predefined method or route for ‘completing’ the dungeon. The player’s motivations and methods should be their own, and you should expect them to shift as they learn new things and as the situation inside the dungeon develops.

• The dungeon should be punishing, and it should be a place that drains resources which cannot be easily replenished whilst the characters remain inside. This could be HP, or light, or spell slots, or rations, or more likely - some combination thereof.

• The dungeon should be dynamic. It should move and breathe, and be both proactive and reactive in response the player character’s trespass. There should be opportunities within for all the major pillars of play - combat, social, and exploration.

• Time should matter, it should be tracked carefully. Time affects your resources, and the position of dungeon inhabitants, and wasteful players should feel all these factors as keenly as a pin in their arm.

Which brings us nicely onto the “how” part of this post. Well my dudes, you have options. You see, it’s been a hot minute since the 1970’s and quite a few people have stepped up to the mark and developed processes for running dungeons. Here’s a handful of them:

Dungeon Crawl Processes

Justin Alexander - So You Want To Be A Game Master

In his book, Alexander explains a very traditional style. It’s a method that’s as old as the hobby itself, and it sets the fundamentals of most of the methods to follow - tracking time, resources, generating improvised encounters, and the concept of a Dungeon Crawl as a minigame within D&D as legitimate as combat.

Marching Order

Getting players to declare a set marching order for the party up front solves a lot of hassles later on. As GM, now you know which characters are likely to trigger/spot traps, and which are likely to be picked off from the rear.

Dungeon Actions

After Marching Order, the next thing to define are the Dungeon Actions, these are not dissimilar in concept to the actions you can take in combat. Don’t read these as an absolute list, but rather as some common actions, which you can improvise upon as required.

This list includes, but is not limited to the following:

• Move carefully (a snail’s pace. default movement speed to reflect the extreme caution of PCs moving through this pitch black, dangerous, scary environment).

• Move fast (for when the PCs throw caution to the wind out of absolute necessity, or if they’re backtracking over a recently explored space).

• Unlock a door.

• Disarm a trap.

• Investigate an area (getting more detail about some room feature than has been vaguely called out in the room overview).

• Look for secret architecture (hidden doors, traps, pits).

• Keeping watch (reducing/removing chance of being taken by surprise).

• Casting a ritual spell.

• Something else (talking to an NPC, loading your pockets with treasure, helping another PC, lighting a torch etc).

The idea here is that each player does one of these things per Dungeon Turn. Sometimes your players might want to do something so insignificant that you rule that they can have another action. This is fine. Trust your gut.

Dungeon Turn

This is an intentionally loosely defined amount of time - usually ten minutes (this is because ten plays nicely with many timed effects in D&D which are usually roundly divisible by this figure). Don’t sweat the precise granularity of it vs the actions taken in the Dungeon Turn, it requires not overthinking it in order to be effective.

Once the Dungeon Turn ends, the GM performs a bit of bookkeeping on their Dungeon Running Sheet. Justin Alexander features one on his website for you to print out and use:

The idea is that you record each ongoing item or spell effects duration per row, and then for each Dungeon Turn mark a tick in each row (all rows should read the same number of ticks in Alexander’s version, other designs may vary). When a given duration is met, that effect ends.

Whilst Alexander advocates doing this behind the scenes and making it feel less clunky and mechanically like a boardgame, other D&D scholars disagree. Dadi on Mystic Arts describes this process, but instead leans into the idea that the players should be aware of what’s going on behind the scenes to better inform their decisions, and thus debates.

You do you.

Regardless - there is one final step the GM takes as part of their bookkeeping.

Random Encounters

These are so important, and so many GMs are terrified of them in case they “ruin their story”. I say; it’s time to cowboy the chuff up, get comfortable with improv, and embrace the dice my friend! Seriously, stop worrying so much about game balance, and just trust your players to make the right choices to get out of whatever peril the dice serve up for them :)

Random encounters are valuable because they make your dungeon feel alive and dynamic. Rather than the players feeling safe that they can only encounter creatures as they travel to a new area, now, the creatures can come to them. Alexander recommends the following method:

• Once you’ve done all your Dungeon Turn bookkeeping, roll a d8. A result of one means that an encounter will occur.

• Roll on your pre-prepared Dungeon Encounter table to decide which encounter it will be.

• Determine how far away the encounter is by rolling 2d6 x 10 feet.

• Unless it’s obvious, make a 2d6 reaction check to determine the attitude of the creatures you’ve encountered. Not all encounters have to be fights.

• Determine if one group is surprised by the other, usually Stealth vs Perception checks. Any players taking the ‘keep watch’ Dungeon Action infer a better probability of success here.

The Angry GM - The Tension Pool

One problem with the traditional method described by Alexander is that the only sense of increasing dread comes from resource drain. The odds of an actual encounter remain static, and this effects the psychology of the group if you’re trying to foster a sense of ever creeping doom!

Responding to this shortfall, the Angry GM has a nifty little replacement for traditional random encounter checks called the Tension Pool and it all starts with a glass bowl.

Each Dungeon turn, toss a d6 into the glass bowl (AKA the Tension Pool). This should be visible to all the players. Then:

• Each time during a dungeon turn that a PC does something risky or noisy, you roll any dice in the Tension Pool. Results of six prompt a roll on your pre-prepared encounter table.

• Each time the Tension Pool fills up with 6d6, roll all the dice in the Pool as above to check for encounters, and then reset the pool to zero.

This is pretty cool, two things are happening:

1. We’re tracking the passage of time, with a dice in the pool representing a dungeon turn.

2. The likelihood of a random encounter is visibly impacted by the passage of time and the actions of your players.

That said, not everyone agrees that this is enough, I reckon that with a small modification, you could also use this to abstractly track effects using different colour dice of different denominations. For example, if someone lights a torch, toss in a d8 (or whatever seems right - I’ve not play tested this). The d8 will never trigger an encounter check like a d6 does, but each time the pool is rolled, that d8 might come up with an eight, and if it does - the torch is snuffed out (and the d8 is removed).

This way that’s less stuff to track on a piece of paper, and we’ve also now baked in variance on item and spell effect durations - if that torch goes out, maybe it was a gust of wind? If a spell effect ends, maybe the caster tripped on a flagstone and lost concentration?

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Goblin Punch - The Underclock

Arnold K over at Goblin Punch has an entirely different method for using random encounters to build tension. He calls it the Underclock and it works like this:

• Grab a d20, a nice big one. Or use a piece of paper, or a paper dial, or whatever you have that can track to 20. This is the Underclock, keep it out in the open so the players can see it.

• Starting from 20, each Dungeon Turn the GM rolls a d6 and subtracts the result from the Underclock value.

• Results of six on the d6 explode (this means you roll an additional d6).

• When the Underclock hits less than zero it triggers an encounter on your random encounter table. At zero exactly, the clock resets to three instead.

• If the Underclock ever reads three, a foreshadowing event occurs and the PCs learn a clue about the nature of the impending encounter (naturally, you’ll have to roll the random encounter at that point for your own reference).

The nice thing here is the players are more informed (but not perfectly so) about when an encounter is due. You can represent this as them hearing noises, or ‘spidey sense’, or whatever works for you.

This forewarning means that the players have another interesting decision to make - do they press on, do they try to hide, or do they prepare an ambush instead?

Dungeon Masterpiece - Random Encounter Tables

Baron de Ropp at Dungeon Masterpiece makes an excellent point regarding Random Encounter Tables.

Traditionally, they’re either single die table of possible encounters, or they’re a multi-dice table, which introduces a bell curve only the range of outcomes. Then on top of that you layer distance and reaction.

De Ropp highlights that this structure alone does not do anything to weave a larger narrative together, nor is it scalable, nor does it do much to help the GM to come up with a unique yarn to spin about the specific encounter.

To resolve this, he has a number of tricks:

• If you have quests and rumours planned out - seed these into your random encounters. That pack of wolves you just defeated, maybe one of them had a golden arrow buried in its flank. Who made the arrow? Perhaps there’s someone in the woods that specialises in such trinkets?

• If your table contains six entries, corresponding to a d6, why not add two more entries to it. Order the tables by difficulty, and then as your players advance in skill, add +1 or +2 to their dice result to weigh the results in the favour of more difficult encounters.

• This one’s the real juice. De Ropp suggests adding two more columns to your random encounter table. Behaviour and Complication. You fill these in on a per row basis in a way that makes total sense for that given row. For example - Wolves. The behaviour might be “Hunting Prey” and their complication might be “Their pups are sick”. Here’s the clever bit - you roll three times on the random encounter table, generating a potentially different row per column. You might come up with “Goblins”, “Grifting for Cash”, “Their pups are sick”. This is your improv prompt for the scene, and by combining the elements from different rows, you’ll come up with some really unique encounters.

I’m a big fan of building Encounter Tables this way, and aside from the small amount of extra prep work they take - there’s not really much in the way of downside that I recognise.

Conclusion

So there you go. Whether it’s the Goblin Caves, Redbrand Hideout, or Wave Echo Cave - you’ve now got a detailed set of options for running these dungeons in a way that’s time tested and true. Let me know below the line if you have any other tips for people looking to improve the way that they run dungeons.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?

Catch you laters, alligators.

GM Burnout - When You Just Can’t Anymore

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated, and ‘whelmed’ tabletop gaming chap

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TL;DR:

GM burnout isn’t laziness or loss of passion, it’s a signal that something in how you’re running games is draining you. By identifying the real cause, whether it’s workload, values conflict, social pressure, or lack of reward, you can take focused steps like resting, changing systems or structure, sharing responsibility with players, and reconnecting with the parts of GMing you actually enjoy.

What Is GM Burnout?

Are you feeling a bit spent, old chum? Tired of running D&D? Can’t bring yourself to actually think about your upcoming game, or perhaps you’re simply filled with ‘meh’ about the prospect of running tonight’s session? Don’t judge yourself too harshly - this doesn’t mean you’re lazy, or that you’ve gone off TTRPGs. You might be suffering from GM burnout.

GM Burnout is a unique form of creative burnout, where a lack of inspiration and joy from the creative aspects combines with the drain of the relational and performance demands of the role. So where a visual artist might be blocked or not be feeling creatively inspired anymore, a GM has that too with their lore and maps etc, plus the weight of managing group dynamics, schedules, and the ‘always on’ energy of running sessions.

As above, it’s important to recognise that burnout isn’t laziness. It’s a vital communication from your brain, so listen to it. It simply means you’ve likely been burning the candle at both ends to the extent that you’re emotionally, socially and/or creatively depleted. It doesn’t mean that you’ve fallen out of love with the game. In fact the opposite is true, you’ve such strong love for what you do, that you’ve poured too much of yourself into it without stopping to refill your tank.

Let’s top you up shall we?

Where Does GM Burnout Come From?

You have to start this process logically. So step one is to identify the cause that fits with YOU. ‘The 5 Whys’ (Serrat (2009)) can be a useful tool of self discovery if you’re struggling to put your finger on it. Simply ask yourself “Why?” five times, starting with your answer to “Why am I burnt out?”, and then for each subsequent answer in turn. The idea is that through this interrogation, if you’ve been honest, you’ll start at some vague, surface level thing that you can easily identify, and you’ll end up at the creamy centre of your problem. The cream is good my friend.

Once you’ve done that check this out: Referencing Drs. Leiter and Maslach, Davies (2013) points to major occupational burnout causes below - several of these clearly resonate with game mastery, do any of these fit with your ‘5 Whys’ conclusions? (If not, tell me in the comments below, I promise I read every one).

Work Overload

This one is easy to spot. It might be too much prep, like trying to build an entire world with all its moving parts, or maybe tying yourself in knots trying to maintain a coherent ‘story’.

That said, it could also just as easily be that you’re struggling with heavy improvisations during sessions and maybe they’re too long, or you don’t get enough time between them to rest.

Values Conflict

If you’re only ever running a particular type of game and it no longer tickles your pickle, that can suck the life out of the hobby for you. With the amount of people that only ever play high fantasy D&D - this one doesn’t take too much effort to imagine.

To greater or lesser extents, it’s rare that we thrive on doing the same thing over and over again, and variety is the spice of life.

Lack of Control

When you’ve got an idea on the type of game you want to run and the direction it takes, but the players have taken it somewhere else entirely. Not specifically in terms of “plot direction”, but tonally. Maybe you wanted to build a sandbox filled with discovery and wonder, but now you're writing plot hooks for a moustache-twirling villain because your players demanded a classic BBEG.

Over time, this mismatch between your intentions and the game’s direction can leave you feeling disconnected from your own work.

Community Breakdown

In TTRPG terms, this is where we see problems with the social dynamics among all the players. If you’ve got a guy who always creates trouble for the group and he’s been allowed to continue, your enthusiasm for the game is going to be well and truly tainted by that. Especially if everyone just leaves it to you to be the adult in the room all the time.

Insufficient Reward

Do you feel unappreciated? Do your players turn up unprepared? All you ever hear from them is complaints about one thing or another? Do they take the effort to ever show their gratitude?

When you get the wrong answers to these questions, it’s easy to start asking yourself: “Why do I bother?”

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Additionally, Tyler (2025) adds to our list the impacts of deadlines, pressure, and work-life balance:

Deadlines and Pressure

Constantly feeling like you’ve got to raise your game and provide increasingly ‘better’ experiences for your players, or that knowledge that every single week you’ve got to have another session up and ready to go. That makes your ideas forced, and leaves little room to enjoy the creative process.

How to make a hobby feel like ‘work’ 101.

Work-Life Balance

Quite simply, you may just have too many different obligations going on right now. When we feel this way, it’s easy to become paralysed and avoidant. Check your to-do list, do you have a bunch of things that other people are counting on you for, competing for your attention right now? If so, you’re overwhelmed.

(Side note, you hear about people being overwhelmed and underwhelmed all the time. Does that mean that the desirable state is simply to be ‘whelmed’? - Q) “How are you feeling today?” A) “Oh I’m fairly whelmed, thank you for asking”. Language is stupid.)

What To Do About GM Burnout

That’s a pretty good amount of potential causes up there by anyone’s reckoning, so if you identify with one or more of them, even though it might be obvious what the solution is, these are some additional areas where you can make changes to feel more like your old self again.

It’s important to note that these will not all be applicable, so use your noggin and cherry pick the ones that align best to the cause of your malaise!

Take an Intentional Break

It’s older advice sir, but it checks out: Luke Hart found that when he was burnt out, taking a time limited break helped him to reconnect with the game and come back to it with reengaged enthusiasm (Hart (2024)), and likewise Hill (2022) describes that ‘doing nothing’ and instead “tending to your physical needs for sleep, time off, time in nature, or time away from work demands can be the best medicine“ when it comes to repairing burnout.

In order to achieve this zen like mindset of chilling-the-fluff-out, Hill (2022) suggests 3 positive actions:

1. Practice some self forgiveness and self love - be as supportive to yourself as you would be toward a friend.

2. Commit to not trying to fix the issue - stop doing all the things you’re frantically trying.

3. In it’s place, be accepting - it is what it is, and it will pass.

Flip the Script

Sometimes you just need to satiate your desire for some new thing that’s taken your fancy. It doesn’t even have to be a permanent change, even a temporary side-quest can be enough to recover your mojo.

Ciechhanowski (2016) prefers to mix things up by shortening the length of his sessions. He does this engineering each game with a single objective in mind - maybe that objective came from his planning, or maybe it came from asking the players at the start what they wanted to do. The important thing is that it’s something short term achievable rather than some miniature tangled spiders web of elements to put together.

Simply put, once the players have accomplished this, he calls time for the evening and stops.

Alternatively, Arcadian (2008) makes no bones about simply advocating that you play something different when the current game no longer aligns with your values. This doesn’t have to be as drastic as putting something down, mid-campaign for good - rather a temporary palette cleanser game could be just the ticket.

Maybe think of it as an opportunity to try one of those TTRPGs you kickstarted last year!

However, if flipping the system isn’t an option, you might want to try running the next session to a different beat, if your games are normally combat heavy, why not run an investigation? If you normally deliver your players with a gripping political intrigue, maybe it’s about time that you unleashed some horror? Hart (2024)

Of course, what any one game can handle is limited, and if you are running D&D, I’d never suggest trying to squeeze a horror session out of it!

Finally, I wrote a piece a few months ago that advocates for running serialised episodic adventures. You know, like TV shows in the 90s. Every episode largely stands alone, sometimes with a central thread tying them all together. The beauty of this is that it makes your campaign very modular, and all the more easy to insert new modules in as you see fit.

Reconnect With What You Love

We’ve all got a favourite element of game mastering, that element that drew us aboard in the first place. Find it, dive back into it. Maybe it’s world building? Maybe it’s drawing maps, or designing a pantheon of Gods. Hell, maybe it’s the thrill of improvising everything up at the table, and living on the edge! Hart (2024) suggests spending some time in this zone and allowing it to reignite your enthusiasm.

When you’ve filled your cup again, you can step once more into the breach!

Let Players Ease The Pressure

If you’re simply finding it all a bit too much responsibility, talk to your players. Let that bunch of pirates shoulder some of the work! The most glaring example here could be to let one of them run a game whilst you play for a while, but we don’t have to go that far. Perhaps you could allocate Ian with the job of doing session write-ups, whilst Chris might be more suited to organising everyone’s availability for the next session.

Additionally, direct your players to up their game. Players shouldn’t be resting on their laurels, expecting you to spoon feed the entirety of the game to them at the table. Rather, let them do some imagining too, why not ask Shaun to describe the Goblins kitchen to everyone - it’ll be fine, just roll with whatever he comes up with, and don’t forget that you’ve got Paige on hand to keep the lore straight.

Whatever you do, just don’t put Alan in charge of the session recap though, that dude can’t even remember what he had for breakfast!

Stimulate Creativity Through Novelty

Davies (2025) highlights that the brain’s capacity for creativity does not happen in isolation from the body or environment. If you’re in a bit of a slump, you should consider the following:

• Get off your butt, have a shower, and get some air outside! Studies show that at least 15 minutes of proper physical activity boosts creativity and can help you find novel solutions to problems.

• Surprise yourself! Do something you wouldn’t normally do, maybe whack on ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls, learn the words and dance around the house like a teenager from 1996. Doing so can “stimulate curiosity and [give you] healthy dopamine doses“ improving your mood and putting you back into a creative mindset.

Conclusion

I know, burnout sucks, believe me - as a blog writer, I feel it acutely from time to time, but it’s not a permanent state, and these tips can help. If you want to offload, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below and I’ll get back to you. Until then, I hope you’re feeling better soon!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?

Catch you laters, alligators.

References

Many thanks to the following sources for their work on the subject:

*FYI, full dates are written in dd-mm-yyyy because mm-dd-yyyy is bonkers :)

• Six Sources of Burnout at Work (2013), by Davies, P. Published in Psychology Today. Accessed 12-01-2026

• Move, Connect, and Create to Reverse Burnout (2025), by Davies, J. Published in Psychology Today. Accessed 12-01-2026

• When You Aren’t Feeling It (2016), by Ciechanowski, W. Published in Gnome Stew. Accessed 12-01-2026

• How to Overcome Dungeon Master Burnout (2024), by Hart, L. Published in The DM Lair. Accessed 12-01-2026

• Gamer Burnout – Both GM and Player (2008), by Arcadian, J. Published in Gnome Stew. Accessed 12-01-2026

• Doing Nothing Is Doing Something (2022), by Hill, D. Published in Psychology Today. Accessed 12-01-2026

• Creative Burnout: Why It Happens and How to Beat It (2025), by Tyler, E . Published in Metricool. Accessed 12-01-2026

• The Five Whys Technique (2009), by Serrat, O. Published in ABD Institute. Accessed 14-01-2026

Do You Call For Too Many Rolls?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Chap

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TL/DR - We like dice, they're cool, we spend a lot of money on fancy ones and we like rolling them. All that's a given. But as Game Masters we need to break the bad habit of calling for dice rolls for every little thing that our players try to do, because failed trivial actions break verisimilitude.

Introduction

As I originally conceive this, I'm currently on a flight to Amsterdam to see GreenDay live with Mrs. WazEre and I'm watching a downloaded actual play of Alien RPG to pass the time.

Or at least I was, but a particular cardinal GM sin was repeated one time too many and I felt compelled to mount my soap box…

You see, the GM kept asking for dice rolls for mundane things, like opening a door, or looking at a security card to see what's on it.

You might be thinking 'so what?!', well dear reader…

Inappropriate and excessive rolling is problematic because when the dice Gods inevitably laugh in your face, the GM is left struggling to come up with a reason for the fail.

When there's no good reason for failing an action that maintains verisimilitude, the resulting attempted explanation inevitably feels forced and awkward.

Compounding this issue, when they see something that seems otherwise simple, fail like this, the other players will start asking if they can try. You can either come up with justifications why they cannot, or allow them to roll also, but when fate curls another one out on your head from a great height, and this new character fails their roll too - Well, now the problem is exacerbated.

Why are all these characters unable to identify if this is a library card or a birthday card, and to whom it’s made out?!

We’ve created a major issue for the players sense of agency. Our dice calls have turned their characters into clowns against their will!

Everyone Is Guilty

I’ve never seen a GM not do this at some point. I used to do this too, and not so long ago that I can’t still keenly remember how uncomfortable it feels to call for a roll and then be left trying to come up with a legitimate consequence for failure. Or maybe success was actually really important for some reason, so after an unnecessary roll where the player scores a 4, I’d try to pretend like 4 was the DC all along.

Yeah, the players catch on to that and it's a cringeworthy moment.

Here’s A Fun Anecdote, That I DEFINITELY Don’t Hold A Grudge About

Going even further back, in my first game as a player, I remember my rogue (DEX = 18) out in front, creeping down some stairs with the party in tow. I was just being cautious and quiet about it, but there was no threat. However, a stealth roll was called and I scored a natural 1.

The GM then fumbled about, grasping for a severe consequence to the crit fail and ruled that I fell down the stairs.

And Just like that, ripped straight out of the moment, there went any semblance I had that my character was a competent thief.

If it’s not obvious already - There’s no need for a rogue thief to roll when creeping, unobserved down a stairwell. That’s an automatic success situation. My rogue thief walks around quietly as his day job - he’s good at it, he probably eats it for breakfast. It’s his entire reason for being.

Ironically, if I had just said I wanted to go down the stairs like the party following me had, the GM wouldn’t have called for a check, but because I said I wanted to go down cautiously, he felt like a sneak roll was required, and the failure, and subsequent desperate explanation led to a situation that turned a cool character into a joke.

Not that I’m still bitter about it or anything ;D

To Roll, Or Not To Roll? That Is The Question

This advice is applicable for every system I've ever played, and some, such as Mothership RPG and Mausritter have explicitly baked it into the rules in one form or another. However it’s often still overlooked.

So here it is, drum roll, please:

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Only call for a roll if there is clear risk or urgency attached to the action. Otherwise just have characters automatically succeed or fail as appropriate - depending on how mundane the task is or if the characters backstory supports their skill in a particular action.

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That reminds me - It's particularly important advice for games where you have to look for McGuffins. Recently, a chap on my socials was upset about his Call of Cthulhu adventure falling apart because his players failed their spot hidden rolls to find important clues, even with the “rule of three” - his game had ground to a halt after they’d failed their checks.

Well, now you know; the solution is to not put important clues behind dice rolls in the first place.

Perhaps Sir Would Like To See Some Examples?

These are some pretty on the nose cases where some similarly paired situations should and shouldn’t require a dice check:

• If the rogue wants to unlock the shed door - he succeeds, because he’s good at this stuff, and no one’s watching, and there’s no time pressure.

• If the rogue wants to unlock the kings bedroom door quickly before the guard circles back around - make a check. Failure means the guard sees you.

• If the marine wants to shoot (with a tranquillizer dart, of course!) a bad guy sleeping at his desk - she succeeds, because she’s passed her basic training and she can fire a gun.

• If the marine wants to shoot a bad guy on patrol and avoid alerting the base - make a roll. Failure means the bullet whips past him so he takes cover and radios for help.

• If the geology professor wants to see if the Necronomicon is in the big pile of books on the messy desk - they can simply determine that because they’ve got eyes and time.

• If that same geology professor wants to find the Necronomicon on the desk whilst the room is on fire - they need to make a roll. Failure means that the desk and everything on it is caught on fire before the Necronomicon is found.

You get it right?

It's a small change but it makes a huge difference to the flow of your game, not to mention that it prevents players from experiencing that sour taste that accompanies being denied something that you just know should have been a given.

A top tip

An excellent mental technique in game is to pause a moment and try to explain the consequences of failure to yourself before calling for the roll.

If you find yourself unable to come up with something that doesn’t feel contrived, don't call for the roll!

Conclusion

What do you think, do you call for too many rolls? Does your GM? Am I just wrong about this? Drop me a comment below and tell me what you think!

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