#RPG Session Planning •

[donaviolet]

New refs (sorta) for my baby!! 💜

(Special edition for an Ordem Paranormal - inspired RPG I‘m going to participate in as her, where she‘s a human strongly involved with occultism, especially the element of Death… :33)

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

every summer i return to working on my slasher ttrpg and lose my mind again. i have the slasher down now so this summer is all focused on the counselors. there are 17 of them and they all need distinct personalities which i’m struggling with a little since there are so many but also it’s fun

[varjopeura]

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[craigofinspiration]

Three-Point Planning, or How to Session Prep Like a Zelda Game

Have you ever wondered why exploring Hyrule in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is so fun and rewarding? After many hours in both games, I have broken down the wisdom of the Legend of Zelda into one concept. Three-point planning.

Have you ever wondered why exploring Hyrule in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is so fun and rewarding? How did the developers create such an engaging and enormous world? After many hours in both games, I have broken down the wisdom of the Legend of Zelda into one concept. Three-point planning. Nintendo What is Three Point Planning? Three-point planning is preparing three choices…

[l-una-c]

i want to post about my campaign but at least one of my players follows me so i have to keep my spoilers locked tight in my brain

[jeffs-gamebox]

Six items ready to be inserted into any Dragonbane campaign. Compatible with any fantasy tabletop roleplaying game with minimal conversion required. Have fun!

[moo-chemia]

So the cumplane runaway au has been in my mind rent free for the past two weeks and so I churn this out so pls excuse the word vomit as I explain what happens in this au.

SQH and SQQ realizes the other is a fellow transmigrator way earlier before the immortal alliance conference (in between the skinner demon arc and the demon invasion arc) probably due to SQH unknowingly outing himself and begins bonding with each other. SQQ brings up the sun moon dew mushroom and neither were planning on getting it until after the conference like canon. That is until they begin seeing how stressed the other is about their respective jobs/narrative roles after some drunk bonding sessions and convince the other to fetch the sun moon dew mushroom tgt and plant it so that they can fake their deaths to avoid doing paperwork and their narrative roles (SQH’s idea) and maybe go monster hunting/sight seeing around the world of PIDW instead (SQQ’s idea).

So during the IAC they fake their deaths just before SQQ has to push LBH into the abyss. SY and SQH wake up 5 years later in their plant bodies and immediately go monster hunting rpg style. They work as rogue cultivators and also trade in any rare monster parts to earn further income. They camp out during the night and huddle for warmth around the fire while reminiscing about their past lives (plural). They visit an abandoned temple for a forgotten goddess only to run into the cult that worships said goddess, causing them to almost be midsommar-ed. They visit a supposedly cursed sea only to run into the sea creature ‘haunting’ it and barely escaping with their lives. They visit lost cities to find supposedly extinct beasts and go bury treasure hunting, etc etc. Cumplane basically tour PIDW and have their best life (mostly) free of stress.

Meanwhile, if we rewind back to the IAC just after SY and SQH faked their deaths, SQH’s body is obvs now soulless and dead but the system forces SJ’s soul back into his og body and LBH still gets pushed into the abyss anyways opps. In the aftermath, SJ explains what happened with SY!SQQ and how basically SY and SQH are transmigrators and their whole situation from what SJ understands. SJ was a ghost all this time after the system forced his soul outta his body and he was lowkey haunting SY but SJ wasn’t always conscious, he probs only saw what was happening with SY!SQQ half of the time bc of the system. Cue Cang Qiong trying to track down one temporary SQQ and their logistics peak lord bc CQM is kinda burning down without him (and also to make sure both are ok)

Meanwhile, LBH speeds through the abyss and plans on taking over Huan Hua like canon and through some protagonist IQ bullshit that I’ve yet to come up with (probably through a grieving MBJ who's kinda been going crazy in the northern desert?) he realizes that SQQ is SJ but not his shizun, and he learns that CQM knows both SY and SQH are still alive and are trying to find them. LBH abandons his plot on taking over Huan Hua to team up with MBJ to find their two not so dead peak lords. 

Cue CQM vs the demon lords racing one another to find cumplane first for 6-7 years. 

Now back to cumplane. The two are enjoying their adventures together for a year or two after waking up in their plant bodies when they run into LBH and MBJ arguing with LQG in a village they’re travelling through. Cumplane realizes both the demon lords and CQM are trying to find them for some reason and panics when they overheard that SQQ is somehow still alive even though SY is right there and panics harder when they realize OG SQQ is back. Cumplane runs for their lives thinking they're fugitives now because their previous sect and the two demon lords are there to kill them/arrest them for impersonating a peak lord.

This is all I got for this au so far lol, this is still a wip so some things might change

[summoningspark]

I'm probably in the minority here, but honestly for me the biggest thing preventing me from trying more TRPGs is the same thing that kills most games; scheduling. My group(a mixture of working college students and people with 9-5s) gets together every other sunday, and no one's very enthusiastic to give up one of our two monthly sessions of a game we do like to try out a game we might not.

I make do by taking mechanics I like from other TRPGs and shoving them into 5e. Giving my players little tastes of what other systems have to pique their interest.

I'm actually thinking about something kinda funny. There are very few RPGs that I couldn't see myself playing. Like, aside from the ones that are downright hateful or made by some variety of fascist I can't think of a game that I would flat-out refuse to play. And given that there's a lot of talk about getting people to try out new games and how hard it supposedly is it just makes me wonder... am I weird for my willingness and enthusiasm for playing other games? Because if so add that to my ever-growing list of "reasons the normies are weird, actually."

[eidolonplaytest]

art by @boocanan

After years of thorough playtesting, you too can now play the complete and beautifully illustrated game of EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self!

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a tabletop RPG for 2-6 players. Look deep inside yourself to find the power lying dormant within, nourish that power through the bonds you build with others, and use the reality-bending abilities it grants you to fight for your ideals, fighting against the pull of the Undertow, the psychic tides that dictate the collective unconscious!

art by @skarchomp

Challenge Fate

EIDOLON uses our own Drawn From the Undertow game system, which replaces dice with a deck of tarot cards. Each action requires a draw, and each card dictates a new direction for the story to go. Play The Magician, and "you achieve an impossible success," but play The Tower, and "something terrible happens." Each character also chooses their own Resonant and Dissonant cards, which act as their own personal critical successes and failures!

art by L.L. Simkowiak

Drama-Driven Battle System

The combat system from 1E has been significantly reworked, while remaining the same core of the Crash system, in which battle is governed by dramatic arcs instead of hard numbers and stats. Short-term victories make enemies more powerful, more deadly, and more desperate, pushing them to further and further extremes until the players reach a moment of climactic triumph!... or, they suffer enough failures, incur enough physical, psychic and metaphysical damage, that they are forced to Face Death, and must cut a deal with the forces of The Undertow to go on fighting.

art by Julie Low

Actually, I Meant for You to Kick My Ass!

With the Reveal Your Master Plan Move, you can dramatically change the flow of a session by revealing a secret strategy that your character's been employing the entire time! Take a bullet? Reveal Your Master Plan to open your shirt and show off the body armor you've been wearing all along! Find yourself alone at the mercy of a powerful villain? Reveal Your Master Plan to declare that you called for back-up before the fight even started! Of course, nothing's ever a guarantee, and you'll often find that your "master plan" has a few hitches you'll need to resolve before it comes to fruition!

EIDOLON was developed in conjunction with the award-winning Eidolon Playtest podcast. Check it out if you want an example of the game in action!

[kinichval]

loml: im going online, let's play together?

your phone rings up, the screen brightening the dimly lit room. a curse escapes your lips as you once again forgot to turn do-not-disturb mode on since you're down again in the rabbit hole of cramming your studies for tomorrow's examination. then again, a smile creeps up on those same lips when you read the contact name. it's kinich.

pursing your lips, you contemplate whether or not to take on his offer. 1) you love playing games with your dearest boyfriend; 2) your concentration was long broken by some sort of distraction in your head; and 3) you miss kinich. however, it's clear that your to-do list still has 3 empty boxes begging to be marked done.

you: studying for exams :( we can play tomorrow

a sigh leaves your lips, your shoulders dropping down as you push yourself back to reality. you have to study, you have to pass, and most certainly you have to make sure that you won't beat yourself up for not working harder just because there's the venomous 'you could've done better.'

loml: do you wanna watch me play?

again, your screen lights up and you quickly swipe it off the desk. a smile tugs the corner of your lips, heart fluttering.

kinich loves streaming his games exclusively for you. especially on days when you can not play for whatever reason, he'd ask to video call with you and he'd share his screen so you'd feel like you're with him.

so what if the gunshot noises aren't conventional for a locked in study session? kinich playing his games—fps, sandbox, or rpg—is a common background music of yours. the two of you doing your own thing in the company of the other despite only being in a call.

you love kinich, even if sometimes you linger a tad bit longer on his shared screen than you planned.

you: yes please baby :)

[jennamoran]

@horatiovonbecker writes:

@jennamoran Incidentally, I feel like you might have some interesting thoughts on how to pick and/or recognize a thematic statement, though maybe it should be its own post.

RPG campaigns are a form of serial fiction, really, and while serial fiction can definitely benefit from picking your themes and metaphors and statements and core setting elements and such in advance, ultimately a lot of what really shines is developed in the process of creation. A bunch of stuff gets thrown at the wall in a hurry. (In an RPG campaign that wall is the players' picture of the real and fictional worlds and what matters.) Some of what gets thrown at that wall sticks. It stands out. It gets more attention. More callbacks. More thinking. It has a greater influence on the rest of what happens. This repeats. Eventually you have a picture of what the story is "about" that isn't necessarily what the author (here, the players and GM) "intended."

If you're writing a non-serialized work of fiction, you might get to this point and start revising front-to-back so that everything fits those themes. You might even do this multiple times. But in a serial work of fiction, all you can really do is recognize a few of the most important things before the end---some from the beginning, some learned along the way---and resolve those in a satisfying fashion. (Or, of course, and you can do this in RPGs too, go on indefinite hiatus, end abruptly while doing your best, or force everything to end in the way originally planned even though it's unsatisfying.)

I think of an RPG as a medium. There's no clean line between medium and message, of course, no clean difference between a game that prescribes a thematic message players can only rewrite by breaking the game, a game that has a few loose messages and leaves the rest to the players, and a game that thinks that it's universal and says nothing at all. But I tend to think of an RPG that I'm writing as a medium for players to use to create stories. Even if I'm trying to say something myself, I'm not trying to say it through the vehicle of your game. Nor am I expecting you to come up with something intentionally---I just figure that if you shake the players and pour out their brains onto the uneven canvas of the game, you'll wind up with a piece of art that's worth seeing.

To be clear, I think that RPGs that do try to say something through the medium of your campaign are pretty neat; I was even a bit jealous sometimes of people who do that kind of thing until I made one like that earlier this year and discovered that the main reason I don't do that is that I don't want to.

... but anyway, if you ever see me casually pushing all the artistic design work for a game onto the players' shoulders, that's what's going on; it's not that I expect professional post-editing perfection from players, it's not that I have nothing to say myself, it's that I am personally really interested in the process of players saying a bunch of stuff that is often not that important in itself but which provides a rich supply of stuff that they can draw upon in the next moment, next scene, and next session to go "yeah, okay, let's build on that a bit" and add contextual weight to their next action, until by the end they've said something they didn't know they wanted to say but did from the start.

cf @shencomix 's classic:

This doesn't happen because someone wrote a book on how to write webcomics that includes a fixed rule telling you that at the end you have to fight God---

unless someone did, I guess?---

But because ultimately nobody writes webcomics except as a cry of rage and horror against the order of the cosmos, so little threads of that theme show up in the first ten comics, and then get amplified again and again before the end. That's the phenomenon I'm trying to capture in most of my games, and in turn the reason why people who look to my RPGs for a clear description of how to write a webcomic only wind up confused.

[solidcarbon]

i hope everything goes well!! sending hugs ^_^

yeah life without social media is nice. only two hours a day is still threshold too high for me, but eventually i'll get to it. ever since i stopped using majority of social media i got, like, minus one billion problems and reasons to care and be anxious about. such a relief

i'm fine!! recently finished a pic of which i'm really proud. genuinely couldn't stop drawing it on the past week. what's more surprising is that i still wanna draw... so many things..... in digital even.......... i hadn't got this feeling for such a long time i forgot it existed. wow, turns out i like to draw? whoooooah.

also i've been playing many games in the past few weeks.... quake, og doom games. proximate (a very short indie horror game. short but pretty nice ig). was going to try out arctic eggs and........ slime rancher...... (to justify this game was my childhood dream.....). there's probably more around a corner which i just couldn't remember from the first thought

hey hi how r u!!!!!

hey hi hello!!!!

im good! im moving house tomorrow which is making me excited but also nervous. i was kinda anxious this morning but im doing better now

im still going strong on my "no social media" cleanse. i think im probably just gonna leave them deleted forever. i have so much more time in the day now. im journalling and reading and doing chores and drawing and exercising and going for walks and just generally filling my life with more fun and interesting things than just scrolling constantly. my average screen time is about 2 hours a day now and most of that is messaging my friends or reading the news.

ive been reading 17776 for most of today. ive finished all of my packing and i dont really have anything else to do and i came across the link for it and i thought. what the hell. ive never actually read it and it sounds interesting. but its a lot longer than i thought it was and ive just been sitting here reading it for hours at this point. idk if i want to keep going or do something else.

anyway how are you!!

[glowettee]

Hi Mindy! I’m a college student and I’m struggling to go to bed at a decent hour (think 3 am bedtimes every day) because of the amount of homework I have. Do you have any tips for time management so I can figure out how to get my homework done all during the day so I’m not losing sleep? (Any app recommendations or suggestions on how to schedule my day would be greatly appreciated). Thank you so much! I love your blog and I love seeing your posts🩷

how to get your life together & actually sleep: time management tips for college✨

hi love! 💌 first off, thank you so much for your sweet words. they genuinely made me smile. i’m so proud of you for wanting to improve your time management and prioritize your sleep (honestly, sleep is like the ultimate self-care, and you deserve it). i know college can feel like a whirlwind of assignments, deadlines, and just… life. staying up until 3 am is no joke, and it’s amazing that you’re ready to make a change. let’s make your routine feel a little more manageable and a lot more magical.

☁️ romanticize your productivity: first thing’s first: mindset. instead of viewing homework as this scary, endless task that eats up your nights, try to romanticize it. create a cozy study ritual. light a candle, make a cute study playlist (ex: lo-fi mixed with soft acoustics), and set up your space in a way that makes you actually want to sit down and work. i know it sounds silly, but giving your study sessions a soft, aesthetic vibe can make them feel less like a chore and more like a peaceful little routine. i have a lot of posts talking about this

🌙 break down your workload: sometimes it’s not about how much work you have but how it’s organized. take a few minutes in the morning or the night before to make a list of what you actually need to accomplish. break it down into small, bite-sized tasks. for example, instead of “study for chem exam,” write down “review chapter 4 notes,” “do practice problems,” and “make flashcards for key concepts.” checking off small tasks feels way more rewarding than staring at a big, vague to-do.

💡 create a time-blocking ritual: i’m obsessed with time-blocking because it feels like giving each task its own little home. instead of doing everything all at once (which is just chaos), dedicate specific chunks of time to each task. for instance:

🌼 9-10 am: review lecture notes

✨ 10-11:30 am: work on that essay (no distractions)

🍓 11:30-12: take a break, stretch, grab a snack

💻 12-1: group project research set timers to keep yourself accountable. i use the “focus keeper” app for 25-minute work sessions with 5-minute breaks. it’s surprisingly motivating!

📅 the magic of reverse scheduling: if you know you want to be in bed by, say, 11 pm, plan your day backwards from there. schedule your evening wind-down routine (like skincare, a little journaling, and tea) and work your way back through the hours, assigning tasks in reverse. this way, you’re prioritizing sleep as non-negotiable and shaping your day to respect that.

✨ my fave apps for dreamy productivity:

notion: perfect for creating aesthetic, organized to-do lists, study schedules, and even journaling about your progress.

flora: turns studying into a game by planting a virtual tree while you focus. if you leave the app, the tree dies (no pressure, right?).

toggl: tracks your time so you can see how long tasks actually take. it’s eye-opening to realize you might be spending way more time scrolling than studying.

clockify: like a little personal assistant that tracks your study sessions and breaks. it’s simple and kind of addicting to see how productive you’ve been.

habitica: makes productivity feel like an RPG game. complete with character upgrades when you check things off. honestly, it’s too cute to resist.

💖 mindy’s personal tips:

📝 batch similar tasks: do all your note-taking at once, then all your problem-solving. your brain doesn’t have to keep switching gears.

🎯 use the “two-minute rule”: if something takes less than two minutes, do it right away (like replying to emails or organizing your notes).

🕰️ the 1-3-5 rule: pick one big task, three medium tasks, and five small ones to accomplish each day. it keeps your to-do list from being overwhelming.

✨ romanticize rest too: treat your sleep as sacred. create a pre-bed routine that you actually look forward to, like reading a few pages of a lighthearted book or doing a little night yoga.

🌸 don't forget how important 'no' is: sometimes, we overcommit because we’re too nice to say no. it’s okay to protect your time! practice polite ways to decline extra responsibilities when you know they’ll eat into your sleep. like, “i’d love to help, but i have to focus on my assignments tonight. let’s plan something for the weekend!”

🌙 gentle evening wind-down: your body needs time to transition from productivity mode to sleep mode. about an hour before bed, turn off your screens, dim the lights, and switch to calming activities. i like using the “calm” app for guided meditations that feel like little bedtime stories.

🌱 become a morning person (yes, it’s possible)

one trick that really works is having something to look forward to. think of a tiny, indulgent ritual that you save just for mornings. maybe it’s a frothy matcha latte with vanilla syrup, journaling in a pretty notebook, or listening to your favorite podcast while you stretch. the key is to make mornings feel like a gift to yourself rather than just the start of a grind.

set your alarm to a song that makes you feel good!! something soft and happy. bonus points if it’s different from your usual playlist because it’ll feel special. place your phone across the room so you have to physically get up to turn it off. i also love using the “alarmy” app because it makes you solve a simple puzzle before it stops ringing (annoying, but effective).

once you’re up, avoid falling back into bed by making your bed immediately. it’s like telling your brain, “we’re up now. no going back.” then, try a quick, gentle morning stretch to wake your body up without feeling rushed. mornings can actually feel soft and peaceful if you give yourself permission to take it slow.

as for getting enough sleep the night before. make it non-negotiable. treat your bedtime like an important meeting you can’t cancel. remind yourself that a well-rested mind works way better than a sleep-deprived one. it’s all about romanticizing rest as part of your productivity rather than seeing it as wasted time.

give it a week, and see how you feel. even a small shift, like waking up 30 minutes earlier, can make your day feel more spacious and less chaotic. being a morning person is just about creating tiny habits that make mornings feel like a calm beginning rather than a rushed scramble.

🌸 micro productivity okay, let’s be real... sometimes the idea of sitting down for a three-hour study session feels completely overwhelming. that’s where micro productivity comes in. instead of blocking out huge chunks of time, break your tasks into mini-sprints that fit into the small gaps of your day.

for example, while waiting for your coffee to brew, you could make a quick list of your priorities for the day. during your commute or while you’re eating lunch, review your flashcards or skim your notes. those little moments add up, and suddenly your workload doesn’t feel as intense because you’ve been chipping away at it throughout the day.

one of my favorite apps for this is “quizlet.” you can make digital flashcards and quickly review them whenever you have a spare moment. or use “ankidroid” for spaced repetition. it’s great for subjects that require lots of memorization.

another trick? the “two-minute rule.” if a task takes less than two minutes, do it immediately rather than adding it to your to-do list. this helps clear out small, annoying tasks that tend to pile up (like replying to emails or organizing your desktop).

i also love the idea of micro journaling. sometimes, when you’re overwhelmed, writing down just one thought or feeling can give your brain the clarity it craves. it doesn’t have to be a full journal entry, just a few words that capture your mood or intention.

don’t underestimate the function of small wins. every tiny task you complete builds momentum and makes the bigger assignments feel more doable. it’s like telling yourself, “i’m already being productive today. let’s keep that energy going.”

the goal is to make productivity feel more like a series of little achievements rather than one massive to-do list. micro productivity helps you stay on top of things without burning out, and it feels way more manageable when your schedule is packed.

💫 stay motivated when your energy is low we’ve all been there. those days when your brain feels like it’s wrapped in a fog, and the idea of tackling your to-do list feels impossible. it’s okay to have low-energy days, but let’s find a way to work with them instead of against them.

first, check in with yourself. is your low energy from lack of sleep, stress, or just general burnout? sometimes just identifying the reason helps you figure out what kind of self-care you need. if you’re physically tired, maybe your focus should be on rest or low-effort tasks. if it’s more mental fatigue, try switching up your study space or doing something creative to break the monotony.

use the idea of “productive rest.” sometimes, resting doesn’t mean doing nothing. it can be as simple as switching tasks to something lighter, like organizing your notes or doing some gentle stretching while listening to a podcast related to your coursework. this way, you’re still moving forward, just at a gentler pace.

set up a reward system to motivate yourself. for example, after 20 minutes of studying, give yourself a 5-minute break to scroll through pinterest or listen to a song you love. use apps like “forest” to stay focused during your work session and then celebrate with a cute coffee break when your tree grows.

also, be kind to yourself. it’s okay if you’re not operating at 100% all the time. instead of pushing yourself to be overly productive, prioritize what actually needs to get done. sometimes, just getting one important task out of the way is enough for the day, and that’s completely valid.

remember, your energy levels fluctuate, and that’s perfectly normal. don’t pressure yourself to be endlessly productive. balance is key. the goal is sustainable productivity, not burning out from trying to do everything at once. listen to your body, adjust your pace, and know that it’s okay to take breaks when you need them.

💫 final thoughts: it’s all about balance, being productive during the day is great, but you’re human. you can’t be on 24/7. give yourself grace when things don’t go perfectly. the goal isn’t perfection; it’s progress. prioritize rest as much as you prioritize getting things done, and your mind (and grades) will thank you.

xoxo mindy

[tomicscomics]

12/30/2024

And so it ends... FOR NOW?!?!?

___ AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, it's finally over. Thanks for sticking through it with me. This series was really fun to draw, and it gave me a chance to do two things I found surprisingly fun: (1) draw several anachronistic saints interacting with each other and (2) make a bunch of RPG jokes in a religious context. To be honest, it was stressful. First off, I hardly have any time to draw these days, so committing to two comics a week was an insane thing to do, especially for the holidays. Second, I had the whole 10-part series planned out at the beginning, but then my mind was so flooded with new jokes as I went that I had to re-write and re-plan almost every week in order to keep the series to the original 10 parts. I have a ton of jokes I had to skip, but I'll keep note of them in case I revisit this concept in the future. Ultimately, I'm frayed and unsatisfied, but I enjoyed myself and learned as I went, and that about sums it up. Maybe I'll write a retrospective to post on Patreon, if I can get my thoughts in order. Anyway, once again, thank you all for indulging me in this incredibly unusual series. Tomics will return to relative normalcy soon. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

JOKE-OGRAPHY: 1. Continuing from the last few cartoons, an angel has been introducing a few saints to playing a tabletop roleplaying game. This series has covered them learning how to make characters, culminating in them introducing their characters and ending with the story finally about to begin. 2. Most RPG players know the struggle of trying to find a group of like-minded players, of scheduling regular sessions, and of actually making it to the end of a full campaign. Many campaigns end prematurely because the players start having interpersonal drama, or because their busy schedules just don't match up, or because the group simply gets burnt out. The end of this cartoon makes light of this earthly reality. Hypothetically, if an angel DID run an RPG campaign for some saints in heaven, they'd all be free of the all the flaws and struggles that would normally force a campaign to end prematurely.

[sandypuggames]

THE ROLEPLAYERS GUIDE TO HEISTS

Made this with the Far Horizons Co-Op a million years ago and its still one of the greatest pieces of work I've done in the TTRPG scene. From project management to print, this was a five gold star winner.

The concept; 35 system agnostic heist writeups set across every genre and setting you can imagine. Each of them fully illustrated, with detailed, labeled maps. Each write up gives you a world of plot hooks, introduces you to important NPCs, points out interesting locations.

This was inspired by my adoration of those history books we all read as a kid, with the huge dioramas. Those things were TTRPG manuals before we knew they existed, right? Poring over them, drinking in every detail, imagining what it would be like to be this person or that. That and Hitman. There's *SO MUCH* Hitman in this book. I loved working on this book. Cracked it open for old times sake earlier today, maybe you'd like to join me.

[that-house]

The Tarrasque Can Blow Me or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make 5e Bosses That Don't Suck

HI, I'm Catherine that-house, and I play Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition almost as much as I hate it. I do this because I am a sicko pervert who likes to tinker with abysmal dogshit, not because it's a good game. This screed is dedicated to everyone trapped in the same mine as me.

D&D 5e combat sucks! Here's the flow chart for your melee champion fighter's turn:

IF BAD GUY: smack bad guy

IF BAD GUY WITHIN 30 FT: move to bad guy, smack bad guy

IF LOW ON HP: second wind

IF NO BAD GUY WITHIN 30 FT: dash towards nearest bad guy

action surge, take it from the top

IF YOU'RE FEELING DARING TODAY: maybe a grapple or an item interaction

And pretty much any non-caster monster has a pretty similar flowchart: there's no real back and forth, just the same set of actions over and over and the only time you have to pay attention on someone else's turn is for an attack of opportunity maybe. Finally one side reduces the other side's number to 0, and you can get back to roleplaying in your roleplaying game.

In general, I strive to make my boss fights hard and interesting, with interesting being the more important of the two. For some reason the wicked clowns working at WOTC got it into their heads that the only ways to make a fight hard are Bigger Number and Less Counterplay. I don't have any data on how they sought to make fights interesting because as far as I can tell they were too busy siccing the Pinkertons on people like it's the fucking 1800s.

Probably not all 5e combat is like this. But, like, look at the statblock for the Tarrasque, the CR 30 "strongest monster in the game" and try to tell me that that thing looks INTERESTING to fight. Difficult? Maybe, if your stats are bad. But INTERESTING? It walks at someone and murders the shit out of them, then rinses and repeats. The fetid dog turd that is the Tarraque is the perfect example of the Bigger Number, and even its meme status as the DM's "fuck you" monster is eclipsed by later additions to the game.

The other end of the "strongest 5e statblock" spectrum is shit like Sul Khatesh from Eberron, who earns the title of "most bullshit" by being immune to nonmagic attacks and creating antimagic fields. This is progress, because you might force someone to grapple it out of the field or something so everyone can deal damage! But this is still ultimately a pretty linear fight, not unlike fighting any other caster in the game, but with Less Counterplay.

My DMing style is pretty character goal-oriented, with the occasional bullshit superboss. We sit around for a few sessions while people pursue side projects and gather information, and then I subject them to the Horrors of a 5e fight that requires things like "positioning" and "planning" from turn to turn.

When playing a high level D&D campaign with insanely bullshit homebrew magic items and character-specific custom mechanics, it becomes necessary to pull out the big guns. The biggest guns. I'm talking a gun like my boy Hierarch Ozyas, undead demigod, father of monsters and heart of a living city, who had a meaty 2000 hit points and took somewhere in the vicinity of thirteen rounds of combat to bring down. Building bosses is an arms race and it's my job to lose in style. Here's Ozyas' statblock:

The bitch himself

Anyways I've been talking for a bit without actually saying anything of substance besides making fun of the Tarrasque. Which I will do one more time:

...deep breath...

D&D 5e is a pretty widely-disdained game by pretty much anyone who's ever played more than one RPG system. I myself only play it because I enjoy game design, and the thoroughly-beaten dead horse that WOTC calls a game serves as a decent foundation to do a lot of heavy tinkering. The Tarrasque is perfectly emblematic of all of the trash I have to wade through in order to get to the stuff worth keeping: it is an uninspired, anticlimactic relic of the past that didn't even manage to cling to a shred of its old glory and is instead content to wallow in the filth of what it once was, never once providing a challenge to any character with a flying speed. I would probably attempt to beat it to death with my hands (and fail, because it checks your character's stats rather than challenging you as a player in any way), but Jim the 1st level aaracokra with a save-forcing damage cantrip already solo'd it for me, so I'll settle for chewing through the throat of whichever game designer forgot they were making a "game" and submitted a three step flowchart for D&D's ultimate boss monster.

But anyways, I promised you a guide to how I design boss fights these days, so let's get to that.

Actually, first here's a quick aside about action economy that I didn't bother finding a place to fit in elsewhere: legendary actions are basically a necessity for any boss past level five or so. One big action is going to be a lot more polarizing than several small ones (i.e. one big crit on a large attack could completely flip the course of the fight, whereas multiple smaller attacks offer the same amount of damage output in a more consistent fashion). If you don't want to give your boss a bunch of HP to make it live long enough to take a few turns, you could consider giving it two turns in the initiative order (reducing the damage per turn to keep the damage per round constant). Low health minions are also a good way to pad out action economy, and even if they're easy to kill they tend to buy the boss another turn or two just from the actions it costs to take them down.

ANYWAYS, here's the core ideas I like to focus on in my boss design:

Keep them moving

Keep them working

Keep things changing

Reward good play

Punish mistakes

Make it a game

Along the way I'll be using snippets of the boss I mentioned above to illustrate examples of these principles and how they affected play. Let's begin.

KEEP THEM MOVING Positioning doesn't really matter in 5e. AoEs and movement values are both so large that you can easily get away with not having a battle map and sorta just tracking "in melee" or "not in melee." I run most fights without a battle map and just kinda track that, but for a good boss you need a map.

But how do we keep the game from just falling back into "move into range and hurt people," you ask? Simple: the Zone of Nasty. The Zone of Nasty is something on the map that is going to hurt the PCs if they're in it, and the Zone of Nasty moves. Depending on the boss, it could grow, shrink, follow a player, follow the boss, alternate between areas of the map, whatever. Some bosses might have multiple different Zones of Nasty that move in different ways and do different things.

There are other ways to force movement besides a moving AoE, such as punishing players for being too close or too far from each other or the boss.

The general principle here is that a boss should at times force suboptimal play: optimal play involves simply standing around, spending all your actions on damaging the boss, and it's incredibly boring from a strategic standpoint. There should be turns in which your players have to spend their action economy on protecting themselves or helping their allies. If they find themselves in a Zone of Nasty, it should force a decision between suffering the consequences to continue optimal play, or spending resources to get out of it.

Our boy Ozyas had a Cancer Field that he could move slowly around the arena that damaged and debuffed PCs inside it, and Pretender-God-Piercing Strike, a telegraphed line attack that oneshot anything that stayed in its area too long (more on this one later).

KEEP THEM WORKING Everyone needs a job to do! This job is probably just going to be based on what their class and abilities encourage them to do, but it sucks for someone to not be able to meaningfully participate in a boss fight.

Let the DPS players kick the boss's teeth in, obviously, but make sure the person who focused on AoE effects has some extra enemies that they can deal with. Bonus points if the extra enemies have something that forces them to be dealt with instead of just rushing the boss' HP bar.

Worst case scenario, throw in a secondary objective like completing a ritual, controlling a point on the map, or fighting the boss' soul on a higher plane to give someone who isn't immediately needed for DPS to still have something to do.

Ozyas spawned a bunch of extra monsters from these gross Birthing Pillars around the map, and killing the monsters and destroying the pillars provided a nice secondary course of action for people either not equipped to slug it out with the boss or not currently positioned right to fight him.

KEEP THINGS CHANGING The tarrasque sucks because it does one thing over and over until it works or it dies. The Theros splatbook improved on this marginally: Mythic Traits are fucking baller! Combats should change over the course of the fight, or this could have been a fucking autobattler. But we can go further.

In addition to occasionally shaking things up based on health thresholds, here's a few ways I like to do it:

Rotating list of effects that change every round

Huge list of options the boss can choose from for one of their effects with no repeats

Some sort of meter that increases and decreases based on what's happening in the fight and modifies the boss' abilities

Ozyas summoned new monsters every round and could customize the statblocks with a bunch of quick templates I whipped together, and in his second phase he started alternating between scaling the to hit/damage of his tentacle attack, the reach of his spear attack, and applying extra buffs to his summons.

REWARD GOOD PLAY These next two kind of tie together but the core idea here is that it's okay if a boss is a bit easy, as long as it makes your players work for it.

This can include things like ways to trivialize certain parts of the encounter as long as the players utilize them, typically at the cost of advancing other parts of the fight.

I knew that Ozyas was going to be a long fight, so I gave my players the ability to heal to full health, as an action, whenever they wanted. They were fighting inside Ozyas' body, and he was a generous host. However, any time they healed, he would be healed for the same amount. They got around this restriction by hitting him with Chill Touch to disable his own healing whenever people needed to heal, but that obviously had the cost of losing two actions' worth of damage output.

Towards the end of the fight, everyone was still standing thanks to that healing, but as he began to infinitely scale his stats once he reached his second phase and started taking them seriously, they couldn't afford to waste turns healing anymore and the safety net they built up by healing earlier in the fight kept anyone in the party from dying.

PUNISH MISTAKES The range on D&D characters' HP pools and general survivability can be pretty broad. I like to give my bosses a reasonably-heavy hitting melee and some sort of light ranged attack to remind the backliners that they too can die. But there's a third kind of attack.

The great equalizer.

The One Hit Knock Out move.

These need to be telegraphed. There needs to be copious time to get out of the area, or to stop the boss from using it, or whatever the case may be. But any superboss should have a way to threaten any player on equal standing: a move that will always hit if its conditions are met, and puts them clean to 0.

Ozyas' OHKO was Pretender-God-Piercing Strike, where at the end of each turn he would wind up a spear thrust with enough range to hit across the entire map, targeting a 15-foot line through the nearest player. Neither he nor the line could move after that, and if you were still in that line at the start of his next turn, you were done.

It wasn't hard to avoid: just walk like 10 feet and don't get pushed back in by another enemy. They even lined it up to target some of his own allies sometimes. But it forced them to think about positioning and stay moving, and there were a few times where it aaaaalmost caught someone in the line. The prospect of Instant Death really does wonders to ratchet up the tension.

And now, finally, we come to the most important part:

MAKE IT A GAME D&D 5e likes to jerk off while fantasizing about being real. "Catherine what the fuck are you talking about?" What I mean to say is that D&D makes a fumbling attempt towards a more simulationist style of game, trying to distance itself from the fact that it is, in fact, a game. It tries to comport itself like reality, such that every part of its combat makes sense in-universe, and then immediately falls short because it can't be assed to indulge in actual simulationism.

It is my belief that if you're going to spend 4 hours fighting a boss, and one of the boss mechanics doesn't really make much sense as an in-universe concept but does make the boss more interesting and fun to fight, then that's a perfectly fine mechanic. Obviously finding some way to justify it is preferable, but my bosses prioritize good gameplay over verisimilitude.

The upcoming boss in my campaign has a feature which puts the fight on a ten-round time limit before he begins kicking substantially more ass than he was before (and the prior ass-kickery was indeed already substantial). If this is a desperate fight with his life and his dreams on the line, why doesn't he open with that? If this were a WOTC statblock, barring a mythic trait, that's exactly how it would work. But fuck that, because it would make the fight way less interesting! Now there's time pressure! And sure, the post-round-ten version of the boss is meant to be fled from, not fought, but if he's at a low enough HP it could instead make for an insane climactic finish!

I let my players see the whole statblock before the fight. We talk through all of its abilities, and I'll even point out some of the potential points of complexity and the big risks to watch out for. There's no in-universe justification for why the characters would know this (beyond, perhaps "you're exceptional adventurers and are good at evaluating your foes"): in fact, one of the quintessential examples of classical 5e metagaming is the Guy Who's Read the Monster Manual. I think that's fucking stupid, though. With open statblocks:

Features can be game-warpingly deadly without instantly incurring a TPK born of ignorance. OHKO moves don't feel fair unless the counterplay is known

The players can strategize around the ways in which the boss is going to change throughout the fight

It's fundamentally fair. Some GMs just wait X turns and then let the boss go down when it takes a big, impressive hit (and I fully respect people who do that! That's still more compelling boss design than 5e's normal schlock), but I personally like when numbers have meanings.

You can still hide some information (I like to black out the boss' Mythic Trait, and then only use it if the players stomp the fight too easily), and you can still tweak it to adjust the difficulty, with the difference being that your players know it's being adjusted and how so (which again comes back to my feelings of fairness).

A few other fun mechanics to toss in include stacking debuffs that trigger something horrible at some certain threshold, additional win conditions or lose conditions, and silly little minigames. One trick I particularly enjoy is having my players secretly vote between two or more bad outcomes, and punishing them even more if the vote is tied.

CONCLUSION Your mileage may vary, but I'm hoping at least some of the insights here were useful to you! I have a particular strain of undiagnosed mental illnesses that make me especially predisposed towards piloting huge convoluted intricate bosses with 1k+ word statblocks, and I'm lucky enough to have players who know their shit well enough to play around this bullshit. Find something that works for you and your players.

If you hate 5e combat and think this sounds like way too much work to be worth doing, go play something else, like Pathfinder or Lancer or (heaven forbid) a game that actually struggles to trace its lineage of inspiration back to D&D. Go to itch.io and find some game no one's ever played before, and toss the creator a bit of money. The only way we're making it out of these goddamn Mines of Phandelver is if people try something new from time to time.

On the subject of cool games with cool combat, bear with me as I shill for a friend real quick. If you want a game that cares less about combat as an abstract dick measuring contest and more about combat as a facet of violence and all that that entails, check out [BXLLET> by @rathayibacter.

And, finally, from the bottom of my heart, fuck WOTC. Your books aren't even worth pirating, and the Tarrasque can blow me.