Favourite Campaign Endings

Over the years I've run a great many campaigns, and they've all come to an end. But only some of them have come to a good end. Some of my favourites, therefore:

All four of my "great campaigns" had strong endings. The first of these, the unnamed Tolkien rip-off campaign, came to an end with an epic confrontation between our heroes and the risen lich Pelenor Corariath, a battle for the ages that left the world forever changed. There's not too much more to say about this one, especially since it was so long ago - sword battled spells, and in the end the bad guy made a very satisfying 'thump' as he hit the ground.

The "Rivers of Time" campaign had the most unusual of the endings - this one came to a bittersweet conclusion as the world came to its end. The year was 2150, and our heroes were called to meet one of a former childe of theirs for a final toast. It was very quiet and contemplative, and brought together everything from five years of gaming to that point. (Sadly, that campaign had long-since outlived its best times. But the ending was solid.)

The "Shackled City" campaign ended with another great and epic battle, this time with the corrupted angel Adimarchus. As was fitting for the highest-level campaign I ever ran, this was the most epic, knock-down battle I've ever run. At the end, the PCs were victorious, but only just.

"The Eberron Code" came to another great battle, this time with the imprisoned Bel Shalor, the Shadow in the Flame. The stakes for this one were dramatic - win, and the Silver Flame would be cleansed of the corruption that had infested it; lose, and the demon would be freed on the world. This conclusion was notable for the death of a PC and his subsequent refusal to return to life, and that fact that it had a proper epilogue for all the PCs - something I highly recommend.

There are also a small number of noteworthy endings that are not from the "great campaigns". "Mists of Lamordia" saw the PCs battling Adam for their freedom from Lamordia (and Ravenloft as a whole). This one saw one of the PCs tempted with the chance to become the new Dark Lord (a role he eventually took), saw a sudden but frankly obvious betrayal as Victor Mordenheim turned against the heroes, and saw the battle hinge on the discovery of Adam's crucial weakness. This wasn't the greatest campaign, being hampered by the format, by Covid, and by a long-term player absence, but the ending was really good.

"Isles of Dread" had a decent ending, except that the climax came in the session before the last and the final session was then a brief epilogue. Taken as a pair, those sessions were solid; individually they didn't really work. Still, the battle against Red Bethena was fun to play out, and neatly encapsulated everything in the campaign.

Finally, "A Quest for Memory" had a noteworthy ending mostly because I reused the same "Forge of the Fire Giants" dungeon that provoked a TPK when running "Storm King's Thunder" itself. This time, the PCs were able to battle their way to victory, although it was a close-run thing. In truth I don't consider this one of the "great campaigns" and don't consider it a top-tier ending, but it's certainly interesting that the same dungeon run with two different groups had such different outcomes.

"Isles of Dread" wrap up

A rather belated post - the "Isles of Dread" campaign actually ended in July. However, the end remains somewhat fresh, and so in the spirit of completeness, here are my thoughts:

• This was intended as a short six-month campaign to pass some time, and ended up running for almost two years. That's largely a scheduling issue - with so few players we really struggled to get to a quorum. And that, in turn, is why I've called time on this particular group.
• That said, near the end of the campaign I took that view that we were essentially going ahead no matter what, and that actually worked much better. I should have done this throughout. And, actually, I think that may be a lesson for even "regular" campaigns - better to fix a slot and go ahead come hell or high water, and if you find yourself regularly struggling for a quorum then that's a sign to call a halt.
• I was very proud of the way the campaign was structured, prepared, and presented - I've posted about this separately, but the work put in did pay off, mostly.
• The extended duration of the campaign did, however, mean that some key callbacks never paid off. I suspect that would have gone better had things been fresher in minds. Or perhaps not. Either way, nothing vital was missed, so that was okay.
• The campaign structure, which I cribbed from "Lost Mine of Phandelver", was great. I highly recommend this for any sort of "beginner" campaign.
• I never did get an "inventory" sheet put together. With the release of new books, and since I'm now not gaming, I'm not sure it's worthwhile any longer. But it's definitely something that I've been missing.
• The rerolls worked slightly better. One enhancement was that characters now received a number of rerolls per level equal to half their Proficiency Bonus, rounded up. That seemed to make them a bit less of a scarce resource, and so they seemed to get a bit more use.
• For the first time we saw a feat being used (Lucky), but alas it wasn't great, largely because that one served to duplicate the effect of those same reroll tokens.

And that's basically that. A decent campaign, although not a classic, and a reasonable way to close out gaming with that group. I'm a little sorry that this campaign seems to also be the one to close out my career as a gamer, but so be it - ultimately most things end badly, or they wouldn't end at all, to better to wrap things up on my terms (even if in a suboptimal manner) than otherwise.

"Isles of Dread" - a Lesson Learned

When setting up the "Isles of Dread" campaign, one of the things that I did was set up several key adventure areas, and then add several other small islands that didn't have fixed content - the idea being that as the characters travelled to one of these islands the content would be rolled randomly and then used.

Unfortunately, I've found that this doesn't really work - the randomly generated encounters aren't really interesting enough in their own right to justify their inclusion, and the random generator is largely transparent from the other side of the screen. Which means that from the players' perspective they're mostly seeing a number of fairly dull encounters playing out.

Bottom line: random generators like this are probably not a bad thing in published adventures, especially ones likely to be run more than once (like "Lost Mine of Phandelver"), but for a home campaign they're probably not ideal. (Except, of course, for a big book of random encounters - that has use for a time-starved DM. But don't write your own!)

How Can It End Like This?

I'm finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with my current campaign - I'm convinced that the concept is good, I'm happy with the preparation I've done, and it's actually playing out in an entirely sensible manner given the material. And yet... meh. Something about it just isn't working for me.

I suspect that part of the issue is that the starting phases of D&D 5e are just naturally slow, because the characters are so squishy. And while those stages are also short, that's only true with something approaching a normal play cadence. As it is, we're grinding through week after week of the PCs at level 2, and they're constantly out of their depth. Which is a shame.

(Plus, all my best material is in the third part of the campaign, which kicks off soon. Maybe things will get better?)

But that's all an issue - I'm pretty certain that this is my final D&D campaign, possibly ever and certainly for a very long time. I'd really hoped to go out on a high, but this is really starting to feel like a damp squib. It's just a real shame.

(Indeed, had I known, I would have been better ending after the previous campaign - that one ended very well, and would have made for an ideal capstone. Oh well.)

A DMing Principle

I was having a discussion earlier about PC race, and I noted that my preference is for players to 'default' to human characters but that my players have a very different view and will basically never choose a human PC. And then I found myself imagining that I'd been asked the question of what happens if these impulses come into conflict.

My answer is actually simple on this one: the player gets their way.

The principle that I work to is that the PC is basically the only thing that the player gets to control. And the PCs are the only thing in the game that the DM does not get to control - the DM gets to choose literally everything else.

And so, my principle is that when it comes to what players do with their character, the DM's position is "hands off!"

(I'll also note that while I may come here, or other places online, to complain about this and other things, I don't do so at the table. When I say this is the players' choice, I really do mean that - there's no passive agressive grumping that they didn't do what I wanted.)

I may well have posted on this topic before. But I couldn't find it. So if it's a repeat... oh well.

A Minor, but nice, Innovation

One of the things that I've done a couple of times, but that I see Critical Role do rather more often, is that when a PC strikes a "killing blow" the DM invites the player to describe how it is done. That doesn't have any rules impact, but it's a nice way to involve the players just a little bit more in the narrative of the game.

My inclination is to mostly limit this to the final opponent in a combat and/or the special 'boss' monster(s) (which may or may not be the same thing), but it's still a nice idea.

Thoughts About Crucibles

As "The Mists of Lamordia" comes to its close, I have locked the PCs in to the final crucible, which will serve as the final adventure location of the campaign. We're now heading to the final showdown, with the next session potentially being the last.

Having had some more time to consider the matter, and having seen the crucibles play out in two campaigns now, I have a few thoughts:

• As I've mentioned once before, the crucibles need to be kept short - a session or two at most. They should also be fairly brutal, as the whole point is to challenge the PCs as they come to the end of one phase of the campaign.
• As a consequence of that, I'm inclined to suggest a crucible should comprise around 5-6 encounters, with those skewed a little more towards the top end of the challenge range.
• Because of the small number of encounters and the need to challenge the PCs, it should not be possible to take a long rest while in a crucible, nor indeed to retreat and then come back. Face the challenge, or fail!
• And having said that, I've just come up against some fairly serious resistance to that "no resting" approach - some players really don't like it!

You Can't Stand Still

In my experience, the single biggest cause of the game getting bogged down is simply player inertia, generally caused by decisions simply taking a long time. Part of that is that PC groups don't as a rule have a nominated leader (and nor should they), part of it is a lack of an obvious right thing to do (a feature, not a bug), and a large part of it is a simple lack of urgency - there's no need to take a decision, there's the fear of taking the wrong decision, and so they just wait.

The solution to this is fairly simple, at least in concept: apply that sense of urgency. If it's clear that a decision, any decision, is better than simply not making a decision, then there's suddenly an incentive to get on with things.

In D&D, my solution to that is mostly the use of the wandering monster, coupled with a clear statement that such encounters are a bad thing - they don't carry treasure and they don't grant XP. So you do need to get moving, because if you just stop then trouble will find you.

The next step to that is to reintroduce the formal Turn structure that older versions of the game had, where time is split into 10 minute blocks and the party is expected to do something (and, indeed, each party member does one thing) in each block of time. Which gives a nice, clear clock for events. I haven't got to that yet...

Bogged Down

I mentioned in my previous post that I had made a mistake in "A Quest for Memory".

The problem is fairly simple: I built up to the first crucible, locked the PCs into the dungeon... and then the whole thing bogged down. They've reached a point where they're on hostile terms with all the factions within the dungeon, so now it's a case of explore a bit/fight/explore a bit/fight/repeat. There's not a huge amount of interest left there, I could really use an opportunity to organically write one of the characters out, but because they're locked in we're all somewhat stuck.

There are two big lessons to learn from that:

Firstly, don't lock the PCs into a location for very long. Keep the crucibles short!

Secondly, make sure there's plenty of interesting things within the dungeon, so that even if the PCs do get locked in the whole thing is less likely to come to a grinding halt.

As regards the current campaign, the way forward is relatively straightforward now - cut a lot of the unseen material (or at least gloss over it) so that the PCs get out of the crucible and on to more interesting things as quickly as possible. That feels like a bit of a cheat, but on the other hand it's preferable to spending another six sessions stuck.

Slice of Life: The Rule of Three

Scenario: the PCs find themselves as the crew of a Spelljammer vessel. In order to provide some grounding in the setting there should be some sort of play dealing with the mundanities of running the ship, but the truth is that much of that is largely routine and therefore of little interest. So, what to do?

Musing on this, I have come to the conclusion that you want to cover this three times, but with a different experience and emphasis each time.

The first time out should occur pretty much right away. The PCs should encounter each of the key parts of running the ship, should have a scene involving each, including the relevant rolls, and should gradually accumulate XP for doing so - just as with any other challenge. These are likely to be short and fairly dull scenes, but that's okay. But be sure to intersperse them with more interesting events.

The second time should come a level or two later, but certainly in the next few sessions. This one should take the form of a cut scene, highlighting that the PCs are now expert in running the ship and all this is now second nature. The idea here is to highlight progression, while also noting that all that stuff hasn't just gone away.

Then the third (and subsequent) time(s) should be those rare occasions when something interesting happens. Perhaps the crew has to manage the ship when the helm fails, or in the teeth of a storm in the Flow, or while under attack, or... In a campaign of a decent length you probably do want to include at least one such scene, given that you're running this type of campaign and not some other, but it should also be reasonably rare.

And that, basically, is that - the rule of three.

Wandering Monsters: Two Thoughts

As I've mentioned in some previous posts, I don't give out XP for wandering monsters. The intent here is to emphasise that such encounters are a bad thing. Which works really well, but there are two caveats I should add:

1. As a rule, it should be possible, albeit perhaps costly, to avoid a wandering monster encounter. The last two such encounters in my "Quest for Memory" campaign have taken the form of ambush attackers, which is far from ideal. I really must bear that in mind!
2. It's important that players are aware of how wandering monster encounters are triggered, so that they can act accordingly. I've been using the Angry DM's "Tension Pool" for this purpose, which works great... but it works much better with a physical pool that people can see on the table than it does in the virtual realm. I'll need to ponder that to see if I can come up with a better solution.

A Tale of Two Sessions

Due to the complexity of scheduling, I now find myself with both my games being scheduled for Thursdays, meaning that most days I have no gaming at all and then two sessions in a day. Which isn't ideal, but it's better than most of the alternatives.

Last Thursday was an odd day, then, in that the two sessions were radically different in outcome and character.

The work game was deeply underwhelming. The major reason for this was that I was woefully under-prepared for the session, largely due to just not having the time required. The other problem was that the PCs decided to conduct their infiltration under cover of daylight, meaning that pretty much all of the material that I had prepared was rendered useless. As a consequence, the session started late, ended early, and contained almost nothing of any value. And given that this is one of the centre-piece adventures of the campaign as a whole, that's pretty disastrous. A real shame.

By contrast, the game in the evening went much better, despite also being under-prepared. At least in this case the material that I had in place did apply, and the game was generally fun for all concerned. Which is a win.

It's also worth noting that the evening campaign has established (I think) that it works best as a very 'classic' campaign style - what is needed is a succession of well-designed short quests and dungeons, rather than anything more nebulous. So keeping the runway going there shouldn't be too tough.

But "The Lists of Lamordia" is a challenge. I clearly need to put in some more work on that centre-piece adventure, which really needs to pull together from the mess that is currently in place.

Player vs Player

We're now in a position in our campaign (though hopefully not for very long) where one of the PCs very definitely has a different agenda from another. This may or may not lead to direct conflict. I have a few thoughts on the topic.

Firstly, it is extremely important that everyone at the table be able to trust each other to play in good faith and to approach things in a muture manner. This is certainly not something that I would tackle with every group, nor with the first campaign with any new group (no matter how mature). Let everyone get into a good place before going down this route.

I'm also very much of the opinion (these days) that any such discussions are better had out in the open. There's a strange combined status in RPGs that is, I think, unique to the form: the players are both participants in the action and the audience. So by all means include individual storylines and crossed motivations in play, but allow everyone to enjoy watching the story unfold.

The doesn't mean that everything has to be out in the open, of course. My campaign also includes PC secrets as a factor, and some discussions really are best held in a one-on-one manner. However my default, and very definitely my default for potential PvP opposition, is that it should be done openly. If nothing else, that serves as something of a brake on the more egregious excesses.

I also strongly recommend that this is something that is done very sparingly. Dip a toe in the water, by all means, but don't throw your players bodily into a vat of acid! So while it's probably no bad thing that the PCs have differing agendas, it's probably best if those are focussed on possession of some third-party McGuffin rather than being a matter of besting one another in combat, and it's definitely better that any combat that results stops short of lethal damage.

And when in doubt, stop. It's better to call a halt to things, even if it leaves the story unfinished, than to damage real-life friendships!

I'll let you know how it goes.

A Matter of Style

Over on my main blog I've recently posted about a revelation concerned with "Style" in writing. This revelation has made me think about stylistic issues with RPG writing, and especially adventure writing.

The truth is, RPGs have actually lost something of style over the years. When D&D was first published, and especially in AD&D 1st Edition, one of the hallmarks was Gary Gygax's very idiosyncratic writing style. He had both an extremely extensive vocabulary and a penchant for obscurity over elucidation. He liked a big word.

Similarly, the early RPG "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" took many of the same tropes, respun them with a distinctly British madness, and produced an extremely stylish game. And then "Vampire: the Masquerade" took things in yet another direction, being infused with a style all their own.

But VtM and the other "World of Darkness" games are the last 'stylish' games that spring to my mind. And as time went on, both D&D and WFRP (and others) gradually lost a lot of the initial style that made them stand out. This was largely a conscious decision - the focus was shifted to creating RPGs that were approachable and easily understandable.

This was almost certainly the right decision. High Gygaxian is certainly interesting, but the price of favouring obscurity over elucidation is that, well, you lose out on elucidation. There are sections in the AD&D DMG that you can read carefully and repeatedly, and still end up none the wiser. Far better for rulebooks to be well structured, well organised, and to explain the rules in clear, unambiguous language. They're effectively technical manuals, and should be presented as such.

That latter does not apply to settings or adventures, however. Here, maintaining a strong and distinctive style has a very distinct benefit. "Planescape" certainly wasn't for everyone, but the distinct flavour of the setting is what made it what it was. Likewise "Dark Sun", "Spelljammer", and "Ravenloft". That's also why having "Forgotten Realms" and "Birthright" and "Dragonlance" is redundant - they're just too similar.

I rather suspect there's little hope of seeing nicely stylistic adventures in published works in future - Wizards of the Coast and Paizo both have a style that mitigates against it, and the various authors on the DM's Guild will inevitably follow WotC's lead to a very large extent.

What this does give rise to, though, is yet another consideration for the Ultimates version of Terafa, and also "The Quest for Memory" campaign. Rather than just following the lead and aping what's there, and therefore suffering the inevitable redundancy that follows, I now find myself questioning whether I need to focus on building up a different style.

Though that remains tricky - the overwhelming bulk of the writing I do is aimed at a technical audience, which means needing to be able to context switch between two mindsets. Still, it's a fairly fascinating line of thought...

Passing on the Lore

The 5e adventure "Storm King's Thunder" has a genuinely great concept. Firstly in the simplicity of the statement "Shakespearean Giants", and also in the detail (spoiler: King Hekaton's court is largely lifted from "King Lear"). Unfortunately, it falls down badly in the execution, because for the vast bulk of the campaign the PCs spend their time wandering around the Savage Frontier having adventures, gaining XP... and although they do deal with a lot of giants who are kicking off in various ways, it's seldom clear exactly why.

It is only later that the PCs run into a giant who explains all this - and who is essentially the Font of Exposition for the campaign.

The fundamental problem there is that there's a whole lot of lore behind the scenes, but it needs to get into the hands of the PCs. And the reason for this post is that "Storm King's Thunder" is far from being the only adventure or campaign to have this problem. Indeed, getting the lore to the players is a fairly inevitable challenge - there's bound to be something that it would be better that they knew, so how to tell them?

Some thoughts:

• One option is simply to inform the PCs, either in the role as DM or through an NPC simply providing exposition. That works, and has the advantage that there's no ambiguity there. The downside is that it's a blunt instrument - "show, don't tell" is considered good advice for a reason!
• One thing I've used to good effect in the past is the "Five things you know about..." post. I really should re-institute the use of this device. That's not much better than just telling the PCs (indeed, in many ways it's exactly like that), but it can at least be use for incidental lore, rather than tying directly into the matter at hand.
• I'm very much of the opinion that PCs should be rewarded for choosing relevant proficiencies. Therefore if a PC has relevant skills (be it a 'knowledge' proficiency, their background, or whatever), they should be fed an abundance of information... that may or may not be relevant.
• The best way of all is to provide lots of clues, and let the players build up the picture. This needs a lot of care, and will take loads of time. (Remember the Three Clue Rule!) And it's best to avoid false information. But it does have the big advantage that it gives the players the opportunity to go off exploring the various details that get dropped in, rather than just being guided by all the answers.

Oops

I've just fallen afoul of my big weakness when running 5e - I have a nasty tendency to misjudge the difficulty of encounters. Fortunately, this time the opposition were intent on capturing the PCs rather than killing them, so it hasn't completely derailed the campaign, but it's still not an ideal outcome.

Of course, the way that this always seems to fall out is that the encounter is pitched to be "about right", and then the PCs contrive some way to go in at less than full effectiveness, and then proceed to botch a few key rolls, and then the dominoes topple.

But on the other hand... yeah, it was just that bit too tough for them to deal with.

No matter. As noted, this hasn't derailed the campaign, though it will take it in a somewhat different direction. The next session is likely to be taken up with fixing the mess and getting back on track, and then things will proceed normally. So it's not too bad.

It is, however, something I definitely need to work on.

The Final Session

The final session of the year proved to be quite successful - the party had finally reached the end of their investigations and were able to take action. So they kicked in the door, dealt with some of the Stitched, interrogated a survivor, and then descended to the surgery below.

We left with a tense standoff between our PCs and the disguised imp Malewrath (because I reuse names extensively). Next time should see more action, and then we can move on to the wider campaign. Huzzah!

Another possible lesson to be had from this: D&D really handles action well, and is less good at everything else. So apply the focus there!

Anyway, the upshot of all that is that I was happy with the way things went today, happy with the way the year ended, and I'm confident with the way things are likely to go in the new year.

What Went Wrong?

As I said in my previous post, "The Mists of Lamordia" has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start. I'm hopeful it can recover, since I have a fairly clear idea of what to do with it, but the question remains: what went wrong? And, more importantly, what should I do differently in future?

I think the problem is really threefold:

Lack of Action

I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. In a dungeon design, most rooms will feature some sort of an encounter. In a mystery adventure, the dungeon rooms are replaced by the nodes of the investigation. Consequently, most of these should also feature some sort of an encouter. Unfortunately, while I did a good job of constructing the mystery, I neglected to insert appropriate encounters.

An Urban Mystery as the First Adventure

That said, I'm inclined to think it was a mistake to use an urban mystery as the first adventure. I would probably have been better to insert a more combat-based adventure, ideally in a wilderness/dungeon setting, prior to reaching the town. (And then using the mystery. It's not a bad adventure; it's just the wrong adventure at this time.)

I think a key part of the problem here is that PCs act differently in a 'civilised' region than in the wilds - in a dungeon they're happy to kick in the door, kill things, and take their stuff; in a city they're much more aware of social nuance and less prone to those decisive actions.

(That said, maybe one of the things I should have noted up-front is that while they're in a 'civilised' region, it's not that civilised. And, indeed, part of the joy of being a PC is the opportunity to be Batman, Dirty Harry, or other not-quite-legitimate authorities. So, actually, it is appropriate for them to throw their weight around. Even though, or perhaps especially because, it's not something they would ever do in reality.)

Anyway, I digress. Basically, I think I went for the wrong adventure at the wrong time.

Lack of Investigation Skills

One of the things I really considered, and then decided against, was advising the players that there is a set of knowledge/investigation skills in the game (Arcana, History, Investigation, Medicine, Nature, and Religion; and to a lesser extent Deception, Intimidation, Perception, and Persuasion), and that it would have been really useful if they'd tried to have someone with proficiency in each of these.

Making sure they collectively had a grounding in these subjects would have gone quite a long way to helping get information into their hands, and information is absolutely key to dealing with a mystery adventure. (And since the entire campaign is, to an extent, one big mystery adventure, that's a bit of a weakness!) As it is, the party is well versed in a few of these, but sorely lacking in several others.

Still, I might have a quiet word with a few people, and maybe suggest some gentle tweaking of the skills list to help cover the bases. And I'll also make sure to provide more information associated with the areas they're strong on than I otherwise might.

All in All...

I think perhaps the biggest problem is perhaps one of improperly set assumptions - given that I didn't mention that it would be good to have coverage of some specific skills, they didn't realise the benefit of doing so; and given that it's entirely realistic for people to operate differently in a 'civilised' region than an untamed wilderness, of course they did exactly that.

For next time, then, the main thing that I need to do is to properly set expectations. Where there are particular skills that would be especially useful, these should be flagged up. Where there are things that are counter-intuitive, it wouldn't hurt to actually mention these. And so on and so forth.

And, yes, run an initial adventure somewhere suitably isolated, so the party get to know their own skills and interactions before they have to deal with a whole world!

Smitten on Zalto's Anvil

We were finally able to resume our campaign today, and as feared the result was indeed the dreaded Total Party Kill. As is frequently the case with D&D, as soon as the first PC hit the deck the writing was on the wall - the party was then torn between sacrificing actions to bring people back into the fray or just letting them bleed out. And lacking a dedicated healer who could give meaningful amounts of hit points back, any recovery was short-lived.

The group therefore suffered a domino effect, and just found themselves overwhelmed. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

That brings the question about the next campaign into rather sharper focus. And I'm no closer to a resolution - on the one hand, running a pre-written campaign (and, ideally, a D&D 5e campaign at that) has a great deal of attraction to it as it would reduce the workload I have to face. On the other hand, I'm definitely attracted to the notion of running a campaign designed for about a year of play, which probably means going from 1st to about 8th level, and then coming to a definitive conclusion. That suggests that homebrew is probably the way to go.

I have a couple of weeks in which to come up with three options to put to the group, and then a couple more weeks before the campaign is due to start. (In reality, character creation will probably take a couple of weeks, so add a little more again.) That's really not long, especially if going the homebrew route.

What Would Make Them Stop?

One of the things I'm less than keen about in many published adventures (and, if I'm being honest, in my own adventures too) is that just about every opponent the PCs faces will fight to the death. Part of this is because D&D no longer has morale rules, and part of it is that the game is so punitive of attempts to flee or surrender. Nonetheless, it's something I'm not keen on.

As a corollary to that, I always see at least some thought given to what the villains of the piece want, and usually some thought given to why they want that. However, it's far less common, to the point of being unheard-of to see any thought given to the question of what would make them stop.

But that question is probably one that would give rise to better fleshed-out villains. Can the evil inquisator be persuaded of the error of her ways? Can the warlord be redirected from this conquest to a greater quest? Does the mafia boss have a favoured child who could persuade him to change his ways?

By asking, and answering that question, the door is then opened to solutions other than just fighting through hordes of minions before putting the Big Bad to the sword.

And sometimes the answer might well be "nothing". Some hurts are such that there's no stopping the revenge. Some insanities might not allow for being talked around. And that's fine, and it might even be the norm. But maybe it shouldn't be the only scenario?