Escalation in novels BAD; What You Should Do Instead

 Hello!

Now that I have your attention, I'll finish my sentence: Escalation in a novel is BAD when it is simply for the purpose of escalation; what you should do instead is fulfillment and variation. Escalation for its own sake is boring, because it's just more of the same. A battle against 1d8 wolves is fundamentally the same as 1d6 wolves (Just ask Ginny Di in her video about making encounters not suck. That video has great advice). I'll layout the issue with escalation and then provide some examples from anime, movies and tabletop games of how to resolve this. 

You should only escalate your story if it leads to the advancement of a plot or the completion of a character's goal. Escalation for the sake of escalation is actually a narrow way to write, which locks you into a particular narrative arc. 

For instance, it's great if you want to write a tournament style story.  With each victory, the protagonist climbs to a higher rank, and therefore each opponent should be a tougher challenge than the last. How else did the opponent last this long in the tournament? But if your protagonist is just wandering around a countryside, how are you going to escalate that? Make each area coincidently more dangerous than the last? You might find it difficult to hype up each new random opponent outside the structure of a tournament.

(Did you realize I was talking about Pokemon?) 

I remember a class, way back in Elementary School, when our teacher had us read this "story". It was about a kid eating a cookie. Then he ate a bigger cookie and then a much bigger cookie and then an even BIGGER cookie. Then she asked us if that was a fun story. I think it had to do with vocabulary, you know, using words like "giant", "huge" and "titanic" instead of repeatedly using "big", but it works for the case of escalation in novels as well. 

That story is escalation in its simplest form. It's about the kid eating cookies, and it escalates by him eating bigger cookies.  Does the escalation make that story better? No. 

What if the story began with his goal of eating the world's biggest cookie, as part of some "break the record" sort of ambition, and this had some great personal significance to him? Then the escalation serves a purpose. Eating that bigger cookie is a step on the road to the fulfilment of a goal, which can serve as a narrative arc. 

Or what if, instead of just cookies, the story included other deserts, like pie, which would require tableware to eat without getting messy, or ice cream in a hot area, so he would have to eat it quickly and risk a brain freeze. Doesn't that sound more interesting than a kid eating progressively bigger cookies? 

In the famous manga and anime, Dragon Ball Z, we find an example escalation that can get boring as well as an example of how variation can mitigate this. 

The Namek saga is infamous for being very long, and its climactic battle with Frieza even more so. This can be seen as a simple case of escalation: battling through Frieza's minions from weakest to strongest and then Frieza himself, who goes through a series of transformation that reveal more of his true power. Very little actually happens plot-wise or character-wise. 
(Personal aside - I really like Dragon Ball Z. I watched it every afternoon on Toonami after school. I watched the original Dragon Ball, G-T and Super.) 

There is one particular area of this very long arc that is different, and that is the battle with the Ginyu Force. These are Frieza's Elite, and they have some variation to them. Guldo, for instance, is the weakest of the bunch. In fact, Krillin and Gohan outclass him in terms of straightforward combat power. However, Guldo has more than straight-forward combat power. He can read minds and freeze time. He is very unusual in this regard, and that makes his battle different in nature. He is like a palate cleanser in that regard, because his teammates are more straightforward. Then we get to Captain Ginyu himself. He is a body-snatcher. He can force someone to switch bodies with him, which he does when he starts to lose. He'll even deliberately injury himself before doing so to handicap his opponent. Again, this is a variation that makes him more difficult to defeat than simply beating him into submission. 

Another example of variation comes from Yu Yu Hakusho. 

In the aftermath of the Dark Tournament arc, the protagonist, Yusuke, has become the tournament's champion. He won by overpowering this tall, imposing brute of a fighter. You might think that his next opponent would be stronger, more powerful, and more of a threat, right? No. The very next group is actually weaker than him, but they have particular abilities that bypass simple power: causing paralysis by stepping on the target's shadow, creating a field where certain actions are forbidden and supernaturally restricted, or like in the Dragon Ball Z example, mind-reading. These requires Yusuke and his friends to think in ways other than "punch the bad guy really hard". This is deliberate on the part of Yusuke's mentor, who feared he would stagnate otherwise.

These are old shows. It's not a novel technique. Yet, in the aftermath of the MCU's Avengers: Infinity War and End Game, a youtuber posted a video saying what a terrible precedent it set for cinema. Viewers would be impossible to please, they said, because they would keep demanding escalation: more heroes, bigger stakes, more, more, more. But no. That wasn't the case. The very next MCU movie was Ant-Man and the Wasp, which was very (pardon the pun) small scale. Two heroes trying to save one person by finding them in the (to be laconic) wilderness, that's it.

Finally, Dungeons and Dragons. This classic tabletop roleplaying game shows what I mean by avoiding escalation for fulfillment and variation. 

High-level play doesn't happen much. Players seldom reach level 20, the highest level in fifth edition, and when they do, they seldom stay there long. This is because it gets boring. Their characters have likely completed their character arcs by then. The story of the campaign might be over. Furthermore, many Dungeon Masters just throw tougher monsters at them as a way of escalating the challenge. This runs into what is called the "Chunky Kobold Problem". 

A kobold is one of the weakest monsters: small, fragile and weak. A Tarrasque is one of the most powerful: big, tough and strong.  Yet, fighting the latter is fundamentally the same as the former. It just takes longer. If used for the simple purpose of escalation, then the Tarrasque is just a big and chunky kobold. 

Enter the infamous "Tucker's Kobolds". These little guys come from a short story where they are shown to terrify high level players with their creative tactics and refusal to fight directly and openly. They are not stated to be any more powerful than standard kobolds, but they lean heavily into the Kobold lore of being master trap makers. By using a variety of tactics, they can force player-characters much more powerful than them to think creatively as well. Suddenly, fighting kobolds is a multi-faceted event. It's not about more kobolds or more powerful kobolds or any sort of escalation. It's about what these particular kobolds can do and why the players are willing to mess with them. 

As for the Tarrasque, the Dungeon Dudes present many fine uses for this creature that avoid making it a big and chunky kobold. 

(Another personal aside: The Dungeon Dudes are awesome. They have so many videos on so many aspects of the game. Really deep and creative stuff, and their advice is system agnostic. You can even use it for novel writing). 

One of the many ways they suggest running a Tarrasque is to introduce it EARLY in the story, when the player characters have absolutely no chance of defeating it outright. It is not a mere monster but a force of nature; you don't defeat it, you survive it. Gaining strength, developing powers, finding special magic weapons, all these are driven by the goal of ultimately defeating this ultimate monster. Thus, rather than some novelty to throw at high-level players who need something tough to beat down, it is instead the fulfillment of a narrative arc and the climax of a campaign. 

...This is long. It's a bigger topic than I expected. I might write another post on a specific aspect later on. 

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

New book up! Catalyst for Glorious Change!

PathFinder - First Edition - Core Rulebook

After Wizards of the Coast did that One D&D OGL debacle, I decided to explore other TTRPG systems, and the first one on my list was Pathfinder. I've heard that the first edition was nicknamed "D&D 3.75 E", so I decided to start there for the similarities. 

My first impression: "A lot crunchier than D&D 5E". I had read the books for D&D 3.5 E, but I hadn't actually played it. My play experience is with 5E exclusively. There are a lot more skills in PF 1E, as well as tiers for status effects and conditions, and also a lot of different kinds of bonuses. On the one hand, I like this because D&D 5E can be pretty restrictive and limiting, and on the other hand, this is a lot more to keep track of. I spoke with someone at a Rennaissance Festival about this, and he remarked that he had to use a smart phone app to manage it all. 

I like greater depth in the classes compared to D&D 5E, the barbarian, for instance. In D&D 5E, there really is no reason not to rage immediately at the start of each encounter, because you could keep it up through the encounter and were unlikely to run out of rages in a single day. Here, raging is a more strategic resource, bestowing advantages and disadvantages (unable to spell-cast while raging is hardly a disadvantage). 

CRAFTING! I really like the idea of crafting items, but the rules in D&D 5E are so scant in terms of crafting, and those that exist are so onerous, that me and one of my players had to homebrew a system for his character to make more types of poisons than basic and in a reasonable amount of game time (we based it off how a wizard can learn new spells, but added a research function; he wanted to be this "artisan poison crafter"). 

All that said, I'm not sure what sort of a grade to assign, because the actual experience is in playing, and I'm not going to play 1st edition. By now, I suspect that PF 1E tables are going to be harder to find than PF 2E tables. I mostly read this to understand how it differs from both PF 2E and D&D 5E. Yes, I am a nerd! 

Trickster Eric Novels gives " PathFinder - First Edition - Core Rulebook" a Thumbs Up

Click here for my next book review: The Last Dragonlord

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Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

New book up! Catalyst for Glorious Change!

Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn

Inspired by Critical Role? Want to run your own campaign in their world? This is your ticket to Exandria! 

This book is a guide to the world of Exandria, specifically Tal' Dorei. It contains a LOT of stuff. There's history, lore, sub-classes, plot-hooks, and, yes, post-epilogue info about Vox Machina. And gorgeous art. This artwork is stunning. I'll go into some of the extensive content here. 

If you want to set up shop in this setting, you have all you need here. A detailed map of the Tal' Dorei continent is included in the front, and each area of it has its own section detailing all its stuff. Towns, environments, brief history, persons of interest, plot hooks etc. What I also like about this is how flexible it is. There's a lot of detail but nothing demands a particular direction. 

The plot hooks create a general start to the adventure, and they point to a possibility, but it is vague enough for a Game Master to do with it what they want. There is little baggage except for what the Game Master and players sign up for by choosing this campaign setting. Even then, there is advice for making changes, such as considering how the addition of a large city would affect the local area and its history. 

The sub-classes sound like fun. Barbarian-Juggernaut especially sounds like fun to play: position control against a single large enemy, charging through smaller mobs, and breaking through structures (both in and out of combat; There Was a Door). 

The Vestiges of Divergence are here, both those from Critical Role campaign 1 and some others. I like the guidance given on how to unlock them as the campaign goes on. It is incentive to be invested in the character and to role-play, while also not being strict about how it has to happen, no alignment-straitjacket style thing. 

Vox Machina info is everywhere, but it is well integrated. Each member has their own section at the end of the book with their post epilogue activities and a stream-lined character sheet, but they are not confined there. They are included as relevant: 

Keyleth is in the section for the Air Ashari, being their Voice of the Tempest and leading them into a new era; Percy and Vex are in Whitestone, tinkering and leading the Grey Hunt. respectively. There's a footnote about how the group started in the wretched hive of Stillben, etc. 

Art is gorgeous. The map of the setting, the illustrations of characters and places, the full page spread of the WildMother and the LawBearer with the backdrop of their respective divine domains....Whatever Critical Role Studios/Darrington Press paid the illustrators; the result was worth every cent. 

Trickster Eric Noves gives Tal-Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn an A+

Click here for my previous book review: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? volume 5

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Dungeons and Dragons - Honor Among Thieves (movie review)

This is truly a Dungeons and Dragons movie. It is not just a medieval-Europe fantasy movie with the D&D name on it. It doesn't merely use lore from an official D&D setting (Forgotten Realms in this case). This really is the experience of D&D as a movie. 

You can see it in the way the plot is set-up and executed. You can see it in the way the main cast members interact. You can see it in the way battles play-out, especially with the magic. Yes, the magic system in the movie obeys similar rules as the game. It's a lot of fun to watch this play out.  Fun. To describe the movie in a word, that is what it is. This is a fun movie. 

Fitting for a movie sub-titled "honor among thieves", this movie can be called The Heist at a very high level. Edgin Darvis is a bard and he is putting a team together so they can steal from a dangerous and powerful individual.  As this mission develops, you can see the Game Master setting up the goals and challenges for the player party. Each set-piece is a challenge for the players to overcome through the use of their skills and their creativity and their teamwork.
Travel scenes are boring, so the Game Master typically skips over them.

This is a team that works together, but its members also bicker. There is a scene where they argue about the plan is going to be. That is precisely what it is like to be in a D&D party about to go on a mission; they argue about what to do and who is going to do what.  The scene in the battlefield graveyard, where they use the Speak with Dead spell, is quintessentially a party trying to find the information they need. 

Everyone gets their character moments; moments to shine and moments to roleplay are shared by all of the main cast, and no one interrupts. When Edgin is expositing on his backstory, he gets to do this bard thing (story-telling and persuasion) and he also dispenses Bardic Inspiration. Holga, a barbarian, gets to be a total badass in a fight scene with guards and also a personal roleplay scene with her ex-husband. Doric, a druid, has this amazing wild-shape chase scene. Yendar shows gets moments to be paragon of both mighty stoic warriors and compassionate holy warriors. Everyone gets their moment to be important and contribute to the success of the mission, because D&D is a communal experience; it is people coming together to tell a story together. 

Magic! There is legit D&D magic in this movie. I noticed Meteor Swarm, Polymorph, Misty Step, Gravity Reverse, Prestidigitation, and even Bigsby's Hand! Atunning to a magical item is a plot-point and it becomes an awesome moment, too. Blink and you'll miss it, but there is a clutch break-the-caster's concentration moment in the climax. 

Having said all this, it is not necessary to be a fan of D&D or to know anything about it to appreciate or understand the film. It works perfectly well as a generic fantasy adventure story. The "attuning to a magic item" thing I mentioned is presented as "I have to do this thing or the item won't work", which is all a viewer needs to know. Knowledge of D&D just makes for a richer experience. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Dungeons and Dragons - Honor Among Thieves" an A+

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Dungeon and Dragons module - Dragon Heist

Welcome to Waterdeep, grandest city on the Swordcoast!

This book is advertised as an adventure module for D&D 5E, but it's actually a lore book about the setting for the adventure, Waterdeep. This is a good thing. This is why. 

The story takes place in the city of Waterdeep and is set up for new characters, those just starting their careers as adventurers. This starting adventure provides them with a home base in the city, invitations to the various Factions, and many things to do other than the Dragon Heist. Indeed, the "main story" as it were, doesn't start until chapter 3 and is only truly focused on during chapter 4. There are a total of eight chapters. The Dragon Heist is clearly not the focus of the book. 

No, the focus of the book is clearly establishing Water Deep as a city of adventure and providing the Game Master with the tools to tell their own story. 

The first chapter is a rescue mission tangentially related to the Dragon Heist. It gets the party involved with some of the city's residents, earns them some fame/credibility as adventurers, and rewards them with a home base. This is not just a house but a tavern. It is a place of business, which is then connected to other businesses and guilds. It is the start of adventures. As the saying goes, "You All Meet in an Inn". 

The second chapter focuses in on these connections. It speaks of how the guilds operate in relation to the tavern. It speaks of the tavern's neighbors, shop owners forming a self-contained community. It speaks of the Factions, and how one or more of them seek to recruit one or more members of the player party. It speaks of the missions those who accept such an invitation can go on.  Even the start of chapter 3 speaks of how the player party only gets involved in the main plot because of how this plot impacts this web of connections. 

Four chapters are given over to describing the lairs of the various villains. The book outright states that going to any of them is purely optional, and likely only to happen if the player party fails at some scripted encounter in chapter 4. So, there are four dungeons fully described with maps and treasures and thugs primarily included to sketch out a villain's organization. 

The final main chapter is a tour guide of the city. Literally, it is framed as something written for an in-universe reader. It describes the city's history, layout of its wards, guild system, law code, methods of moving around, and even tourist traps.  This has absolutely nothing to do with the Dragon Heist. It is just here to further flesh out the city. Which is just as well, because the Dragon Heist is pretty lame as written. 

Chapter 4 is the only chapter solely focused on the Dragon Heist. It is comprised of a series of scripted encounters where the player party scrambles to acquire the Macguffin before the villain does. There are 4 villains to choose from, and each villain has its own encounter sequence. Which is great for replay value, theoretically at least. Reading through it, I felt it relies on rail-roading to stay on track. One scene says the player party gets arrested, just arrested, like Cutscene Impotence in a video game. The book even suggests corrective measures if the player party gets the Macguffin too quickly. 

The artwork is fantastic. It looks great. It shows the many sides of Waterdeep in all its seasons. Occasionally, I came across two-page full spreads of a given scene. A pleasant surprise indeed. 

If this were an actual lore book instead of an adventure module, I'd give it full marks. Because the adventure itself is lack-luster and rail-roady, it loses points. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Dungeon and Dragons module -  Dragon Heist" a B+

Click here for my previous book review:  She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wiseman - Volume 1 (read for fun)

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Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

The Gamemaster's Book of Non-Player Characters (read for fun)

This is a book I spotted at Barnes and Nobles while browsing. It sounded useful, and it was a hardcover book at a decent price, so I decided to give it a shot. I have mixed feelings about it. 

First,

There are three one-shot adventures.  I can't say I'm a fan of them. All three are basically guided tours by an NPC, and not a friendly one either. All three are based on one NPC leading the characters through specific events on the way to a climax; the first two are deceivers responsible for the trouble in the adventure, and the third is not because they are a prison warden overseeing an earn-your-freedom ritual. It is totally rail-roading. The sidebars even try to pre-empt any attempt at deducing these first two NPCs are liars to keep the adventure on track. If a single high Insight check can derail the whole module, then, in my opinion, that is a shoddy module. 

I get that these are one-shots, meant to be completed within a single session, and so there is little room for deviation, but this is not a video game. This is a tabletop roleplaying game. Players have agency. If you're going to set up something like this, then you should have alternative routes or just remove the single point of failure all together. 

Now, the first adventure is a lot more vulnerable to this than the second. The second DOES acknowledge that the player party can call the NPC on their lies and accommodates this in a way that allows the adventure to continue basically as written.

Second,

The majority of the book is filled with full character pages. They are divided between location and then further by categories such as Rulers, Commoners, Lawbreakers and Criminals, and finally, Outcasts. There really are a lot of characters here, so the author is not exaggerating when they say the book contains hundreds of unique characters. However, I wouldn't say they are all "fully realized", as the back of the book claims. 

Some of them are, to be sure. A solid backstory, clear motives, interesting twist in their "secret" or "obstacle" section and further details in what they are carrying. Those are fun to read. Others are frustrating. 

You see, some of these "fully realized" characters have too much baggage to be easily used in a campaign. Their backstory might have certain requirements of the setting. Their goals might be vague; clear enough in concept but requiring building out in details to actually be used in practice. Who wants to roleplay the results of an accounting error?

Many of them leave dangling questions. This one is particularly frustrating because the author states at the start of the book that the book doesn't have "all the answers", and then provides characters that are more questions than answers.  

So, this character is pregnant with a "child of prophecy". What prophecy?

So, this character is attempting to keep a terrible creature sealed. What terrible creature?

So, this character wants to prevent their hometown from changing in some undescribed manner and decides to do that by flooding it, killing everyone and destroying the town itself. How does that accomplish anything?

Then there are characters that are written in a way that implies certain things rather than stating them. I think this is to make the character more flexible, open to interpretation, but it can also make the character less coherent overall. 

Some of these homebrew abilities are ridiculous, such as a lawful evil humanoid lion that enslaves humanoids. They can use this ability thrice per long rest, humanoids have disadvantage on the save, it lasts for 24 hours (no secondary save) and the reasoning is simple overwhelming charisma.  A DM would have to put a lot of context around such a character to make fighting this guy fun instead of frustrating. 

I also find issue with how, if family members are mentioned in the backstories, they are either dead or antagonistic. The former is too close to the trope "Stuffed Into a Fridge" for my taste, and the latter mandates using the family as villains if this NPC is used; to not use them as villains removes a significant chunk of characterization, thus making the decision pointless. 

Overall, a lot of these "fully realized" characters have to be modified, trimmed, adapted etc. to be used in a given campaign. It's not a plug-and-play thing, like I was expecting. There is a section for much simpler character outlines, more easily selected and used on the spot. I think those are meant to be selected during the session and the rest are meant for planning stages between sessions. 

Some characters have full page artwork, which is nice. It is good art. 

This is definitely a useful book for a gamemaster. The important thing is to set your expectations. This is useful for character inspiration, side quest fundamentals, campaign reference, and that is mostly it. During a session, it will, at best, slow things down. Use a generator app instead. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "The Gamemaster's Book of Non-Player characters" a C+

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Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Curse of Strahd - D&D 5E module (read for fun)

I picked this up because I heard a lot about Strahd and his Ravenloft castle. I got curious. This book here is a revision of the classic adventure for Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition. It is a Gothic Horror story, where the adventurer party is trapped within the cursed land of Barovia, and the only way they can escape is if they kill its lord, the vampire Strahd. 

My impression of this module is "wide-open sandbox". After the players arrive in Barovia and get their bearings, they can go anywhere they want. There are no Beef Gates or Broken Briges to stop them from entering a given area.  Each area has its own chapter, and each is written in such a way that events from one area do not influence events in other areas (with few exceptions). Thus, the party can visit each area in whatever order they want. 

As far as I can tell, there is no intended story line. No plotted course for the DM exists within the book. Such a course is only vaguely implied. This is what I think. 

The party arrives in Barovia. Ismark asks the party to help him escort his sister, Ireena, to the walled city of Vallaki, where she will hopefully be safe from Strahd. Once in Vallaki, the party becomes involved with Strahd's plot to attack the city's church. Regardless of whether or not the party thwarts this plot, Ismark states that this city is not as safe as he hoped. The only other option is Krezk, another settlement at the far end of the region. A subplot or two to gain access to this city of shut-ins is next, which requires traveling to regions the party otherwise might not think to visit. Once inside, Ireena is reunited with the ghost of Sergei, her lover from a past life. After this, Strahd is furious enough to seek out the party directly. At that point, the party either confronts him at some place nearby or goes directly to his castle. 

There is far more to the module than what I just wrote. In fact, there is so much in the book, I don't think a DM would be able to bring it all into one campaign. I think that is the point, re-play value.

This module contains a mechanism for randomizing certain aspects of the story. The location of key items, the identity of a key ally, and location where Strahd can always be found: a tarot card reading performed by an NPC tells these to the characters. So, each playthrough of the campaign can be different. If nothing else, it provides options to the DM. 

Besides the story events and this in-universe randomizing, the book contains a lot of art. It is beautiful art, creepy art, and beautifully creepy art.  Some of them fill entire pages. 

If I had one complaint to make of this module, it is the rigidity of the setting to change. In many places, the module states that the players cannot make the situation in a given place any better. The reasons vary from "character X is incurably insane/beyond redemption" to "the Dark Powers will prevent/negate the improvement", which is as frustrating as any thought terminating cliche.  Also, the players can't make the situation in a given area worse either, because it could hardly get any worse, just a different kind of bad. I understand that this story is Gothic Horror, but it's frustrating in a game. Then again, the rigidity is sufficiently justified internally, and I imagine that the writers at Wizard of the Coast expect a DM to tweak things here and there. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Curse of Strahd - D&D 5E module" an A+

Click here for my previous book review: Anansi Boys

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Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - Dungeons and Dragons 5E (read for fun)

I was really excited to read this one.

I picked it up because I heard that it did interesting things with character creation, and that it provided a leg up for the Ranger core class. It does all this and more. First, character creation. 

Lots of options here for customization. Unlike previous books, which provided generators and tips for adding flavor, there are numerous mechanical options here. When I heard that TCoE would allow players to mix and max race options, I was afraid that it would open the door to illogical powergaming, without respect to lore. While powergaming is definitely an option, as it always is, the lore is still intact. For instance, if you wanted to build a wizard in the past, then it was recommended to go High Elf, Tiefling or Human to get a bonus to Intelligence. A dwarf wizard would always be inferior for lacking that, which discouraged roleplay possibilities. Now, with TCoE, a player can officially state that "my dwarf character was more studious than other dwarves, and so he is more intelligent, but he's not quite as hardy as other dwarves." There is no official way for non-dwarves to get explicitly dwarfish racial abilities, like their poison resistance, so that is reassuring. 

Also on the same subject, is the idea of changing class features and even archetypes mid-campaign. I'm a dungeon master, and so I've had my share of players who want to change things up about their character or even start a new character. I've struggled to find ways to accommodate those requests within the story. Again, I'm a lore guy. I want to keep things consistent and make sure that those things have an in-universe and lore-based reason. This book helps with that by providing mechanical ways to allow and, at the same time, regulate character changes. It also has fun lore-based reasoning examples. 

Next is the Ranger core class update. All the classes received new archetypes or other options, but the Ranger is the only one that got a total overhaul. Seriously, these aren't additional features so much as they are replacement features. I understand that there is some disappointment over how the official overhaul isn't as powerful as the Unearthed Arcana, but I feel that is to be expected. In my experience, UA is always really powerful and then it gets toned down for official rules after playtesting. 

Finally, Sidekicks. The last thing in my review is going to be about the rules for sidekicks. I'd like to do more, but I'm trying to keep this review short (ish).  Sidekicks/pets/etc. have long been on the fragile end in 5E. There's a lot of roleplay potential in them, and interesting character build options for them, but they're only viable at the lower levels. These new rules make them more viable, because they can level up with the PC and gain other benefits. I say this from a place of experience. In my home game, a player befriended a pseudo-dragon, and I used these rules to make the tiny creature less squishy. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything " an A+

Click here for my next book review: The Irregular at the Magic High School - light novel volume 1

Click here for my previous book review:   The Trials of Apollo - the Hidden Oracle (read for fun)

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

The Monsters Know What They're Doing (read for fun)

So many monsters, so many choices, how does a Dungeon Master know what to do? They could read all the stats in the Monster Manual, crunch all the numbers, and brainstorm all the possible tactics for both practicality purposes and roleplay purposes,  and then keep all that information handy for their sessions. Or they could read this book and follow its advice. 

This is a third-play supplement for Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, and it is designed to help DMs run monster encounters in their sessions. It is specifically for combat encounters. The author is very clear on this point. He only considers monster traits that are useful in direct combat, so if a monster has something like Clairvoyance, which has no combat utility, he is going to ignore it. However, if a certain monster is set up so that it is likely to avoid direct combat, then he will mention that. Night hags, Rakashata, and Succubus/Incubus are mentioned to be more like sub-plots rather than single encounters. This is due to their written lore. 

That's one of the great things that the author, Keith Ammann, has done in this book. He doesn't write purely optimize encounters.  This is not a book of "the most effective way to kill your players with monster x". No, the book has the title that it does for a reason. The Monsters Know What they're Doing, because the lore states that they behave in a certain way. Mr. Ammann looks at the written lore, considers the stat block, and then deduces how a given monster will fight. Then, once he has the framework of the monster's mindset, then he looks for the optimized way the monster would fight from within that mindset. 

Night hags, Rakashata, and Succubus/Incubus don't have much going for them in straight-forward combat. The lore states that they accomplish their goals outside of combat, and their traits support this perception. So, Mr. Ammann writes their entries that way. These monsters will avoid combat, only resort to it when cornered, and attempt to escape instead of fighting to the death. That, by the way, is another great thing about this book. 

D&D is not a video game. Not every monster will fight to the death in every occasion. Humanoids, for instance, will typically attempt to parley or retreat when their HP gets too low, as their lore dictates. This is because they are mortal creatures that have evolved over time, so they have survival instincts, and so they will try to avoid death. That is the standard Mr. Ammann uses, a mortal creature that has evolved over time. When such a creature becomes badly hurt (lost a specific percentage of their HP), it flees in a manner appropriate to it. Goblins will scramble in a disorganize rabble, hobgoblins will retreat in as organized a fashion as they can manage, and mind flayers will cast plane shift. 

Avoiding combat, fleeing from combat, now we come to the meat of the matter, how the monsters will act in combat. 

Each monster has a goal it wants to achieve. According to lore, few creatures will attack the party unprovoked just to kill them. Beasts and monstrosities will want to eat them. Fiends will want to corrupt them or use them in an evil plan of some kind, or they will come into conflict when the party tries to stop their evil plan. Elementals are forces of nature, and so the player party might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

I will focus on that last one because it is one where I have experience. I am a dungeon master myself, and so I've read this book thinking about how I could use it in an actual session. In one of those sessions, I attacked the party with a water elemental. I followed the book's advice on running elementals. 

As forces of nature, the elementals don't have needs or desires like physical creatures. They don't need to eat, have no use for possessions, and don't have survival instincts either. In fact, fighting to the death actually helps them get what they want. They are creatures consisting entirely of supernatural energy from an elemental plane, so the only reason they would appear on the Material Plane is if some spell-caster summoned them to it and forced them to take on a physical form. If they "die", then they just go back to their home plane, which is exactly what they want. Until that happens, they follow their nature. 

A fire elemental, for instance, will want to set as many things on fire as it can. So, it will use its full movement on every turn to run to creatures and objects so it can set them on fire by touching them. Not attacking, just touching them. They will ignore opportunity attacks to do this.  Now a water elemental will attack differently. It wants to flow. So it will try to engulf as many targets as it can using its Overwhelm feature in its attempts to drown them. 

I followed that advice for my session, and it worked out very well. The party failed their DEX saves, which meant they took damage and were at risk of drowning from the start of the encounter. By the way, they had an average level of 4 and lacked magical weapons. It was a dangerous situation. They desperately freed the trapped party members and then escaped before the elemental killed them all. It was an exciting encounter. 

This book has great advice, and it is written in a friendly manner. Keith Ammann doesn't deliver his advice in a manner that suggests "my way is the best way" or that a DM should be antagonistic to the players. It is rather the confidence of someone who has crunched the numbers, read the lore, and considered long and hard about how a particular monster would behave in combat. The goal here is to deliver challenging, interesting and diverse combat encounters, so that everyone can fun playing D&D. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "The Monsters Know What they're Doing" an A+

Click here for my next book review:  A Certain Scientific Accelerator V2

Click here for my previous book review:  A Certain Magical Index - light novel volume 2

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Yashahime is someone's D&D campaign (a fan's theory)

Hello Internet! Today I'm going to explain why I think the Yashahime anime is based on someone's Dungeon and Dragons campaign. 

SPOILER ALERT! This is going to involve spoilers for the first season, so beware of that. SPOILER ALERT!

I finished watching season 1 of Yashahime this past week. It was good. It wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be, but that is a different subject. It is a related subject because it is what lead me to this fan theory, but I won't go further into that. 

The first season has kind of a strange start to it. First it uses In Media Res as a frame narrative for jumping back to the original cast of Inuyasha. Then it jumps forwards to the main characters of Yashahime, but not as they are in the first scene of the show. There isn't a series goal like in the original show, not even after a couple of episodes to set things up. In fact, the three half-demon princesses of the title refuse a quest from the Tree of Ages that could become such a series goal, and then they go off to slay random demons, and they may or may not even work together doing that much. 

It is directionless, few things have narrative build-up, and the three main characters all act on their own initiative instead of collaborating towards a larger group goal. That's when it hit me, this is a Dungeons and Dragons party!

There are three player characters, and all of them choose the same class, race, background etc. None of them wanted to change for party diversity, so their party consists entirely of half-demon magic knights who fight in melee. All of them choose to be descendants of this mega important lore character (Inu-no-Tashio/ The Great Dog General), so the dungeon master decides that they are all related to each other, but only the player for Towa likes this idea. Towa's player decides that her character and Setsuna are twin sisters, but Setsuna's player isn't eager to agree, so the dungeon master splits the difference and says that Towa and Setsuna ARE sisters and also says that Setsuna doesn't remember the time they were together. This way, both players can do their own roleplay the way they want. 

The dungeon master creates this epic campaign narrative where the three half-demon princesses work together to defeat an old foe of their grandfather, Kirinmaru, and chooses the Tree of Ages to deliver this quest to them. However, the players decide they're not interested. Towa is more interested in her own character quest (recovering Setsuna's memories), and Setsuna and Moroha want to do their demon slaying / bounty hunting roleplay. 

Thus, the dungeon master, not wanting to railroad the players, decides to give them what they want. First, DM creates a new quest giver in Juybei the corpse collector, who then tells them about demons causing trouble in the area. This leads to a bunch of one-shot sessions staring random demons, which the three player characters kill quickly and easily. In D&D 5E, random encounters and non-boss encounters only last a handful of rounds, after all, and these three players started at levels higher than first level, too. That's why they have so many abilities at the start of the campaign. 

Also, the demon bounty targets tend to evaporate or turn to ash when slain, so no bounty. No treasure and no loot. This is the dungeon master being sore over not getting to play out their epic quest. 

Then the dungeon master slips plot-relevant demons into the bounty hunting, the Four Perils who serve Kirinmaru. The one-shot quests then become tied into the original epic quest that the dungeon master planned. Then there's Homura, who fills in a necessary gap in the backstory for the Towa and Setsuna PCs. At that point, the players decide to humor the dungeon master and try the epic narrative. So they go back to the Tree of Ages, the original quest giver, but the dungeon master has already changed the prepared narrative so that the Tree of Ages isn't important anymore (at least right now). 

It is at this point that the players for Setsuna and Moroha complain to the dungeon master about the favoritism shown to Towa. They're all players so why is Towa's character arc getting so much more focus than them? The dungeon master explains that Towa's player gave her character a character arc, and they did not do the same for theirs. So, they work together to create something, which is introduced to the narrative in more one-shot sessions. 

Moroha gets the history that she trained with a wolf demon, and then gets a present-day duel with her former teacher, which the dungeon master ties into the main narrative via the Four Perils. 

Setsuna gets the history of the hidden half-demon village/orphanage where she was raised. She says that she regularly patrols the surrounding area to chase away demons.  At least, she patrols when she has time for it. This is a justification for why she hasn't done any patrolling before now in the story. 

Towa's player isn't happy about being excluded from both of these sessions/episodes, so the dungeon master frames the second one as an opportunity for Towa to bond with Setsuna. That pleases her. 

Finally, we come to the season 1 finale. The Towa and Setsuna players are finally onboard with the epic quest that the dungeon master wanted to do at the start, but Moroha's player isn't, so Towa and Setsuna get her onboard by saying they will place a bounty on Zero (Kirinmaru's sister) themselves. This leads to the epic fight that the DM has been planning since the Tree of Ages offered this quest. In gratitude, DM lets the players use higher level abilities by staging the fight on a Place of Power, the ruined mansion where their grandfather died. 

Finally, we come to Setsuna's death. The player for Setsuna has bonded with Towa's player enough to feel comfortable roleplaying the long-lost-sister angle, and acknowledges this in character. Towa's player is still committed to this idea, hasn't gotten bored of it, and so the dungeon master lends them a hand. He has a lore important NPC, Sesshoumaru, offer a chance at an unorthodox resurrection technique. 

Did this really happen? Is Yashahime based on someone's D&D campaign? Probably not. But it's fun to think about. By viewing the series through this lens, I could enjoy it more. 

What do you think? Does my theory make sense? Let me know in a comment. 

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

A Magical Medieval Society - Western Europe - Second Edition

As a novelist of the fantasy genre, as well as a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master, I often want to create a medieval European fantasy world. I seek to delve into its details and bring it to life. Not just as a backdrop for an adventure, but to create a fully realized simulation of reality. This book helps me do that, both in a novel and in a campaign setting for a tabletop roleplaying game.

This book lays out how to generate manors, medieval towns, and keeps. It provides rules for creating settings at the scale of kingdoms, villages, and everything in between; both generalized methods and more detailed methods. With a little bit of time and math, a novelist or game master can work out how many people are in a given area, how many of them are spellcasters, how much food they raise, how much land is under cultivation, etc. That is useful, but this book is more than just a collection of generators.

It lays out, in general terms, how the medieval system commonly known as "feudalism" works, both historically and how things like D&D-style magic fit into such a system. It gives a brief description of concepts like vassalage, land=power, the medieval idea of "justice", and how non-modern systems of commodity exchange function. Again, this is in general terms. The author mentions that there are many variations of these customs and things changed over time, because the concept of "Medieval Europe" encompasses over a dozen nations over a thousand or so year period (the medieval idea of "nationhood" is also touched on).

When the author says this is a book for creating a medieval society that is not restricted to real life medieval history, that is a true statement. At no point does real life history influence a section, nor does a real life country stand as a substitute. What is present here are common structures, practices, customs etc. that can create the flavor of a generalized medieval European culture without adapting any particular country's history. The author even mentions which parts of medieval society would be influenced by modern ideas, such as gender equality, and advises the novelist/GM in question to consider the implications of such for their fictional country's history.

The book also has sections for building organizations. Guilds, manor staff and armies are laid out in detail. There are tables for generating them, such as how much to pay for a particular kind of soldier, and how much food a given soldier of a given race needs to consume. There are explanations of how guilds function, and certain rules used by historical guilds to govern themselves. From the baker's guild to the royal court, this book provides novelists and game masters a template to work from, thus reducing their research and prep time. 

Finally, spread throughout the chapters, are considerations about how magic as presented in D&D would influence a medieval world. For the most part, not much. Magic can be one more resource a lord can tax to add to their wealth or prepare for war. Wizards can be one more trade guild among many. Clerics possessing divine magic isn't going to stop them from getting into theological disputes with each other, nor from insisting to non-clerics that their god is the only one deserving of worship.  Admittedly, that is kind-of depressing. 

However, this is only for a low-magic setting. The author assumes a low magic setting, where even low-level spell casters are few in number, and the secrets of both Arcane magic and Divine magic are closely guarded and regulated secrets. The author admits this is to keep the scale of the societal alterations manageable. 

In the book, the author states that a moderate or high-level magic setting would cause so many changes to the medieval European world that the scale of it becomes mind-boggling. Thus, it would be difficult to state in brief. Indeed, many of the considerations of the influence D&D style magic has on historical medieval Europe are short. They are limited to small scale instances like, "most building teams probably have at least one person who knows the Feather-Fall spell", or something like "any king who can manage it likely has an abjuration wizard in his bodyguard". 

This is understandable. A full consideration of the effects of D&D style magic on a historical medieval Europe would be very long, like one volume per aspect of the society. Then there's the possibility that the GM/novelist using this book doesn't use D&D-style magic, which would then limit the book's usability. So, the author's desire to be small scale and general in the interest of staying concise is totally understandable. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives an A+

Click here for my next book review:  The Isolator - Realization of Absolute Solitude. manga volume 1

Click here for my previous book review:  So I'm a Spider So What - light novel volume 5

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage (D&D adventure module) (read for fun)

I wanted to learn how to build dungeons and stock with them encounters. I do not just mean monsters to fight or traps to avoid but a full adventure. So I looked to the professionals of the "world's greatest roleplaying game" and picked up the mega-dungeon known as Undermountain. 

This is a review for "Dungeon of the Mad Mage".

Wow, this module is versatile. The flexibility written into this mega-dungeon is amazing. I was expecting something that was a one-size-fits all sort of thing. You know, something like the modules that Adventure's League DMs run: the players arrive for X reason, and then Y happens. Let the players react and then tell them to do Z. This book isn't written like that at all. In fact, it is so flexible it is less of a pre-written adventure and more like a pre-written setting that includes set-piece events for a DM to use or adapt for their own adventure. 

For instance, the first chapter provides adventure hooks for the party but acknowledges that players can have their own reasons for entering Undermountain. The players aren't locked into a particular quest or storyline. A DM could make up their own reason. This is an easy thing to do. I found myself coming up with several hooks for venturing to particular levels; hooks that didn't have anything to do with the specific adventure suggested but just the setting provided. 

The same chapter has this sidebar listing off possible motivations for Halaster Blackcloak, the Mad Mage himself, to tolerate the adventurers intruding in his lair. There are six in total, and they can change whenever the DM wants without explanation. As the book says, "he is the Mad Mage, after all". So the DM could make up some totally bonkers motivation, and that would be totally legit. If they don't want to include him, then they can leave Halaster in the background. 

The dungeon levels themselves are flexible. Each level map is created with tunnels that lead off the established area. These are marked as "tunnel leads to expanded dungeon".  So the DM can add rooms and events if they want, or they can pretend those tunnels don't exist and treat the area as a solid wall.

 A list of wandering monsters is often provided that the DM can include if they want to shake up an existing room. Even if a player has read this book, they can still be surprised by these wandering creatures, or who may or may not appear. 

Finally, while each level is written with its own storyline, the book acknowledge multiple ways that the players could resolve it, or even ignore it. This is tacit encouragement for the DM to tweak things to fit their own narrative. I see the levels more as "template settings" than hard-coded adventures. Indeed, one doesn't even have to use them for Undermountain.

Each level is designed to work within Undermountain. Of course, it is, because they are included in this book. However, they can take place elsewhere. A little tweaking of lore or re-flavoring of certain factions or items, and any given level can be its own stand-alone adventure. For example, there is no reason why Dweomercore, the school for evil mages, has to be inside Undermountain. It could be some isolated mansion in the woods, or part of an urban city with either a public reputation or secret existence. 

I do not mean that this flexibility is nothing but options. There is a concrete path to walk if you choose to walk it. A DM can run this adventure exactly as it is, no changes necessary, and it would still be a complete adventure. There are storylines, individual events, monster encounters, and treasures of all kinds already provided. 

Each level of the dungeon is supposed to be balanced to the party's level, and there's even a in-universe mechanic to prevent players from going to levels they may not be ready for (if the DM wants to use it). The experience gained from each level will help the party level up and be ready for the next one. As for being balanced treasure-wise, that is something I want to address.

I don't really understand the value of the wealth-per-level thing. It sounds too rigid for storytelling. Why should the same dungeon contain more or less treasure for parties of different levels? It sounds like game-ism for the sake of game-ism. The treasure found in Undermountain makes a great deal of sense with its story.

The majority of the treasure found here is from other people who have set up shop in Undermountain. The bandits, the Drow Houses, the Hobgoblin army, other adventuring parties (living or dead, but mostly dead) etc. are the ones with the treasure. This is because the player's party is not the first to go into Undermountain. Heck, the main entrance to Level One is basically a tourist attraction in the Yawning Portal tavern. Lots of adventurers have gone in and searched for loot. So the book mentions empty treasure chests, already-looted vaults, and other signs of previous adventuring parties. There is STILL treasure to be found, but it is going to be on deeper levels, in better hiding places, etc. I find this a fantastic thematic device.

The artwork and maps and all that stuff look good too. I just don't want to go into detail about it. Rest assured that flipping between the map and the descriptions of the rooms keyed to the map is an easy thing to do. I did just that when I was reading through the book to get a sense for how the level was laid out. 

As a dungeon master, my reaction to reading even the first several levels was, "I want to play through this with someone."

Trickster Eric Novels gives Dungeon of the Mad Mage an A+

Click here for my next book review:  So I'm a Spider, So What? (light novel 2)

Click here for my previous book review: Pendragon's Heir (book 1)

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.