Playing without a Dungeon Master
Dungeon masters can be hard to come by. It’s a lot of work to be a dungeon master even if you can get away with minimal preparation. It can also be emotionally exhausting as you try to provide incentives for your table full of chaotic neutral cunctors to move forward. Cat herders have it easier than this.
but really, why?
It’s worth noting that any mechanism that removes the need for a DM also necessarily means that, as an actual DM, you could reduce the work you need to do.
My particular incentive was to provide a trainer when it comes to the crunch. I think we want to be welcoming to all kinds of people to the vast world that is table top role playing. Not everyone has been playing games of any kind which strengthen one’s ability to process made up rules and see a play space within it. So I want to create a space where I can teach people the crunch of the game without the pressure of being in a big group. I realize not everyone needs this. However I submit to you that people who need that additional experience and confidence are not representing at our tables today. By definition they could not be there without some kind of Herculean will. We’ve inadvertently chased them off. But that’s okay, because in this document we will build a playground for new players to understand the game without all the peer pressure and social expectations to obey.
Aside from that, you could run a session when the DM can’t make it or something with your characters, and see what they do as they plod along. You can still role play without NPCs or a crafty DM!
dungeons
Appendix A of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (henceforth the DMG) has provided looks like a great tool for generating dungeons of many kinds. I’ll come back and update this after I’ve had a chance to play with it.
descending further
There are two descending features in a dungeon: One is via the random room generation in the DMG, which has lots of options for going down. The other is, if no other downstairs passages have been created, create a simple downstairs in the furthest corner (coin flip or roll-off if equidistant). This happens for the last room to be generated.
monsters
“Monster” is the word we will use for any enemy creature. The creature could be human, for example, but we will still refer to it as a monster.
We said we wanted to have combats for training purposes. So we need to generate them. This should be based on the challenge rating system, though it’s well understood that the challenge rating becomes less accurate as the players become more powerful.
population
Let’s say that a floor is all that a party is expected to handle at a time. The DMG states that six to eight medium or hard encounters is something a party should be able to handle in a day. So we could staff a floor with monsters. But how many? Do we stuff them all in one room? Do we place them evenly? We could generate enough for one medium encounter per room. In some ways it’s a little silly to have a bunch of monsters in rooms waiting to be killed, but let’s solve this problem first before fixing the flavor here.
I’m looking at playing with two players. At level 1, two kobolds are considered a medium encounter. 3 kobolds are considered hard. 4 goes up to deadly. We want to avoid deadly - mostly. If possible we want to skew it to medium and hard. In my example, we’ll want 1d2+1 kobolds. The minimum is 2 and the maximum is 4. Hopefully we don’t get a lot of 4s. But we might! That is another problem to account for.
difficulty of the floor
Each floor should have same encounter table and therefore difficulty. Each time a new floor is visited, use a new encounter table.
what are the other monsters doing while I kill their friends?
The monsters should be able to hear the clang of metal and the shouts of verbal spells from a door that is essentially a series of 2x6s banded together. Monsters in adjacent rooms that hear fights will be prepared for the door to open, and will have held actions to attack.
If the players can get the drop on the monsters in a given room, and can take them down in the surprise round without using loud things, then the adjacent rooms won’t hear anything.
this dungeon’s dice are hot, and it’s too hard
Let’s agree that players can and should choose to flee when things get too tough. We could roll a deadly encounter three times in a row and after that, the party is likely tapped if not wiped entirely. If the players retreat out the entrance (even with monsters in pursuit), we’ll consider them as fled from the monsters and will make it back to town. There they can rest up and go again. The layout will remain the same, but monsters will have replenished their numbers. Every room will have the same encounter roll again.
This only applies if the floor was not cleared. If the floor was not cleared, then leave it cleared.
haha I put them at the end of the room and now they have to run to me
Since dice determine the length and width of the room, we can also use dice to place the creatures within it. We’ll need to use dice higher than the total dimension being rolled for. So if the width of a room is 17 5' squares, then we need to use a d20 and simply reroll anything over 17 until we get a lower number. We could also use a d20 for a 11 5’ room, but we might wind up rerolling a lot. Switching to a d12 would be better. Always use the smallest. If a creature placement lands atop another, put the new creature adjacent. Before rolling, establish what North is in your dungeon. Then roll a d8 and consult the table:
| roll | offset |
|---|---|
| 1 | north |
| 2 | northeast |
| 3 | east |
| 4 | southeast |
| 5 | south |
| 6 | southwest |
| 7 | west |
| 8 | northwest |
they always go for the tank
There aren’t really tanks in D&D, and we should avoid that here. There’s something extra to track though for monsters, which is a similar concept from MUDs and later most MMOs - “aggro”. This is generally handled by the computer and tracks damage over time between all of the sources, and the monster attacks whoever is doing the most damage. Then special “tank” abilities increase the aggro on the tank character so they can draw attacks on their hard-to-kill selves. It’s both silly and very computation heavy. We’ll use something simpler.
When characters are seen by a monster, the monster needs to pick one. The one picked is generally the one it will stick with.
If multiple characters are visible, and none of them are engaged in melee, roll the lowest die needed for the number of characters seen and reroll anything exceeding the party size. Before rolls are made, establish numbers for the party.
If there are multiple characters, and some are engaged in melee, first determine if the character wants to dogpile or split off. Use a 1d10. On a 8 and up they will choose a character locked in melee. Otherwise they pick someone not tied up. Then divide and roll off.
Monsters will remain engaged until dead or the knock out the other character. Monsters won’t attempt to kill unconscious characters. If a monster is grappled and pulled away, it will shift to its grappler.
Monsters that are grappled will always attempt to attack their grappler.
Monsters that are prone will attempt to stand up, unless they are grappled. In that case they will attempt to break the grapple.
If a monster has ranged and melee options, it will use ranged only if it cannot reach its target or if every party member is engaged in melee.
A monster switches to melee if it has a melee option and a party member comes within 5 feet of it. If it has no melee option, it will move as far away from the party member as possible (accepting the opportunity attack), avoiding provoking other opportunity attacks if possible, and then use its ranged attack.
Monsters always take the first opportunity attack.
special abilities
Monsters should use their special abilities as much as possible. But using them indifferently without a DM is problematic. Here we will go over various abilities and how it changes monster behaviors.
pack tactics
Monsters with pack tactics will prefer to dogpile their opponents. The values for the rolls are reversed. On a 1d0 roll of 3 or higher, the monster picks a target already in melee range.
generating a theme for the floor
While it can be cool to have a whole floor filled with kobolds, it’s nice to mix it up sometimes with other things.
allies
Many monsters have something they consider to be an ally. If the ally is weaker, generate more of them. If the ally is stronger, generate only one of them. Some monsters have mounts, but that’s not covered yet.
monster are allies with relationship to ally kobolds rats stronger kobolds winged kobold weaker kobolds dragon weaker goblins bugbears weaker goblins hobgoblins weaker