Fitting a full story into a short D&D session

Some players are in it for the game choices, some are in it for the world immersion, and some are in it for the character story. If the last one applies to you. and you've played anything like D&D, you'll be used to being frustrated with sessions that felt like the story went nowhere. Story is not a given if your game's goal is to simulate a battle step-by-step. What if we set up our session in a way that you can't help but have a complete story? Let's do it.

From dungeon lingo to story lingo

First up, we need some story vocabulary. We'll use that throughout this blog. Fortunately, if you know D&D lingo, we can easily think of a mapping from one to the other using the three-act plot structure (check the image below).

• MAIN QUESTS, SUB QUESTS and SIDE QUESTS ➡ Main Plots, Sub Plots and Side Plots. A full story contains at least one full plot.
• ACCEPTING A QUEST and ENTERING THE DUNGEON  ➡ Act I: ‘the Setup’.
• DUNGEONCRAWLING  ➡ Act II: ‘the Confrontation’.
• The BOSSFIGHT ➡ Act III: ‘the Resolution’. 
• The RETURN JOURNEY  ➡ wrap-up of act III.
• A DUNGEON FLOOR (or set of rooms)  ➡ a Sequence within Act II. A sequence is a series of events leading to a main plot point. Typically, Act I has at least one Sequence, Act II has at least two Sequences (Act IIa moving towards a big twist and Act IIb moving towards a crisis) and Act III has at least one sequences building towards a climax. Sequences everywhere!
• A DUNGEON ROOM  ➡ a Scene.
• A CHARACTER ACTION (with consequences) ➡ a Story Beat. Beats are the smallest event that move the story forward.

The three-act structure. Image by Philipp Trüblger, adapted to a dungeon quest.

You can make different mappings. You can break the mold. But this serves our purpose. Let's go!

The bare-minimum for a full, player-driven story

The three-act structure lets us determine the bare minimum of player rounds that a full, player-driven story needs. To call itself 'player-driven', the story needs to give each player a chance to affect each major plot point in the story.  If you're playing in turn order, that's one player round per plot sequence. So let's count the minimal amount of sequences in the three-act structure.

1. One for the set-up (Act I), 
2. One for the first confrontation (Act IIa), 
3. One for the second confrontation (Act IIb), 
4. And one for the resolution (Act III),

leaving us with a minimum of 4 rounds. In other words, if you can fit at least 4 player rounds into your game session, you can fit in a full player-driven story.

Taking 'the 5-room dungeon' as an example.

Let's compare this to the famous minimalist dungeon: the 5-room dungeon, which has just 5 rooms to a dungeon, each containing one of the following:

• Entrance (Act I). There's a reason this dungeon is still full of rewards: it's difficult to enter.
• Puzzle (Act IIa). The dungeon holds many mysteries, and you'll need to rely on more than one talent to unveil them all.
• Setback (Act IIb). Even the most seasoned dungeoneer could not expect what they'd have to deal with next.
• Bossfight (Act III). The dungeon won't give up its crown jewel without a big climax.
• Reward (wrap-up of Act III). The spoils are yours for the taking, and perhaps bring more questions than answers.
  
  

The 5-room dungeon. A.K.A "EPSBR!" (say it with passion)

You can easily tie the 5-room dungeon to the 3-act structure. I already added the acts to the list in brackets. The Entrance is your set-up act. It could be an entrance room of a dungeon, or a tavern room where you pry out secret information on how to enter the dungeon. The puzzle room is act IIa. the setback is act IIb, and the bossfight is act III. Because each room in the 5-room dungeon has a significant impact on your story, the players have to be able to spend at least one full round in each room. If that is all the rounds you can fit into your session, the Reward room can then be reduced to a wrap-up narration without a round: "you gain a wondrous reward in the treasure room", or "when you bring the loot back to the tavern room, you receive a mysterious reward from your quest giver".

One round per room... are you mad??

Yes. Thanks for asking. But not because I'm suggesting to have one round per dungeon room. Having only one round per room makes perfect sense, as long as each player turn has a significant impact. And there's the catch. In D&D-like games, impact is never guaranteed. In D&D, it's entirely possible to spend a full round on a bunch of people missing eachother without any consequences. If you want to fit a full story in the least amount of rounds, well...

Instead, you will need to avoid systems that allow meaningless turns, or guide your session to make every action matter. Either way, the golden rule is: to have a tight adventure, every player turn must have consequences. In other words: every character action creates a story beat. Apocalypse Engine games like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World are built to support this creed for good reason. 

Adding and removing rounds

Once you've mastered fitting a story in 4 rounds, any extra space you have in your session allows you to flesh out your quest, or even have two consecutive plots in a single session. Given that each player group and adventure is different, you'll have to play a few sessions to get a good estimate of the number of rounds you can expect to occur within a single session. Once you have that estimate, plan around it. Add a round to dungeon rooms. Add more rooms. Add a round for the wrap-up. And if at any point in the session you feel like you've overestimated the number of rounds available, reduce back towards 1 round per sequence. This is some expert level game master stuff that I'm still learning about. My favourite resources for effective and flexible session planning are Sly Flourish' Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and the 'running the game' sections of Runehammer's Index Card RPG.

Think in scenes, not rooms

I think I stole this section title from Runehammer's RPG Viking Death Squad.
Up untill now we've just talked about a basic dungeon quest. If that was the whole point, there wouldn't be a need to start with story vocabulary, so let's go full cirle. Once you've gotten used to thinking about your dungeon quests in terms of plots, acts, sequences, scenes and beats, you can think of dungeons and rooms as just examples of that structure. The next time you prepare your session, think of the characters' current situation. What scale would lend itself best for a full story in the next session? Perhaps there is a fight coming up with an epic impact on their ongoing adventure. If that's worth focusing a whole session on, it doesn't matter how many rooms it takes place in. Instead, ask yourself: What are potential acts? What are potential sequences? What are potential scenes? What are potential beats? 

You can simplify this by just writing down potential scenes for your next session that follow from your last. Sly Flourish' Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master has great advice on this. When players decide what scenes actuallly happen through their actions, you can track your session timer to gauge what kind of plot point would be appropriate to drop when possible. Are you mid-way? Twist time! ...would be cool to have some random tables for 3-act-tructure sessions...

I'll stress a common game master advice: create situations, not plots. Please don't take this blog as an instruction to shoehorn sessions into pre-constructed paths. Instead, look for potential story, and guide players to the good bits. When you've mastered this, you are a much better game master than I am.


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