Building Bhakashal - Picaresque Gaming
Image by Don Maitz
So every once in a while I see a post on social media that goes something like this, “If you don’t want the players to get stuck in the dungeon by a puzzle they can’t solve, don’t make solving the puzzle necessary to moving forward”.
This is really just a variation on, “balance your game”, because if you put in a puzzle they can’t solve and solving that puzzle is needed to move forward, they can’t move forward. They have met a challenge they cannot overcome. Similar to a high level monster they can’t damage due to magical resistance, a puzzle they cannot solve is an example of an “unbalanced” encounter, as they are unable to defeat it.
That’s not how Bhakashal does it though, encounter balance is handled in that most things in the game are randomized through tables, so there has been some engineering in the tables to produce reasonable results. I thought I would work through an example to show what I mean.
Say I am designing an adventure for a group of PCs. In Bhakashal this is often done by going to the patron goals table and rolling up something, and then the patron sends the PCs on the task. So let’s say I roll up an adventure where the party has to retrieve a magic item from a NPC warlock who has a lair in the marshes. The patron will summon the NPC warlock to her tower for a meeting under false pretenses, while he is away from his lair, the party is to break in and steal the item.
To do this I would roll up the NPC warlock, and randomly generate spells and magic items for them. With those in hand, I would design the warlock’s lair to make it appropriate for someone of the NPCs level with that particular loadout of items and spells.
So for example, if the warlock has a Charm Monster spell, they would very likely have a charmed monster or monsters in their lair or with them. If they have spells with permanent effects they might be used in the lair as well. You can of course put in things that have nothing to do with their spells and items, they can make traps, puzzles, magic fonts, etc. or just have them as acquisitions in their lair that have no connection to their particular set of spells and items.
Importantly, most of this is randomized, and NONE of this is done with the party in mind, except in the sense that the patron wouldn’t send them up against something they would have no hope of defeating. I don’t calibrate the encounters by looking at what the PCs can do and either enabling it or nerfing it. Both are undesirable to me, instead I design challenges, with no expectations based on the party. I do this to be fair, I’m not giving them advantage or disadvantage, I’m designing the environment.
I’ll take a random NPC warlock that I rolled up a while back as an example, let’s say this was the NPC warlock with the lair in the marshes
I roll up a cave complex for his lair, I decide that you enter a cave and there are tunnels that lead to his lair. In front of the tunnel entrance is a permanent Wall of Fire. Jimnir has a Ring of Fire Resistance, so he can walk through the wall and only take a single HP damage, so this makes sense in the context of the NPC.
So let’s say the party gets to the Wall of Fire. They have no magic to protect them from the fire, and none of them have enough HP to be willing to risk going through. However, this is the entrance to the lair, and they have to get through it to get in.
This is the classic scenario, the party has met a barrier that they can’t get through, but they have to get through the barrier to complete the task.
Is this bad design?
I say no.
One of the points of running a sandbox style game is that you have no pre-planned “story” to tell, you create encounters, and the party has to deal with them. In that sense the sandbox style is picaresque, in that there is no pre-planned plot in mind.
So in this case they would have to either brave the Wall of Fire and hope for the best, leave and come back with fire protection magic to help them, find another way in (say a Passwall spell or Dimension Door), or go talk to their patron and tell her that they couldn’t get into the lair and need help, or abandon the task.
There are really very few situations in the game that the players can’t think their way around, but if this particular challenge is above their pay grade, then they are able to walk away. Sandbox games are premised on the idea that you can do whatever you want, that includes abandoning a task if it is too much for the party at the moment.
You might think that this is a bad example, as a Wall of Fire isn’t the same as a puzzle you can’t solve. But here’s the thing. D&D is a game with magic, and a game with sages, and either of them can help you in this case. There are spells like Speak with Dead and Commune, Contact other Plane, if your party doesn’t have these spells you can pay others to cast them for you, they aren’t combat spells after all, so you can take your time. The DMG lists prices for spells for this reason, it’s an in game way to get access to higher level magic.
There is also casting higher level spells from scrolls in AD&D, so sometimes the party will have a spell like this available.
Other options include going to consult a sage, there are extensive resources on sages in 1e, the party can find out answers there. It takes more time, and it costs, but it is within the reach of any adventuring party with some dosh to spend. And, depending on how your referee handles it, you could trade services, or a cut of the loot, for the spell or sage consultation.
You might think, “why bother, why not just give a hint, or not design the adventure with a component like this?”
Good question.
First off, this sort of thing is pretty rare. Players figure out most riddles after a bit of time and discussion, I haven’t hit a riddle the PCs haven’t been able to figure out eventually. But let’s for the moment assume this is one of those rare cases.
For me, when the party hits something they can’t handle, and has to travel back to the sage and rolls are made there to see if they can get their answer, the game world feels real. Travel engages with the encounter tables, you can get waylaid on your way back to the sage after all. Or you can get to the sage and agree to solve a problem for them in exchange for his knowledge. And who knows how that will go.
If you have ever read Vance, you will recognize that this is pretty much how classic Vance rolls. You get bumped around like a pinball, sometimes you capitalize on it and do well, but things can always go sideways. Vance’s stories were always so unpredictable, and that’s exactly what you get when you don’t give away the solution to the puzzle, or you don’t hand waive the Wall of Fire, or remove it from the adventure as it isn’t “fair”.
And I will add that the players are ALWAYS smarter than you, if you don’t just give them the solution. I can’t tell you the number of times players would complain about hitting a wall, and say things like, “can’t we just say that my PC has X”, or “can’t you just tell us the solution?”, and when I said, “no”, they figured it out. They found a spell one of them had that would allow them to do Y, and then they could do X. Or they “brute force” their way through things.
The aforementioned Wall of Fire was used in a session of ours with low level PCs (1st and 2nd level), the PCs hacked it by walking to a nearby river, immersing themselves (sans magic-user material components) in the water for 10 min to get thoroughly soaked, and soaking their blankets in water. Fortunately they had horses, and returned to the entrance soon after. Soaking wet and attired with wet blankets, they dashed through the wall and took reduced damage.
Roll of the dice, they got lucky, they might have taken enough to kill them, but they found a way out.
Caveats
Games will be frustrating if you are constantly facing reversals, so there are always caveats on things like this. If you use too many traps, puzzles and encounters in your game that the party can’t beat without a lot of ingenuity and luck, the game will become frustrating.
The point is not to make a lot of these sorts of situations, it’s to treat the PCs’ reversals as prompts for the adventure, not things that have to be dealt with by the referee in the form of clues or hand waving. It’s OK to hit a wall and have to improvise, it’s OK to walk away and come back later. A group of mine got a third of the way into White Plume Mountain and bailed as they lost 4 henchmen and almost lost 2 PCs early on. I could have “softened up” the opposition, or fudged a bit, but instead the party left White Plume, and quickly became embroiled in other shenanigans. That’s what picaresque adventuring looks like in Bhakashal, and it is an intentional design conceit, that’s what it is meant to emulate.
Don’t be afraid of saying, “no” and seeing what happens, don’t be afraid of creating encounters that are above the party’s pay grade, let them either figure it out or run away from it with an exciting story about how they almost died. There really is no lose state here for you.
Let the results of the players actions + the environment + the dice take you where it takes you, and you will have exciting, engaging, memorable times together. And your referee isn’t responsible for making the party succeed, the players' success is entirely their own.
That’s the stuff.
"If you don’t want the players to get stuck in the dungeon by a puzzle they can’t solve, don’t make solving the puzzle necessary to moving forward” doesnt just mean to provide easy puzzles, it means hard puzzles should br optional. A good thing to have in mind with sandbox games. In my home games, I rule that bigger monsters are spotted at a much further distance so usually there's more than a fair chance to dodge around them. It's pretty sensible and effictive so far.
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