Building Bhakashal - “Free Form” D&D as a Playstyle

Pictured: The Greek god Hermes, Roman Mercury, God of the Gym and Sports (Games)

Today I am going to talk about playing D&D as a game, not as a “narrative engine” or a “collective storytelling experience”.

But before that, I want to make something crystal clear. There is NOTHING WRONG with treating D&D as a collective storytelling experience, or as a “narrative engine”. I would say that many people play it that way, and it works well. I would also say that the current zeitgeist on TTRPGs is to play D&D in this way, with a focus on story. You can see this in the terminology and discussion, people talk about creating satisfying stories and completing the character’s “arcs”, the use of backstory to drive elements of the game. Also, you can see this in the discussion of making sure every player has a “chance to shine”, etc. It is also a big part of the “fudging” discussion, the idea being that a PC shouldn’t die for “ignoble reasons”, and that they should get to achieve certain goals because it is “good for the story” can involve tweaking the dice. 

So again, all this is fine, you can play D&D that way.

But you can also play it another way. And I wanted to talk about another way. I will discuss it’s advantages, but this isn’t knocking story focused play, it is making the case for trying something else with the game, and what that can bring to your table.

D&D as a Game

The central premise of this playstyle is that D&D is first and foremost a game, and as such is designed to challenge players and give them problems to solve, environmental challenges, resource management challenges, martial challenges, etc. At some point in this process of challenging the players dice will be involved, to bring in a random factor. I have chosen to call this free-form D&D.

You can certainly tell stories about what happens at the table after the fact, or view the collective actions and responses of the PCs and game world as an, “emergent story”, but the basic idea of “free-form D&D” is that the referee is NOT manipulating the challenges of the game, either covertly or overtly, to achieve any narrative goal. Thus free-form D&D is a playstyle that removes the referee’s hand from important aspects of the game so the randomization can drive results, not any desired narrative structure or end. The idea is to “get the referee out of the way” as much as possible so they can be primarily an adjudicator, not a driver of the narrative. That’s ENTIRELY on the players. 

It’s easiest to explain this by contrasting it with the “narrative focused”, “storytelling” approach.

1. No “Backstories” - in the free-form D&D playstyle, you don’t need backstories. Backstories funnel your PCs along predetermined paths in order to address whatever “unresolved business” marks your PCs past, and thus drive the referee to introduce “narrative arcs” related to player backgrounds into the story. Alternatively, they create a degree of investment at the start of play (“it’s time to complete Grabnar’s story”) that makes it tempting for the referee to direct the game to predetermined ends. Instead of this, free-form D&D gives you a background based around your class, culture and skills, enough to be suggestive to the players, and build upon, but not enough to compel the referee to introduce a ‘storyline’. Your actions and the game world’s reactions are all that you have, no preconceived story for the referee beyond that. 

2. No “Story Beats” or “set number of encounters per day” - there is no “typical day” in a free-form D&D game. Every day of adventure is driven by PC choices and actions in the game. PCs act, the game world responds. So if the session is entirely “shopping at the market for supplies”, then that’s what they do. If the next three sessions are that, and the players are enjoying it, then that’s what they do. Random encounters and the ramifications of past actions can interrupt whatever the PCs are doing, but there is no need to ensure that the group has a fight every session, or social role play every session, or character development every session, each session emerges out of the environment, past actions and the challenges therein.

3. Everyone has to Earn a “Chance to Shine” - rather than creating the situation necessary to ensure that each player gets a chance to shine (e.g. putting in a locked door so the party thief can use “pick locks”), the players have to do that themselves. They have to act boldly and make smart decisions, they have to be creative, and patient. They have to find ways to be useful when their particular skill set is not needed. They have to be a team player to get others to help them reach their goals. The referee does NOTHING to make these things happen, the players have to make it happen.

4. There Does Not Have to Be a “BBEG” - much like a video game, many campaigns are run with the idea that the sessions will get progressively harder as you deal with minions and lower level enemies until you pull back the curtain and see who is orchestrating it all, bonus points if you can weave in some PC backstory. In free-form play you will certainly meet powerful enemies, but there will be many of them and there need not be any overarching story leading to an “End Boss”.

5. The PCs are not “The Chosen Ones” - free-form D&D absolutely eschews the idea that the PCs are the most important people in the game world. They can certainly become important and powerful if they play well and luck is on their side, but there is no guaranteed arc to triumph, they are not “fated” to do anything, nor are they going to be the most important people in the game world. As it happens, all of my favorite fantasy stories are like this, I never liked “chosen one” stories, this playstyle hews to Howard, Leiber and Vance in that respect.

6. Treasure and Magic - Rather than assign treasure and spells, all magic is randomly generated, from “level up” spells, to spells found in treasure hoards, to loot and magic items found after defeating monsters. All of it is randomly generated, which means that it can produce nothing, something small, or something far more powerful than the party would normally have. Rather than the referee doing this, the dice decide. This makes the “challenge” of the game further independent of the referee, and it means both players and the referee have to figure out how to incorporate the results.

7. Random Encounters - a core part of this style of play is that stuff will happen as time passes. But rather than have this driven by the referee, it is driven by the dice and random encounter tables. Keep in mind that encounters need not be dangerous or involve combat, they can lead to information gathering, alliances and new goals. But the game ensures that SOMETHING will happen, even if the PCs don’t know what to do. The game world reacts, but not strictly due to the referee deciding “this would be a boring story if nothing happened”, instead due to a regular check for encounters that is driven by dice. 

8. No Hand Waving - the goal in this style of play is to avoid as much as possible hand waving things that make the game challenging. So for example, encumbrance is used because you can’t just carry everything, and managing encumbrance is a resource challenge. Travel is similar, it takes time and triggers random encounter checks, it also gives time for information gathering, alliance formation, etc. The goal here is to avoid saying, “It would harm the story to have a long interlude of travel here, so we will just fast forward”. Instead, the travel is part of the challenge, but also part of the immersive experience. 

9. Don’t Make It “Too Easy” Or “Too Hard” - this is actually a Gygaxian insight, and one of the areas where I think he is most misunderstood. The goal is not to make it too easy on the players in order to serve the story (e.g. your “story” is that the PCs are big shots who should not really face the threat of death), nor to make it too hard (e.g. your “story” is that the game world is cruel and crushes everyone as the challenge is extreme). This means, for example, that you don’t add HP to the monster to keep it alive, or ignore HP for the monster to allow it to die as combat is “boring”. You play it out. You don’t optimize every opponent, nor do you minimize every opponent. 

10. Don’t Consider The Party When Creating Challenges - instead of calibrating the challenges to the party, create environments and situations that they can engage with. Some will be very easy, some will be very hard, but the idea is that you don’t use the party’s makeup to set the challenge. This is very important, as there is a strong tendency to design challenges so that certain aspects of the party are useful. Avoid this temptation. True story: in high school I played in a game where the DM had set up an adventure that relied on a PC being able to use their wand of frost at one particular point. The PC who had it was hit by a fireball and their wand was torched.

11. Randomize NPC/Monster Generation and Behavior - There is always a tendency to “optimize” your NPC/Monster “builds” and tactics. free-form D&D instead randomizes the process of monster/NPC creation. So for example, randomly rolling to determine what spells an NPC magic-user has, or the magic items that a NPC has. Always rolling for monster/NPC hit points. It also means randomizing behavior of the monsters rather than picking actions, this is done in several ways:

1. Encounter reaction rolls are used for all interactions between PCs and monsters/NPCs

2. Morale is used for groups in battle

3. If a monster has multiple attack routines (say a claw/claw/bite, a breath weapon and an at will ability), randomize their choice of attack.* 

4. When there are several courses of action open to a NPC/Monster, randomize them when directing the actions of the NPC/monster*

* By “randomization” here I mean weighted randomization, e.g. sometimes you just split up the chances, so 1-2: CCB routine, 3-4: breath weapon 5-6: at will ability, other times you will assign more probability to one or more options based on the context. So for example: 1-4: CCB routine, 5: breath weapon, 6: at will ability. So it doesn’t always have to be an even split. And sometimes the environment will dictate the options, e.g. if the PCs and the monster are a distance apart, and the monsters’ at will ability is not a distance attack, then they will use their breath weapon, no need to roll. 

12. Sandbox the Game: it is absolutely crucial in this style of play to play in a sandbox game. In such a game, the PCs have no meaningful restrictions on where they go or what actions they choose to execute. They have complete autonomy over how their character acts. So for example, the players can start an adventure to find the magic axe of Borghadesh the Bald, and two sessions in decide they aren’t interested in the axe anymore for whatever reason, so they decide to find a nearby town and look for a new job. They can leave a dungeon as they are taking too much heat and do something different for a few sessions. They can spend a session buying stuff for their next job. They can spend a session testing magic items, or making them. 

In essence, the PCs are the avatars of the players, and are directed in any way they want. One day my Tuesday group, who had been hired to bring back a creature to a warlock who was willing to pay big coin, decided they didn’t trust the warlock, and that he had nefarious plans for them, so they found a ship at port, signed on as crew, and left. Cue 3 months of an entirely improvised nautical campaign. 

Complete freedom. No rails. No requirements. No asks by the referee. They can do what they want. The referee’s role in a game like this is to create a deep and immersive world, and allow the players to explore it. But that means you will sometimes watch as they explore the environment with no particular purpose in mind. Or want to do something you never thought about. One of the players in my Wednesday game decided he wanted to create a “hobbit hole hideout” in the marshes around the city “in case we need a place to hide one day”. Another found a grove of trees and grew a garden that he goes to to contemplate and pray to his god. These things were asked for, role played and created in game at the player’s requests. 

To make this work you have to remember a few things. 

First, the point of this is to keep the referee from directing the “story”, so rather than the referee deciding what adventure the party goes on, the party decides what they want to do. The ref creates the game world and the possible hooks, but the party is free to choose any of them, or pursue something else. The less involved the ref is with the decision making process the less influence they have on the outcome.

Second, the ref has to do a lot of improvisation to make this work, so they need to have a robust set of random tables, constructed with bounded randomness, available to them. It will be useful to have “in the bag” bits and pieces lying around, a Tavern, a ship, a small town, that they can use. Caveat, some refs can improvise everything but the maps in these situations, but most need back up. I know I do. The good news is that Bhakashal gives you a lot of that backup, and there is a SEA of OSR materials that are essentially system neutral (maps, for example, are system neutral for the most part) you can plug into the game to help with improv. 

Also, the ref can always say, “OK, we are done for today, this decision requires me to work up some things, see you next week”. However, I find that this is rarely if ever needed. Either a random encounter, or any one of a number of “back pocket” encounters I have available to me, e.g. that thief that got away from your last adventure, she’s back with some ogres and has just found the party, can keep the group busy to the end of the session, and then the referee can work up what’s needed to meet the new direction. 

13. Nothing is Wasted - any encounters you create in this system are entirely transferable, in part due to point 10 above, since encounters aren’t keyed to particular parties, if the group isn’t interested in that encounter you save it for later, and perhaps “re-skin” it if needed. I have a number of “set-piece” encounters I have used with multiple groups to great advantage. I’ve read posts from refs struggling with whether or not to railroad the PCs to an encounter so as to not “waste” their effort. This isn’t an issue in free-form D&D.

14. The Referee Never Fudges - In free-form D&D fudging is off the table. Fudging is almost always done for “story related” reasons, e.g. it is “anticlimatic” or it “is slowing things down”, or something like that. Fudging is the antithesis of free-form play, fudging is the referee stepping in to “tell a story” with the results, to change what is there to make the experience more like a story. 

The easiest way to achieve this particular goal is to roll everything in the open, that way there is no question of dice results being ignored or altered. This takes some getting used to, when you have the power to change things without player knowledge it can be a difficult thing to give up. And there will be times when a bad result comes up and you REALLY WANT TO CHANGE IT. 

Resist this urge, it is the urge to TELL A STORY rather than PLAY A GAME. 

15. Minis and “Dressing” - This is not a hard and fast restriction, but the sandbox nature of free-form D&D means that using miniatures for NPC/Monsters and other forms of elaborate “dungeon dressing” is more of a challenge. Using elaborate setting materials and minis for all monsters is certainly fun, but the need to pivot pretty quickly makes them less useful, and can become pretty costly. 

It can also lead to a “sunk cost” fallacy, e.g. since you have spent hundreds of dollars on minis and dressing, you want to find a use for them, and this can lead the referee to push the “story” in the direction of the PCs engaging with the encounters that these materials are used to support. 

Observations

First things first, you might ask if these suggestions are realistic and sustainable? Can you play D&D this way over the long term? Well, as it happens I have had an opportunity to play test all of these recommendations over the last 3 years. 

In particular, over a 10 month period last year I ran 7 concurrent D&D campaigns for 7 different groups. We logged over 560 hours at the table using this system. I have been asked many times how I could have run this many concurrent games, “how do you create so much content and run so many games, how do you keep this many campaigns moving?”

The answer is essentially that I don’t do these things, our games are essentially player and dice driven, the big “secret” here, the “trick”, is that the players do most of the heavy lifting to direct the game, and the dice make many of the decisions. The referee’s role is primarily that of an adjudicator, the PCs act based on player directions and the referee makes the game world respond. The referee doesn’t have to be a storyteller who spends hours prepping plot, you just let the players play and react to their actions.

It also has a number of corollary benefits:

1. Everyone gets to be surprised - since so much is randomized, it’s not just the players who are surprised by what happens at the table, the referee gets to be part of that too. In any style of D&D the players actions can surprise the ref, but in free-form D&D even the game world’s response to the PCs actions is surprising to the referee. This is important as it keeps the game fresh and interesting for the referee. We often forget that the ref needs to be entertained too, running a long term game is a lot of work, keeping a degree of unpredictability is key to maintaining referee interest in the game, which in turn helps the ref to make the game interesting and engaging for the players.

2. Randomization is a source of inspiration for the ref. I’ve lost count of the number of times a random prompt inspired me to do something creative I simply wouldn’t have thought to do. When I’m stuck, random tables get me unstuck. When an encounter reaction roll is positive and I have to decide how to interpret that when it’s a blue dragon, I remember how much randomizing monster actions adds to the game. Essentially, free-form D&D provides regular and generative prompts through randomization, these prompts can drive creative play in a different way than a set “story” 

3. In free-form D&D successes are earned as the referee does not fudge, aid, or harm the players to serve the needs of any “story”. So if the PCs achieve a goal, they will know the referee did not tip the scale to help them achieve these goals. You roll everything out in the open, if you roll enough damage to kill a PC, the PC is dead. One of the greatest and most rewarding aspects of this style of play is the look on the players faces when they are successful, they know they earned it, you didn’t give it to them. 

4. Fairness is another important aspect of this style of play. Of course, a referee can always be unintentionally impartial (say in the odds they set for a task), or deliberately impartial in other ways, but the fact that they do not “tip the scales” to serve any narrative ends means they are less likely to play favorites or work against any given PC. Also, rolling in the open helps contribute to a sense of fair play. 

5. Challenge based D&D brings the excitement, players know you won’t fudge, and you roll in the open, so whenever you roll dice they hold their breath, every roll counts, as every roll is beyond your and their control, there is something special and thrilling about knowing the dice stand when they are rolled, and the roll impacts the PCs. 

6. This play style also impacts immersiveness, or, put in another way every time you “hand wave” something like travel or encumbrance you are removing the mechanics of the game that model time and space, and thus removing the sense of time and space from the game world, making the experience less immersive. Essentially, aspects of the game that are isomorphic with aspects of the real world create immersion, so the possibility of death in the game, the need to take time to get places, the need to limit what you can carry, etc. 

7. This model is sustainable and generative, it can support long term play, as the consequences of the player’s actions will create challenges, actions are generative of game world reactions, and this happens even if they have no particular direction in mind. 

8. This model also removes much of the burden of “driving” the campaign from the referee, so that they can work on creating the deep, immersive world that sustains this form of play. 

9. Players are not beholden to any backstory or predetermined narrative arc, so they get to “discover” their PC as they play it. This form of character engagement is visceral and engaging, just like you come to know and define yourself through actions in the world, your PC comes to know and define themselves through their actions in the game world. This kind of isomorphism contributes to immersion.

10. The game world gains a feeling of independence from everyone at the table when this style of play is embraced, when the monsters, the treasure, combat, negotiation, exploration, etc. are randomized, the game becomes to a degree independent of the players and the referee, it becomes a third contributor to the mix in producing gameplay, the ref, the players and the game. This degree of “independence” is important as it makes free-form D&D a game, not a shared storytelling experience. 

One last point. I am amply aware that the referee’s ability to create the entire game world and adjudicate the game means that they can always “tip the scales” or direct the game towards particular, narrative ends. If that’s what the referee wants to do, there is nothing to be done about it. Even fully randomizing aspects of the game, and rolling in the open, cannot ensure that the referee does not try to direct the game to achieve narrative ends. And of course, since the referee sets the odds between options, and sets options, they still have an enormous impact on how the game develops. Still, embracing randomization, open rolling and eschewing altering results to meet narrative ends brings the greatest degree of independence of the game from the direction of the referee that is possible. Nonetheless, this is a playstyle preference, if the playstyle is not adhered to, then the above mentioned positive impacts will likely not be felt. 

The goal here isn’t to prevent referees from imposing narrative goals on play, it’s to get them to want to stop trying to impose narrative goals on play, to get them to, as much as possible, let the player’s choices and PCs actions drive the game, not any desire to “tell a story.”