Building Stories

Table of Contents

Creating the things that adventurer’s deal with in a game such as Wyrlde is very similar to other kinds of storytelling, but with some very important and essential differences. Among these major differences are:

No Challenge has a fixed solution.
No storyline has a fixed ending.
Choices are required, but the DM does not make them.
There is no audience other than all the people playing in that group.
The game is a series of “set ups” – of opportunities for something to happen. The outcome of those opportunities is entirely in the hands of the players.
The story is never about what the PCs are going to do, though it may be about what he NPCs will do, in reaction to the PCs.

There are others, but these remain among the most important to know, as many an inexperienced DM will find themselves creating a story built around a particular villain and creating puzzles that must be solved to move a story along. In both cases, they learn that the game can be made to work that way, but it is often unsatisfying and lacks the common thrills and excitement of other games for the players. Or they have a group of players who run roughshod over the whole the carefully constructed story, ignoring it and doing whatever they want.

Then there are the things that PCs are supposed to do:

They decide if they will do it.
They decide what to do
They decide when to do it
They decide how to do it
They decide why to do it (though you can give them options).

Finding a path through this is where the “player driven story” comes in.

Inspiration

One of the things a lot of folks will wonder about after a while is where to get ideas for a new adventure. Wyrlde is built around a host of ideas and concepts pulled from books, movies, and television shows, and those are outstanding examples of a resource for good ideas.

To pull a storyline out of a film or show, do not look at the characters, which is often where most people first turn. They see an anime show and say “I want to do that and try to make that villain exist” or get their Players to play those characters, but not.

Instead, look at what happens, and use that to fill in the parts of your story that match.

An example for this is the film The Magnificent Seven. It is a good story. So good, it is also the story of the film Bugs. And was, in itself, a story brought from yet a different film.

Let’s break that up into what we can do:

A Bandit leader wants to feed his horde of bandits and find a way to live an easy life and become an important person in the region.
He subdues and takes over several villages, demanding they feed him and his men, taking what they want, including all the valuables.
Villagers go out and find an Adventurer’s Guild and post a rather sad little bounty and request that many adventurers dismiss.
If the players take the job, they will travel to the village, likely having random encounters. If they do not, a Lure can be used – perhaps there is a cousin of a shop owner who was getting married and they are worried, or maybe it is a small town one of the Heroes came from in their backstory, or perhaps the PCs stumble across a group of toughs beating up the poor villagers who beg and plead as innocents.
If the PCs arrive at the town, they will meet an old man, a blend of Conscience, Mentor, and Ruler who gives them the lay of the land.
Shortly after arriving, the bandits return, and a huge fight erupts. With luck, the PCs are victorious, but if they are, they have now upset the bandit leader. IF they fail, the bandit leader will execute people from the village.
The bandit leader sends in spies to watch them, possibly to try and kill them.
The villagers will betray the party, leading to the next encounter, only this time there are more bandits. If the PCs lose, they are captured, and then run out of town.
If the PCs do not return to finish off the bandits, the local villages are ultimately burned, the people forced to move into a single village, and there is much sadness as a new warlord rises and begins to get more ambitious.
If they do return and finish off the bandits, the PCs are hailed as heroes and gain at least renown, if not great wealth.

That’s a general layout for the adventure. Note how most of it deals with the actions and behaviors of NPCs. It is built around the consequences of actions or inactions, and the plans that the villain has for the towns. It also increases the stakes – there are several villages, not just one.

That simple set up gives the Players immense agency in their actions and decisions – and there is an effect they will see if they don’t do anything (warlord rising, burned villages).

From that general outline we can add in all the elements, add bits and pieces to a plot, and we can have it become anything from a low-level adventure to a high level one.

That storyline can be expanded or contracted to be anything from a side quest to an adventure to a whole campaign.

Genres

Every storyline has a genre. Wyrlde, in particular, is intended to draw from several different genres, each one providing a slightly different mood or feeling.

A Genre is exactly what it sounds like. Having different Adventures or Episodes pull from different Genres can make a game more dynamic and feel surprising and fresh, and encourage more creative play.

Here is a list of genres drawn from Film and Television more than books, because it makes for quicker building and greater ease of engagement.

Action	Action/Adventure	Adventure	Comedy	Coming of Age
Detective	Disaster	Drama	Dungeon	Epic Fantasy
Gangster	Gaslamp	Heist	Heroic Fantasy	Horror
Life Fantasy	Madcap	Mystery	Nautical	Noir
Romance	Slasher	Subterranean	Supernatural	Survival
Sword and sorcery	Thriller	Travel	Urban	Western

When creating a Campaign, it is always wise to follow a few simple rules for selecting what genre to make an Adventure.

Never repeat the same genre twice in a row.
Never follow Horror with Drama.
Never follow Coming of Age with Disaster.

The purpose of a genre is to help frame and guide the plot in a certain way to achieve a certain kind of atmosphere, mood, feeling, and style of storyline. It feeds into the structure of how to set up the plot of a given storyline.

Of the top ten genres, Wyrlde is good for 9 of them.

Rank	Genre	Wyrlde	Locale
1	Heroic / High Fantasy	Yes	Avilon
2	Sword & Sorcery / Low Fantasy	Yes	Montayin, Terana
3	Urban Fantasy / Mystery / Detective	Yes	Any
4	Dark Fantasy / Weird Fantasy	Yes	Space, Dimensions
5	Space Fantasy / Science Fantasy	Yes	Space, Terana, Coyola
6	Nautical Fantasy	Yes	Avilon
7	Wild Western Fantasy	Yes	Avilon
8	Spy / Heist / Gangster Fantasy	Yes	Any
9	Fairytale Fantasy	Yes	Kokayin, Dimensions
10	Alt-History Fantasy	No	None

Plot

To start with, in order to have a story on which to base these assorted things, we need a Plot. Each story has a plot of its own – though in a campaign of several stories, the plot can be the same, different, or a combination. We need to have a plot.

A plot is nothing complicated – it is the answers to two questions put together:

what is to be done and
what is the main challenge to be overcome.

Let’s try this out:

Rescue the Princess
Defeat the Dragon guarding her.

This is pretty simple, and gives us our general plot, which when combined looks like this:

“The heroes rescue the princess from a tower guarded by a fearsome dragon.”

The two basic questions give you the foundation of a story, or plot, but that’s not everything you need to know about it.

Still, once we have our plot, we move into building the story around it. In many ways, a Story is the How and Why of the whole. You may have heard of the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How list before. A good story tells all of those things, plus adds in “What does this mean?” on more than a few occasions.

Challenges

A Challenge is: something that is to be overcome.

A challenge is at the heart of everything, and each stage and part of a story is built around the concept of a challenge. The very nature of a plot requires there be some sort of challenge. The traditional 7 often used are all styled as “Man vs. X”, but they are, at their core, still challenges that have to be overcome, and anything can be a challenge.

Although we made it seem fairly simple with out earlier example, a challenge can be a complex thing, and have multiple parts to it. Villains exist to create a challenge, one or several of them, and that is always the process by which the conflict is resolved: the Party overcomes the challenges posed by the villain.

If you know your challenges, you don’t need to worry about conflict: it is baked into it. Challenges have certain needs for the game, however. By knowing these things, we can describe our challenge effectively.

Cause

This is fairly simple: what is the cause of the challenge. What is it that makes it a challenge.

Goal

This one may be as simple as “to fill the belly” if the challenge is a wild monster, but in a story, there is a reason the challenge exists, a purpose to it, a reason for it. In most cases, this is because the villain is doing something. In our example from a film, the Bandit chief gets to act as a lord over the small towns, feed his men, and feel powerful and authoritative.

Nature

This one is often optional, but lies in the underlying structure for the challenge – why is it necessary for this to be a challenge. In our example, the need is built around a conflict between the bandits and the villagers.

Unchecked Outcome

This one is important to identify for any challenge. This is what happens if the PCs do nothing about it. A challenge always has an unchecked outcome – doing this gives the world a lived in, real place. You cannot check out and have nothing change, and while they were busy delving that dungeon, the bandits took over the towns and killed the men who had come to find the PCs.

It is really simple: what happens if nobody does anything to stop the challenge?

Ripples

In addition to the unchecked outcome, there are also ripple effects of failure to stop it even though they tried, and ripples from the success of the challenge being overcome. Knowing both, even in part, makes a difference.

So, what happens if they try and fail, and what happens if they succeed in overcoming the challenge?

resources Used

This is the dirty secret of all DMs: challenges exist to use resources of the PCs. While not every challenge will require they expend a resource, it should more or less be a goal to do exactly that. Be it food, coin, ammunition, Mana, special abilities, or even rests, by finding ways to use their resources, you can give the PCs and their Players more enjoyment and a more “real” feel to the game.

Clues

A Clue is: something used in the process of overcoming the challenge. Clues are helpful, but not always obvious or easily found, and they are not essential. A door that can only be opened by a single key does not make the key a clue, it makes it a challenge. Clues should never be essential, or required. They are simply something handy to have.

Links

A Link is a linkage, an element that can appear anywhere in anything. It can be a symbol, a motif, a bit of evidence, a thread of storyline, but the deeper and important part of a connection is that it links outside the current Episode to another one, or outside a current Plot to another one, or links and adventure to a previous one or a Campaign to a new or old one.

Connections are best used before either the middle of a Plot or before the End of a Plot. Connections are ways of keeping the story together, even if it isn’t an obvious thing, and also make outstanding foreshadowing.

They are the manner of connection between encounters that forms an episode, adventure, and campaign. Threads are tiny bits of story woven around the encounters to tie them together, give them reason and basis, and provide for the “sense of story”.

These can be simple (a piece of paper with a clue) to complex (an involved conversation with a former minion).

The connection is a form of Link, but one that will tie into a later story. Not every story has to have a link – stories with fixed endings don’t.

Lures

A Lure is: a thing done to attract the interest of the PCs in following the story. The best Lures play on the Reason for adventuring, or the backstory of the character, though the old reliable is still “go get some money”.

Lures are the temptation, the benefit, the bait and the hook that makes a PC want to grab the story and involve themselves. In a real sense, milestone points are a built-in form of bait, but they don’t always give a good reason. Sometimes a Lure doesn’t catch the attention of PCs, and so you need to try a different one.

Good lures often comes from the background of the PCs, or from some role-playing encounter. There are, of course, the old standards as well, such as the person who dies in their arms with a packet containing vital secrets or some strange McGuffin.

Kinds of Lures

Family Members	Old Rivals	Old Friends	Mentors	New Friends
Rumors	Gossip	Ancient Lore	Magic Items	Money
Compelling Clues	Desperate Strangers	Needy Child	Elders	Strange Happening
Rewards	Glory

The trick of a Lure is twofold: first, your Players have to have agreed that there will be a story, and that story will have lures and they should want to grab on to them and follow them if they want to have fun. Second, the Lure is something that is compelling, that gives the PCs, the Characters, a reason that is personal to follow the lure into the adventure.

A very common lure is the offer of a reward for doing something. The rumor of a great payday worked pretty well to get a scruffy space pirate to help an old mumbo jumbo man and his teenage sidekick to rescue a space princess.

When Players are creating their characters, the Dm is suggested to listen, to take notes, and to pay attention. Lures are why this advice is given – it is from those things that you can begin to collect the things you can use as Lures for the PCs, for small elements like this or for subplots and other aspects.

Another place to get Lures is from the playing of the game itself, the social interactions, the needs of the PCs, and general happenings.

For our purposes, though, we are going to use a Lure of the Overheard Comment – one of the Pcs, rolled randomly, will overhear that someone is planning on ambushing the PCs in order to scare them away from the town.

The rest of the Lures we can draw from the scenes as we create them, since we know what we want to achieve – we just need to make it obvious and useful.

Story Elements

A story generally has five parts to it, three of which are well known, two of which are more useful for the purposes of a game. There can be more added to a story as it goes, but the general rule of thumb is still the same.

Beginnings

A Beginning is: a sequence of rising action that reveals something that motivates or pushes the protagonist forward.

The next part of a story is the Beginning. A beginning introduces the initial Challenges that have to be overcome, sets the world around the character, and gets things moving.

In tier one, a beginning might have 3 Episodes, while in tier 5 a beginning might have ten Episodes. Each builds on the one before it in tension, drama, and theme.

Middles

A Middle is: the stuff that happens between the beginning and the End.

The next Part of the story is the Middle. The middle is where the meat of the story is – the little Challenges become harder and start to link together to build up to a big Challenge, which is the major part of the story.

A Middle includes more action, more discovery, and often includes a setback in the rising action that causes the protagonists to have to regroup and find a new path forward along the rising action, culminating in the first half of the climax. It is this that is a key point – a good middle always ends as the Climax begins, or shortly after it starts.

As with beginnings, a middle may have only a few Episodes at lower levels, and many more at higher levels.

Setback

A Setback usually happens during the Middle of a story, and often features in a way that there is a chance to overcome something and then go on to overcome the biggest Challenge. It is, simply put, the place where the PCs lose.

This can be really complex in large, elaborate stories, or simple, like what we are going to do: the stairs to the uppermost part of the tower, where the princess is kept, are gone, and so it cannot be reached by them. Notice how this creates a Challenge that the creativity of the players will be needed to solve.

Climax

Always in two parts, or phases, this is the big fight that bridges the Middle and the End of the story.

Ends

An End is: The second half of the climax and the falling action into the resolution.

The next part is the End, the part of the story from the overcoming of the big Challenge to the aftereffects of that Challenge.

This is when the players actually face off with the antagonist of that story or experience the fallout from not having done so. Ends usually have fewer Episodes than Beginnings or Middles, and they always stop with the resolution of the larger story as a whole.

Resolution

The Resolution is: the Wrap up – thee return to the new normal, the stuff that happens after wards. The Party gathers their hard-earned treasure and heads back home, and starts training or learning or building or whatever.

Inclusions

Storylines have common elements that arise out of the history of storytelling across many mediums. A few of these elements are described.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a thing that happens, a thing that is encountered, a moment of something – a few words, a bad feeling, a song or melody, that hints at something to come in a way that may not be obvious at the time it is first encountered but becomes obvious once the event it foretells comes to pass. Foreshadowing is a fine art, a tricky skill, and when creating an episode, sometimes it can be used – like symbolism and motifs, to create a linkage or connection to a different episode, to a different scene, and even to a different campaign altogether.

Foreshadowing is much like the results of divinations spells, and is a pure narrative device.

Foreshadowing is known as a way to hint about something that will come later.

Prologues

A Prologue is: the lore and set up for a campaign; it is a point where exposition sets the stage for the larger conflict. Prologues are uncommon, but happen outside the storyline, and essentially describe the storyline. They can be useful for foreshadowing and introducing a new idea.

Prologues happen before the first Episode in a Plot. They may even set the theme of a Plot or give clues as to how to follow through with it.

Prologues are optional.

Introductions

A Story may have an Introduction, or an Intro. This is the part of the story where the Protagonists (the party) are introduced. In a book or film or video game, this is often blended into the early part of the story. It introduces the characters, their lives, their dreams and their goals, their personality and their habits. In D&D, an introduction is optional – the audience (the players) already knows their own character, but the other Players may not. This is why it can be handy to do so. Wyrlde addresses this through the use of a Zero Session and the Meeting of the Minds, and these are talked about in the Incarnalia.

An Intro is: the events and circumstances that lead to the start of a story. Where a Prologue happens outside the storyline, an introduction happens inside the story. It is the case of the Innkeeper who tells the story of the wizard and their mighty tower out in the wilderness who succumbed to mistakes in their dreadful experiments and died while unleashing a local horror.

Introductions are optional but are often quite useful.

Epilogues

The final part is another optional one, the Epilogue, or Outro, which deals with what happens now that things have returned to some form of new normal or calmed down. Epilogues can lead into the nest part of a bigger story if they are connected or may be the close of the story as a whole.

An Epilogue is: The What Happens After that follows the final events of an Adventure or Campaign. Epilogues happen within the storyline and are optional.

Codas

A Coda is: a reminder of a previous story or thread, presented at the close of one story. Codas happen outside the storyline, are narrative and optional.

Theme

Themes are somewhat like a genre, through more detailed. A Theme sets up the atmosphere, mood, and idea of the Episode. Is it spooky, busy and bustling, haunting, dangerous, mystical, eldritch, arcane, natural, off, or ordinary? Theme colors the way the place is described, unveiled, and narrated, and can even influence the consequences that may occur. Theme is the adjective to the other parts of an Episode.

Theme is the general theme of the adventure. Given the story itself, we’ll go for a fairytale theme – so I should think about fairytale elements. Note that Theme is optional, as are most of the things around the edges.

Atmosphere

Atmosphere is the feel of the things around the Challenges and throughout the story – spooky, cheerful, and tends to impact descriptions and motivations. For us, I will have the townsfolk be scared, sad, and worried, and I will add a cloudy sky to the mix, giving it a gloomy feel.

Motif

A motif is: a form of symbolism that is much more subtle and far less overt.

Stories often have some sort of symbolism within them. It may be a physical object – everywhere you go within this episode, you see carvings of birds or figures of mice. It may be an actual creature – there are strange worms everywhere, in everything. It may be artistic, a pattern or design that shows up often and marks some elements.

Symbols are extremely useful as subtle ways to create new hooks and are excellent bait for existing hooks.

Symbolism can also be something less tangible. An apparition, a feeling, a but the key to symbolism is that they are used over and over again, they are repetitive, showing up in spots both likely and unlikely, and connecting the Episode to itself or to other episodes.

Most Challenges have some sort of symbolism around them if they are to have an impact. Symbolism is purely optional, and sometimes derived from the place the Challenge takes place in. Symbolism can be literal symbols or abstract ideas – but the value of symbolism lies in that it can act as connective tissue between different parts of a story, and subtly suggest something. Symbolism is closely tied to motif. Another way to look at symbolism is as a pattern – things always show in fives, or threes, or something. For our story, I am going to go with the symbolism of fire and smoke. Everywhere that the party goes, I will mention fire and smoke in some way.

A motif is a visual, auditory, or scent based repetitive element that is found in certain places the use of the smell of carnations or roses, the seeing the same tentacle designs, the way that weaponry is always jagged and spiky – these are motifs that can be carried across different Challenges, linking them together indirectly in the same way that symbolism does. For a motif here, I will use a lot of dragon shaped silhouettes and even include the one in the name of where they start. It blends well with the symbolism of the smoke and fire.

Motifs rely on things close to themes – colors, shapes, smells, materials — that repeat and also link things. When describing a series of rooms within an episode, each room may make note of the materials used, or the shapes involved, or the colors of things in that room. These elements are repeated in each space and become a motif.

Keywords

Keywords are: terms you will use often when describing or talking about or narrating things – the use of keywords creates a kind of common interface with symbolism and motif and atmosphere, but you can also use each for them to be jarring. You can even use them to tie into something else – say, a later adventure.

Frameworks

A Framework is: the rough sequence of events in which each event affects the next one through the principle of cause-and-effect. A framework is the structure of a storyline, but not necessarily the order of a storyline, because in a player driven campaign that isn’t determined by the DM.

A framework sets up what could happen; what will happen without involvement from the PCs, and what might happen if they do become involved.

There are a lot of different frameworks that use a lot of different metaphors, systems, tools, and whatnot to help guide someone in the creation of a story for a particular medium, or form of expression. The one we will use is a variant of a very basic framework that guides us through the assorted steps of doing so.

You may note this has much in common with the Grid shown previously. The primary difference is that this shows in a more direct sense the way that the challenge increases over time before reaching a climax.

Another approach to this kind of framework is to use something that has been drawn from past works, such as the Hero’s Journey cycle, the Heroine’s Journey cycle, or the Virgin’s Promise.

These tend to list and lay out certain relatively concrete steps in a larger overall story and are no more or less valid than what we present, as long as the user of them remembers the basic rules about PCs:

They decide if they will do it.
They decide what to do
They decide when to do it
They decide how to do it
They decide why to do it (though you can give them options).

The main part of this is the triangle looking thing. It is set up to give a visual point of reference for how things should be structured or set up.

It starts with the Introduction, or Intro. This is a Scene that as noted earlier introduces the PCs to each other, to the start of the story, or both. For this example, we’ll use the tried-and-true trope of meeting at a tavern.

Between the Introduction and the next item is a Link. A Link or Lure is a connection, often discovered through a Lure of some sort, between each of the parts of the story – they are the thing that makes each part of the story connect to the previous. In Linear campaigns, this will be a single link that connects to a single thing, and they will move through each of those items in a direct order – or line. In a non-linear campaign, these links may connect to more than one thing, giving a multitude of potential paths. We aren’t going to do any inks right now – we’ll come back to them in a bit.

Following the Introduction are a series of Challenges that are of increasing difficulty. Challenges can be anything, but we will describe them as Scenes and talk about them in a bit. The key here in our framework is that each of the Challenges are of an increasing degree of difficulty – each one is harder to deal with than the previous. We’ll skip Challenges for now and come back to them.

The Challenges are capped off by the Greatest Challenge, or Climax. This could be where you run into the BBEG, or a Lieutenant, for example, but it could also be the hardest part of a dungeon or the major encounter with the full bandit camp. A Climax always happens at the point where the middle of the story runs into the end of a story, and occupies much of the ending. In our case, it would be the fight with the Dragon.

After the Greatest Challenge is the Afterwards, or Aftermath – a sequence that often links to the next adventure as well. Commonly, it is used to show the new status of things around the PCs. For us, we’ll call that the journey with the Princess back to the town.

This is then followed by Downtime, where the Party does advancement and other things – in this case, it is not the stuff which is done off screen, it combines both onscreen and offscreen stuff. It is the time when restocking and resting happens. We’ll say that there is a reward and they will be honored by the town.

That is a basic framework for how to structure things, but then around it are additional items. Note that while I am expecting things to go the usual way, I am not really putting anything down there about what the players do.

There is no limit to the number of Challenges that you can use or where you can use them, and no limit to the number of Challenges that you can have between the introduction and the Great Challenge. The pretty graphic shows 5, yes, but that number could be a dozen or even just one – it is entirely up to you how involved this will be.

A low-level adventure may only have one Challenge and then the big one, while a high-level campaign may have couple dozen Challenges before the big one.

We aren’t done, mind you – we just have the basics, the bones of a story or an adventure here, but this gives us a way to put all these things together and to make sure that the things we create next work together to create a whole.

There is an additional benefit to using this approach: you can write this out on an index card, and then save it – pulling it out whenever you need an idea, or create new ones when you get an idea – any book, movie, play, video game, and so forth can be turned into this kind of a setup, because they feature these aspects and elements. For Wyrlde, it is always a good idea to save these things as discrete items – you never know when they will come in handy own the road.

Villains

If Players are the Protagonists, then the Antagonist is the Villain. Or Villains, as the case may be – nothing says that a Villain need be a singular being. The stories told through role-playing games are not the stories of the Villain. The stories are about the Heroes, the PCs, and overcoming a Challenge.

Villains are always a Challenge. They may merely be a Challenge, they may often be the Challenge, but either way, they are still a Challenge. They are a Challenge for the wider world, a force that is fundamentally aiming to disrupt and distort the world as a whole, and they have motivations to do so and they have plans, schemes, and ploys to achieve their goal, which is always going to be a Challenge that, with luck, the PCs will solve in some way.

Villains, as a whole, do not care about the PCs. They are, most often, not even aware of the PCs when the campaign or adventure starts. The most compelling villains do not have a personal stake in the PCs – heroes are a bother and Villains are usually well aware that they are better because they have a scheme, plan, and/or ploy in place that will take care of them long before they could even think about being a challenge.

What they are concerned with and focused on, however, is their plans, and their backup plans, and how to achieve their goals despite the Challenges and how they treat their minions and so forth. The only time a Villain generally becomes aware of the PCs is shortly before the final showdown, or if they disrupt a particularly sensitive element in their plans. Another possible way is that the renown of the PCs becomes such that they come to the attention of the Villain – who will want to know how much of a threat they might pose.

Villain Archetypes

There are a whole host of possible kinds of Villains, and while the following will help you get an idea of some of them, it is by no means exhaustive or complete.

Autocratic

This is the take no prisoners, has no loyalty, no morals, nothing stopping them from manipulating their way to their goal of gaining wealth, power, authority, and status. Once they have that, they hold on to it at all costs.

Personality wise, they see things in a framework of Win or Lose, and they never see themselves as a loser under any circumstances. They are manipulative and cunning, collecting minions, lackeys, flunkeys, stooges, and sycophants, as well as a few henchmen and devoted fanatics, of which they are abusive and dismissive at best, murderous and deadly should they fail or prove no longer of use. They often disguise themselves, being one way in public, then their true selves in the sanctity of their personal spaces where they do not perceive risk.

Beastly

This is your basic capable critter, filled with cunning, experienced as a predator, wary and watchful, never giving prey a chance, always seeming smart enough to get around things while it pursues its sole set of standard goals: provide food, defend territory, protect young, destroy threats, and play with what will become the first goal. This is not a reasoning creature, nor does it necessarily have to be a predator or even carnivorous. It cannot be bargained with, cannot be stopped, and cannot understand things that are of importance to people. Beastly villains are often considered “misunderstood” by those who are outside of the range of it, and considered beyond saving by those who are victims of it.

Common

No villain would ever deign to be considered common, even those who are indeed common villains. Brilliant, thoughtful, perceptive, elegant, arch, and absolutely confident, this villain is the patient sort, the kind of planner and plotter whose machinations can take great lengths of time to unfold, each step meticulously researched and crafted with a precision that makes even their foes look on with admiration.

They are ruthless, merciless, and exacting, punishing failure swiftly and without warning. They do not care who knows they are the Villain. That knowledge will do little to help them by the time they have learned of it. They do not mess with traps or games; they are direct, pointed, and brazen when it is useful and subtle when it is called for. Their plans have layers, and there is always at least three backup plans for each primary plan, and there are false plans to lead the suspicious astray, and there are cut outs at every level of every scheme, ploy, or scam. This is the villain who reads Machiavelli and Sun Tsu.

When they do finally feel that something may be a threat, they will seek to get close to them, to aid them, to be their friend and trusted advisor, the close friend, a colleague, that houseguest who hides a psychopathic killer mentality behind a normal facade. Then they will choose a moment of calm and strike in a way that is calculated to cause the greatest harm with the least risk.

Corrupt

Some Villains are good people. People with good and noble intentions, a history of good and noble works, a life and recognition of things that are admirable and idealized. People who used their power, authority, influence, wealth, or status for the best of reasons and in the best of ways.

Or at least, they once were. Then, as ever, something happened; something tragic, something embarrassing, something endangering, something that enabled them to be corrupted, to seek to keep that hidden, secret, to keep their hold on their comfortable life, their authority, their influence, their position, their reputation.

For some, it may be a hidden past as the cast away embarrassment, the black sheep; for others it may be a moment of indiscretion, in speech or action, while for others it is little more than raw ambition kept hidden beneath a crafted veneer. In all cases, their plans and schemes seek to preserve and further their position, while also keeping such things as far away from their clean and pleasant image as possible.

Criminal

This villain does it for the money, and benefits of wealth. They will tend towards crimes which do not shed blood and may even have a kind of code that they follow, even though they trust no one (even their own Minions). They can be bought off, they can be negotiated with, but they are always looking to the money, first and foremost, and that is what they do. They will pay well, but then betray or turn on their Minions, and they will have few scruples about letting others kill for them if it means a large amount of coin in their hands.

Desperate

This is a villain who is desperate, trapped by consequences, running, escaping, fleeing something – physical, emotional, imagined, psychological, spiritual. To survive, they will do anything, become anything, by any means, at any cost, in any way that they can. And it is this that makes them villains, for they will use others in whatever way they can to achieve that goal.

Faultless

This villainous type constantly tells people it wasn’t their fault, they were forced to agree to some nefarious plan. They can deny any responsibility for the things they have done because they truly believe that their hand was forced, it was someone else’s responsibility, and genuinely feel they are being wrongly judged. So long as they remain safe and secure, this villain is capable of doing anything all while resolving themself of any blame or guilt because somebody else made them do it, they didn’t have a choice. They are unreliable witnesses and will seek to shift the blame onto anyone else.

Honeyed

This Villain uses their charms, good looks, sexual prowess, and creativity to prey on others. They seek wealth, power, control, and adoration; usually all at once and they will take it by any means necessary. They may have started off as powerless victims, but now they are powers themselves. They often use their playthings, their victims, as followers and Minions, people to do the dirty work, to bear the burdens, to provide for the lifestyle and adulation they deserve.

Idealist

This Villain has a goal, and that goal is absolute and unwavering, their reason for living, their purpose for being, and the sole sum of their life. The agenda, the ideology, the religious belief, the adherence to tradition, the extremism of their goal is always complete and utter, with black and white thinking an essential part of it.

They are on a mission, rigid, disciplined, exacting, precise. Their own well-being is tertiary at best to the goal, and they are obsessive and focused to the point that self-sacrifice is an ultimate expression and culmination. They instill this into their followers, a total sense of subservience, and a complete awareness of the end goal, even if they do not always understand the path to achieve it.

Infernal

These are the Villains that love the game of it all. From Devils and Demons and Hags bent on corruption to narcissistic intellectuals, this is the villain that ruins not only days, but years. They are the ones who select targets, lay traps, and play with their victims, before an often-gruesome ending that was carefully arranged.

This villain is a Maestro when it comes to reading actions, guessing thoughts, predicting behaviors, identifying weaknesses of the emotional, social, psychological, and moral sort. They are masters of temptation, of lulling, of manipulation and deceit, and they use all of it liberally. The see themselves as the smartest person in the room, in the settlement, in the region, in the realm. To them, all of it is a game, a challenge, a competition, and none of it is ever personal, merely play, for the joy they gain from matching wits and watching failure is the ultimate goal they always have.

They will intentionally leave cryptic clues, maneuver heroes into sets of puzzles and games, all of which will be rigged and structured to ensure this Villain’s victory. There is only one thing one can trust about them, which is that it is always foolish to trust them.

Maniacal

These are the villains who have lost connection with reality in many ways, yet retain a deep sort of cunning madness, and may often seem to be quite normal, ordinary even, everyday, commonplace, typical, unremarkable. They are, however, completely insane, likely aware of it and even how it happened, but utterly unconcerned by it. Usually, they have an inverted set of values, ideals, and beliefs, and so seek to bring to the broader world an expansion of the poor quality of awareness, an increase in the amount of joy that they see as pain, a hilarity that they see as grief in their small little minds. This kind of villain is one of the rarest to directly go after the heroes and will react in an exaggerated way whenever a plan or scheme is disrupted, but then will calm down quickly, dismiss any losses or consequences of that loss of control, and come up with a new scheme or ploy.

Secretive

This is the kind of villain that likes to keep things secret. Plays their cards close to their vest, so to speak. They often have no origin story, and their background is shrouded in mystery and has no ties to anything, because they long ago erased any evidence of it. On Wyrlde, for Mages, This is a fairly fruitless task for those seeking to become a power, as True Names can always be ferreted out, since that is part of the magic of True Names, but for those seeking secrecy the power they want isn’t obvious, isn’t overt, isn’t direct.

This villain will even keep their identity secret from Minions and followers, all except for their confidants in few cases, but normally even they won’t be aware, and instead will be apparent face of the overall effort, seeming to be the one(s) who are the makers of the plans and schemes and ploys and scams.

Shepherd

This Villain will initially seem to be someone who has been ostracized, cast out, living alone and isolated but still nearby to other people, who will shun them. Often, they will offer salvation or succor to those in need, and they always seem to be in need of care and support themselves. They are the kind of person you feel sorry for, the sort that brings up empathy and sympathy, and shows a sharp wit, a deep intelligence, and carries experience and wisdom with them. They will turn away offers of kindness, however, because they are doing all this kindness for a single reason that they share readily and easily: the seek to be accepted once again by the nearby community. Those they help are often mistreated, solely for accepting their help.

This is all a front, however, for they are not what they seem.

The truth will only come out after the foiling of some ploy or scam, but what it reveals is that the local settlement cast them out for vile and unspeakable crimes such as they had never seen, perhaps even service and sacrifice to the Dread Host. They really do want to be accepted back into the community, and are bitter and angry, resentful and jealous, filled with a desire for revenge. Revenge and redemption best gained through the very acts that got them expelled, such as cannibalism, sacrifice, torture, and such, with unsuspecting new friends who show a lack of awareness.

Terminating

One of the more common Villains, they have one focused goal, to destroy the hero normally. They are generally unstoppable and terrifying, have little or no remorse, and they can’t easily be harmed, stopped or killed. This bloodthirsty villain takes no prisoners. This is a hut, a sport, and they favor violence and brutality, and do not plan anything intricate or involved – they are simply going to keep coming and keep hurting, maiming, and killing anything in their path as they seek to directly face off with the heroes. They will kill friends, family, people talked to, animals, pets, hamlets, villages and they may be slowed down, but they will just keep coming.

When the final fight does happen, it will take something outside the arsenal of the heroes, often something in the environment, to end them once and for all.

Terminating Villains are sadistic, craving the fear and terror they cause as they rampage; they do not worry about be found and captured because they will escape by killing everyone around them. They cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bought off, cannot stop their quest, do not turn away or take shortcuts or the long way. Abou the only emotions they ever do show are satisfaction once they kill the heroes, and often a smile as they kill.

Vengeful

At some point in the past, someone or something hurt this Villain. The pain of it, the humiliation of it, the trauma of it, it still lingers in them, and they remain unable to move on. That was then, and this is now – now they have the power to fix this, to punish those responsible, to stop others from doing the same, and now they have the power, authority, or wealth to achieve this goal. They have no faith or trust or concern about the system of justice beyond viewing it as a hindrance, and consider themselves above and beyond such a system, out of its reach and not under its authority.

Villain Motivation

Villains generally have a series of things they are trying to accomplish, all in service of a greater thing they seek to do that is drawn from their Motivation. Motivation is often suggested by their archetype, but otherwise can be anything.

Motivations shape the Plans, Schemes, Ploys, and Scams of a Villain. For each of these things, there are a few questions they have to ask themselves about each little element.

What do I want?
What is my goal?
Why am I doing this?
How will I accomplish that goal?
What do I need to do to accomplish that goal?
When do I need to accomplish this goal?
Who will I need to accomplish this goal?
Where will I accomplish that goal?
What will I do to achieve this goal?
What do I need to have under my control to accomplish that goal?
Where will I find those parts to do it?

These questions help to outline the size and scope of a scheme, plan, ploy, or scam. These efforts often mean turning to and relying on followers, also called Minions.

Villainous Minions

All intelligent Villains have Minions. Hired, recruited, bribed, cajoled, whatever. They are the people who keep hands clean, who keep distance and can be a pair of hands and legs and a strong back when needed.

Minions have similar cravings and amorphous morals to a villain they work for. This is because although the henchman craves the same profits from their crimes, they don’t often believe they have the ability or status to run the plans. The Villain who leads them uses the Minions for the dirty work they possibly don’t want to take part in. Some may have ambitions to take over the business as soon as they can dispose of those above them or even the villain, but these intentions will never be displayed. Many are expendable, while a few will end up in hospital or running away.

Minions come in different sorts, ranked by their overall level of closeness – confidants, inner circle, middle circle, outer circle – and generally have a structure.

Position	Ranking	Description	CR
Sycophants	6^th – Unrelated	These are people who don’t know anything, but go along with whatever because they get something out of it or suspect something that they will benefit from.	-10
Lackeys	5^th – Outer	The cut outs, the fall guys, the scape goats, the ones who get the blame if something goes wrong.	-9
Flunkeys	5^th – Outer	The ones who go along because this is what they do, don’t really see anythign wrong with iit, just a thing they do and hey, they can have fun.	-8
Stooge	5^th – Outer	The smarter of the least of them, ambitious, angling to move up to Henchman, dreaming of being an overseer, maybe one day runnigh the whole show themselves.	-7
Fanatics	4^th – Middle	Fanatics are the highest ranking followers, usually given higher position because they demonstrate absolute loyalty and commitment.	-6
Stooges	4^th – Middle	These are the folks that are part of something through bribes, coercion, and greed, the ones who enable others to achieve things. They are corrupt officials, usually innocent at first before becoming too deeply embroiled.	-5
Henchmen	4^th – Outer	Supervisory Role; those who handle the outermost ring of folks, the flunkeys, lackeys, and stooges. Henchmen are always present in person.	-4
Overseer	3^rd – Middle	Supervisory Role; answering to Chiefs, these are the folks who run the crews and projects being undertaken. They are oly rarely at the forefront.	-3
Chief	2^nd – Inner	Supervisory Role; these are the folks who support the Bosses and are considered part of the Inner circle, privy to the villains most closely guarded things and able to assume the role of the Boss if given a chance.	-2
Boss	1^st – Confidant	Supervisory Role; these are the highest ranking, most important, closest to the Villain followers. They will be the sub-villains, charged with tasks.	-1

The table above serves as a kind of guide to the followers of a Villain, showing the role they occupy in a plan, scheme, ploy, or scam. There is also an occasionally useful CR modifier to guide how powerful the Minion might be in relation to the Villain.

Not all Villains have huge organizations, and so may not use all of the assorted kinds of followers, but the general roles and descriptions remain within nearly any grouping, even if the Villain themselves is only a Henchman of some greater power.

Nevertheless, the role of a Minion is to ensure that the Plans, Schemes, Ploys, and Scams come to fruition.

Plans, Schemes, Ploys, and Scams

A Plan is the overarching idea, the whole big deal of the Villain. “I will own the Docks of this City!”

A Scheme is a portion of the larger plan. To take over the docks, first you must have the dockworkers, then you must have the harbormaster, then you have to get the gangs under control.

A Ploy is the way that a Scheme is done. Cajole the dockworkers, bribe the harbor master, take over the gangs.

A Scam is a betrayal of some sort that is the truth of a ploy. After taking over the gangs, they all found themselves sold into indenture on board ships headed for faraway ports.

These are the tools that a Villain and their Followers, or Minions, will use.

At the heart of a Villain lie the plans and ploys, schemes and scams, machinations and connivances that make them a Challenge for the world as a whole, and which in turn becomes a Challenge for the Heroes.

First, be aware that these are not ploys and plans about the Heroes. These are the designs of the Villain in a world where there are no heroes, for in their mind they will always act to avoid the notice of those who could thwart their schemes.

Which is not to say that sometimes the whole point of a villain is to cause harm to the heroes – but if so, they have a reason, and the most common reasons involve them interrupting or ruining some ploy that Villain had, or else it is something deeply personal and obsessive – but that all too often comes across as cartoonish and trite, the mustache twirling evil doer whose only purpose in life is to cause the heroes’ pain.

Well, on Wyrlde, that kind of person generally does it in a way that is direct – they hire assassins, they poison supplies, they expose foibles and ruining their reputation, they kill family and friends, and the like. That is, a Villain who is realistic of that sort isn’t going to create a complex plan, they are going to go straight at the PCs in the most devastating and brutal way possible, because Wyrlde is a brutal and devastating place.

Those villains of Wyrlde who are more common, though, are those who seek to effect a change in the world that they perceive as benefitting them, or as being of the greater good for all (if they lean towards the more crazy, helpful sort).

Getting Hooks

Mistakes are what you can use as plot threads, as the bait to Lure the PCs into a story, and the hooks to drag them into it. All Villains make mistakes — that’s kinda the whole thing about the Heroes and the Villains. Those mistakes are in things that will allow the PCs to unravel the plan and ultimately find out who is behind it all.

The other part to this is that sometimes those mistakes are success in their plans. Perhaps they burnt a village, or allowed a prisoner or turncoat to escape, or perhaps they did something that picked up on a backstory of some character.

These things aren’t directly about the PCs. None of it is “this happens to this PC”. They happen to things around the PCs. Often the things the PCs care about. Or need. Or maybe even want. They are always things that affect the PCs, but indirectly — and the reason is that the Villain doesn’t give a damn or even think about the PCs.

The next thing is to answer the question “What did they do wrong?”

Villains always do something wrong. It is how the heroes and them end up facing each other.

For this, look to the PCs backstories for some hook, but not in terms of something that is direct to the PC personally – that is, nothing that was done to them as an individual, but rather something that was done to someone or some place around them, that ultimately had the effect of causing the PC a Challenge.

For example, it wasn’t that the Villain attacked the PC, it was that the Villain attacked the parents of a close friend, or the family of someone who trained them. Always keep at least one degree of separation between the PC and the Villain when looking back stories for this planning stage. There will be enough time for direct stuff later.

Then look at other things. Maybe they burned down their town. Maybe they kidnapped a good friend. Maybe one of their followers robbed someone close to them because the Villain wasn’t keeping a firm grip on them. Whatever it is, try to think up a half dozen things.

Sometimes that means something like this:

Early in my career, I used a spell to turn my best friend into my most loyal ally — and I did it because he was going to turn me in. I wasn’t aware until the end, but he nurtured a huge grudge, and wanted to be free from the spell and to take me down and end my blight upon the world.

Timetables

These Plans, Schemes, Ploys, and Scams happen on a timetable, and unless stopped, these nefarious and dastardly things will come to fruition, and thereby have an impact on the world in which the PCs live, and that means they will be affected; something that happens unless the PCs stop it, a lesson so often learned early on that wise Players will try to do their best to stop the plans.

This is why there is a calendar provided – to help with planning out when things will happen. And there are always timetables for complex plans. Knowing the timetable for all the little parts of the plan also gives you an interesting ability to introduce hooks and bait that don’t come from what they did wrong, but more likely what they did right, as each little thing the Villain does has an impact in some way on the world around them.

One of the interesting things about timetables is that they make schemes, ploys, and scams dependent on each other. If the gangs are controlled but he harbor master isn’t, then the plan becomes unwieldy and there will need to be a corrections made.

Initially, Villains have no clue the PCs exist. Villains are above them; they aren’t a threat; Villains won’t even consider them until and unless the Villain sees a beautiful plan unraveling and finds it is too late to fix things and get back on track. That is when a Villain will get angry — and either the Villain will plan a faceoff so they can have their revenge, or they will get the hell out of there and hope the Heroes don’t find them (usually making another mistake that inevitably leads the PCs straight to the Villain).

Such an event happens very late in the game, as well – so for most of the time, the Villain won’t usually know the Heroes are a Challenge, even if the Villain here’s about a group causing Challenges. They are likely to just send some followers to take care of it.

What Changes

That impact is always in the form of some kind of change. The Docks are closed down. Ships are having strange fires. The trade in the city is getting strange. Grain prices are up.

Something always changes. And this is not just important for the little things that lead up to the final confrontation, it also must apply to what happens if the Heroes never get involved at all — or lose.

When you are figuring out the Plans of your villains, always have two outcomes prepared: Success and Failure.

You should know before you even start to run a session what the possible outcomes of the plan are, just as your Villain would. But also, be aware of one more thing.

Time. As the DM, your job includes tracking the time as part of your responsibilities to run the NPCs, and in this case, Time itself is an NPC. All Plans are linked to a timetable as we just noted, so you should know what is going on around the PCs that they do not see or may not be looking for, in relation to the plans of your villains.

Because if the Heroes don’t act in time, the plan will succeed.

Vile Villains

What makes a villain super hated is a Challenge some folks come across. For the most part, the primary villain of an arc or a bigger story is often an impersonal villain, someone who is doing bad but that bad isn’t about the PCs it is about a thing that is bigger than the PCs.

There is a trope about Saving the World, where the question is Why are you bothering. Sometimes the response is the whole “there is good in the world”, but more often, and of more importance here, there is the whole “this asshole killed my friend.”.

To make a Villain truly vile, you have to give the PCs something personal, some kind of “ick” factor that makes them as an individual (or your players, as people) really want to see this Villain taken out. That means you have to step away from the Impersonal Villain and make it Personal.

There is a time for this, that varies from story to story. Sometimes it is early on. Other times it is well into the overall story. The when is dependent on when you need to make that shift from an impersonal malevolence to a personal annoyance.

The major ways do achieve this are Direct Harm, Taunting, Indirect Harm, and Threats.

Taunting is the one that is often the most annoying, and can be done in a way that negates the revenge driven motive often used. The heroes have caught the Villain in the middle of a grand crime, and despite everything, He still gets away with it. The heroes gain an artifact they have struggled for, and the villain swoops in and takes it right from them. Every time something bad happens, there is a smiling woman in the distance who just laughs and vanishes.

Threats are what the villains usually do when the heroes keep getting in their way, the plans are thwarted, and the villain has finally learned it is the fault of those damn meddling kids. A letter arrives that says if they do not cease then they may find their home burnt to the ground. Their families are all scared by close calls, Their favorite merchant is suddenly terrified and refuses to do business.

Indirect Harm is the attacking and hurting of those who are close to the PC. Pets, Friends, Family Members, Mentors, favorite locations. Something happens to them, and it is obviously the villain who is responsible for it. Sometimes this is not intentional on the part of the villain. They said to burn down the warehouse, and they didn’t know the PC’s best friend was camping out there. Other times it is intentional, and it is meant in part as a threat.

The final one is the Direct Harm. This is the one where the villain targets the PC personally. Assassination attempts, destruction of their home, the fulfillment of a threat.

In each case, the goal is to make the PC want to take out the villain for personal reasons. If the Villain is the world around them, a force of nature, or a deity, well, then they have some work to do. But if it is a truly vile villain, then there is one trick that you should always hold in reserve; repetition. They do it over and over and over again. They essentially torture the PC. Everything that goes wrong starts to be about the Villain, even if it truly isn’t.

It is the corruption of that PC that turns them away from things that the villain seeks, and now it becomes a matter of redemption.

Scenes

A Scene is: the primary tool for everything. It is the core block of this approach, and you will, over time, build up a library of them that you can revisit and tweak slightly over time. Watching a show or a film or playing a videogame or reading a novel, you may see ideas for a scene, and start cribbing from them, as scenes are integral to all forms of fiction and storytelling.

Any time that the PCs encounter a place, a person, or an object, and have a conversation, a bit of discovery, or a fight, is a scene. Scenes are a staging space, the place where the action takes place, where and when the stuff that happens or hopefully will happen. Scenes are sequential, connected by some piece of knowledge that is presented to the PCs, typing them together in either a direct (linear) or indirect (tree) way, but always exist in multiples, usually (though not always) found in threes, with one scene leading to the next, and that one leading to a third.

Scenes are how an Episode gets a beginning, a middle, and an end, with each Scene being a portion of the whole and developing out the Episode. So, something like a story within a story. Some scenes, themselves, will be an entire mini-story, with their own beginning, middle, and end, but for our purposes, it is better if they represent some portion of that whole.

Sometimes you want to do a Scene Tree – like a skill tree in a video game, with many different paths through it, all of them ultimately ending at a pint that leads to the next Episode. You can do the same thing with Episodes and Challenges, as well – we chose not to use a Tree approach for simplicity and ease of learning.

A very complex Campaign can involve hundreds of distinct scenes and resemble a video game, a simple one might only have a few and resemble a book. The only real limitation is the amount of time, effort, and depth you want to put into your campaign.

Scenes are great for how you incorporate a milestone point into the whole – one milestone for one scene. This also allows you to control the flow of the adventure as a whole, because if they skip a scene, they can always come back to it if they want.

The Scene Card is essentially a collection of notes designed to help you describe a given scene. A Scene Framework is useful, in the same way that the other frameworks are: they can be created and then saved for later use – used or not. Making minor changes can benefit in a long-term campaign in terms of theme, motifs, and symbolism, and the use of a place for different purposes can be helpful.

So, what goes into a scene, then? Well, first understand the term Scene is a metaphor. You can call it anything that gives you the idea of what it is. We use the erm Scene because we tend to think in terms of how a film is put together – there are several different scenes.

Descriptions

Scenes have Descriptions – it is important to know what you are seeing, hearing, and experiencing. Description can also be thought of as Set Dressing.

Locales

Some locales are visited frequently in some campaigns, used over and over again. A Political intrigue may have locales that are the room of a noble, a western may have a ranch or a general store, a horror show may have a creepy crawlspace that has to be visited several times.

A place where things happen, a location where they take place. This is the place where battle maps and location shots come into play, the description of the place giving the PCs the layout, contents, and notable features. A dungeon room, a marketplace, a forest. Add in the theme and you have a dingy dungeon room, a bustling, loud, and boisterous marketplace, and a creepy, unnerving forest.

Scenes take place in Locales, and one scene can blend into another scene seamlessly. An example of this is the exploration of a room. The beginning is the entry into it, discovering it. The next scene is the exploration of the room, discovery of the things within it, examination and triggering or disarming traps. The final scene would be the leaving, possibly interrupted by a visitor or a group of residents.

Other locales are one shot and done.

Dressing & Design

The next thing that a Scene has is a description. This is the place where you use all those Symbols and Motifs and Keywords and Atmosphere things.

When describing a place, there are certain things you should always include unless their inclusion is unnecessary – and there is a difference between unnecessary and merely distracting, as distraction is good. These essential factors are divided into three broad categories with five aspects to each:

Sensory	Sight	Sound	Scent	Taste	Texture
Dimensional	Height	Width	Length	Depth	Volume
Perceptual	Shape	Substance	Atmosphere	Mood	Resonance

Each of these factors helps to build up and is related to the others, such that they all combine to create a whole vision of something. Often, things can be described simply because they have acquired a broad familiarity to your listeners – a chest is a chest, a door is a door, a chair is a chair, a table is a table.

When describing something, use adjectives over adverbs, use repetition over singularity, use association or familiarity over originality. Focus more on spaces and places, and develop a habit or system of doing so, such that it is always going on whenever you describe something.

This habitual aspect is important for two reasons: first, it allows your Players to focus on what it is they need to know and makes it easier to do so over time, as well as prompting questions more effectively. Second, it becomes a way for you to describe things that may include something that is meant to warn them or disguise something and does not call out a surprise in the description or give them a sense of foreboding that you do not intend for them to have.

In short, you don’t spoil it if you do it all the same

every time.

Some of these may require explanation. Sensory elements are always the way that what lies before them impacts their senses. Sensory information should always be presented, with every sense involved. We taste the air, we feel the air, we intuit the graininess or slipperiness. Dimensional elements are primarily part of how we visualize something. They have to do mostly with size and shape of something, and often can be described in terms of familiarity and as a common thing.

The one that often escapes people, however, is the Perceptual stuff. These are things that deal with how we feel about something in ways that we cannot put into simple terms as it relates to the size and shape of something or what our senses tell us individually, because often it is the unique combination of all those factors and then other things that give us our perceptual awareness.

Shape is the easiest of them, often because we can turn to the shapes of things, we already know to describe them, and we have the benefit of the dimensional aspects to help guide this. Substance, of course, can often be subsumed into the item – this is always and essentially what the thing is made of. Describing a Troll, though, can be a task, as they can often be made of the things that exist around them. Is it wood, is it metal, is it ceramic – these are the kinds of things that Substance covers.

The last three are all of a common sort as well, but are about how a place makes one feel, in terms of physical, psychological and emotional awareness. Atmosphere is the overall sense of the space, almost like a genre of an area. The atmosphere can be welcoming, abusive, dreadful, intimate, and such. Mood is the emotional feel of a place, the particular emotions that it brings out. In Wyrlde, Mood can give a sense of connection to planar aspects, since the spheres are tied to different emotions – but they may not, as it could be caused by something in the area or that has recently passed through it. Lastly, resonance describes the way the place seems to fit into the world around it. Resonance is how out of place something feels as a whole and can even include psychic emanations and Palescent vibrations.

A strong descriptions will include all of these things about an area, and many of them about a single object.

It will then go into more detail about the little things – the objects and items, the stuff that is noticeable, and in some cases, there will be things that can only be learned from more careful examination, or perhaps a special skill or ability throw.

In a traditional Dungeon, there are rooms and corridors. Description is important to both of them, as well as everything else, but in this case, the way that it connects to the idea of a Dungeon is that a scene is a room in a dungeon, and Episode is a level in that dungeon, Connections are the corridors in that dungeon, and the dungeon as a whole is the Story.

A Scene is like a room in a dungeon – but it can be a wooded forest, a bedroom in a house, a hall in a great castle, an alley in a busy city, a village, or whatever you need it to be. If you use a VTT, think of a Scene as a battle map.

Hoard

A scene is where the Hoards are found – the treasure. Hoards are described under Adventuring.

Tactics & Strategy

Your Scene should include information on their tactics of the creatures or beings that are being fought. Tactics, in part, derive from the goals and objectives of the creatures being fought. They may not want to fight, or they may choose to go all out, or they may send someone off and handle it, or any of a huge variety of things.

Purpose

Each scene should have a clear purpose that advances the story and moves the plot forward. Why are you telling us this story?

Challenge

Challenge is the engine of storytelling, and every scene should contain some form of Challenge, whether it is external or internal. A great scene should contain a strong Challenge that drives the action and keeps the reader engaged.

Setting

The setting of the scene should be described in enough detail to give the reader a clear picture of the environment. Try to world build to make things pop and steep the audience somewhere they have never been.

Dialogue

Not all scenes will have an encounter with other speaking beings, but when they do the dialogue should be believable, and advance the story. A great scene should contain sharp, witty, or insightful dialogue that advances the story.

Action

The scene should contain action, whether it is physical, intellectual, or emotional, that propels the story forward. A great scene should contain physical or emotional action that propels the story forward and keeps the players engaged.

Emotion

Emotion is what makes a story resonate with the audience, and every scene should have an emotional component that connects the audience to the story. An important scene should evoke a strong emotional response in the players, whether it is fear, joy, sadness, or suspense.

Tension

Tension is what keeps the audience engaged, and every scene should contain some form of tension, whether it is physical or emotional. A key and important scene should contain high stakes and keep the players on the edge of their seat, wondering what will happen next.

Symbolism

The scene should contain elements of symbolism that enhance the story and provide subtext. This can give you powerful images that make scenes pop off the page; By using symbolism, you’re adding another layer to every scene, episode, adventure, and campaign.

Theme

Each scene should relate to the overarching themes of the story, helping to deepen the audience’s understanding of the story and its meaning. Your theme needs to carry both the weight of the story and a connection to the players.

Digressions

Digressions are optional for any Campaign, Adventure, or Episode. They are their own thing, like a mini story of some sort, and often can happen while the major story is going on – and may or may not be connected to the larger story.

One key element about Digressions is that nothing in them can be accomplished by someone alone – they always need the party as a whole to be involved – unless you, as a DM, want it to be something only a few handle.

Imbroglios

An Imbroglio is: a sub-plot. They may be character back story connections, romance sequences, even entirely separate adventure lines. And, as such, they still follow the basic structure of an adventure and are set up the same way, with minor differences when it comes to a Romance subplot. An imbroglio is a storyline for a single, specific PC within the overall whole. Imbroglios can be tied into the main story, or they can be stand alone.

Imbroglios have their own structure, as well, that runs parallel. You may have noted that previously, they were mentioned as happening at set times, generally from 5^th to 16^th level, over a longer period. A regular Imbroglio will have 5 Episodes of 3 scenes each, with the scenes happening over time. They are more fluid in structure, since they are determined in part by the Player’s goals for their PC.

Imbroglios can also earn a reward for the PCs, in the form of Milestone points or experience points.

Imbroglios are the most important type of Digression, as they involve the PC in the world around them, and often build on the backstory and history of the character, telling a much fuller story as it goes.

Side Quests

Side Quests are often small stories that use the same structure. You develop Side quests in much the same way you develop any Episode or Adventure. The Inspiration we gave earlier is a wonderful side quest to use.

Side Quests earn a reward for the PCs, in the form of Milestone points or experience points. There are several different kinds of Side Quest:

Interludes

An Interlude is: an Encounter or series of encounters that is outside the primary storyline, and could exist for character development, side stories, or just as a break in the action. They happen in between the Beginning and the Middle, and the Middle and the End.

Diversions

Diversions are all the assorted in the story things that PCs have going for them, or something that pops up during play and is often wholly improvisational. They are diversions, distractions, little things that keep the game from feeling like a one-way ticket to the end of the storyline.

Missions

There are always Missions to go on. They may choose, for example, to go save a small village, or maybe start a tavern, or any of too many different things to anticipate. So, a story should always describe what happens if they do nothing. Missions are marked by their direct, pointed purpose and often linear structure.

Fetch Quests

A Fetch Quest is often the most common kind of side quest, and usually deserves special mention because there is little as easy to create as a fetch quest. In a Fetch, the PCs have to go and get something and bring it back. That’s the quest, that’s the whole of it, but the devil is in the details – why is it wanted, what will it mean, what happens there and what happens on the way back, as well as the age old why don’t you go get it yourself?

Fetch quests can often be a point of entry and meeting between the villain and the Heroes, simply by having the Villain hire them to do something for them.

Scenes to Episode

An Episode is: a series of connected events that tell a story in and of themselves, with a beginning, middle, and end, while also only telling a part of the larger story.

An episode is a contained portion, a single unit of an overall story. Each Episode has elements that combined create a single unit and may or may not be used in a given adventure but will need to be prepared anyway.

The benefit to an episodic structure is that an episode or part of episode that is skipped by the PCs in one adventure or campaign can always be re-used in a later one, giving you, as the DM, greater flexibility and adaptability to the unending surprises of PCs.

An Episode is very much like a small version of a story. The heart of an Episode is always the Challenge that an Episode is built around. You could easily use a Framework you have saved from before to create an episode of a larger story – that is, after all, what a Campaign itself is.

The Episode Framework is much simpler, because an Episode doesn’t need quite as much stuff in it.

Episodes are composed of Scenes. A typical Episode has 5 Scenes plus an introduction and a way out. There may be more than one path – our general default is two, with the climax coming in the 3^rd or 4^th scene, and combat being the thing that happens then. There may be a Side Quest or other Digression there. All of it linked together by Lures, or hooks.

Just like with Challenges, you can have as many Scenes in an Episode as you want to have. When first trying out this approach, about three is a good start. As you get more familiar with it and work with it more, you can create more and more elaborate and complex ones. When using a Card, you can simply skip the scenes in-between as you need to – they are guidelines, not rigid formats.

An Episode carries over a lot of the same stuff from the Story Framework – Symbolism, Keywords, and Atmosphere are all directly drawn from the Story Framework. You can also use the Story framework to add in the Success State, Failure State, Connections, or Foreshadowing, if you wish – but you can also create Episode Specific versions of these things.

Pay attention to how failure states change the world as a direct result of the actions of the Party. Many adventures are set up so that there is no possible failure state that doesn’t result in the PCs being dead or dying or ending the campaign – but a freer format that includes a failure state introduces the idea of a setback as a function of fate, or bad luck, and gives the Party a chance to correct their mistakes, or lick their wounds and try again, building on the knowledge they already have.

Note that at the height of any tier, the pinnacle scene is often a Capstone Encounter of some sort.

This brings us to the Scenes.

Scenes Per Episode

In a standard layout, there are a fixed number of Episodes per adventure, and a fixed number of Scenes in each Episode. This translates into something that can look terrifying:

Level	Episodes	Scenes	Level	Episodes	Scenes	Level	Episodes	Scenes	Level	Episodes	Scenes
1	5	15	6	10	30	11	15	45	16	15	45
2	5	15	7	10	30	12	20	60	17	10	30
3	5	15	8	15	45	13	15	45	18	10	30
4	10	30	9	15	45	14	15	45	19	10	30
5	10	30	10	15	15	15	15	45	20	10	30

The catch to this, is that you don’t have to create all of those episodes or all of those Scenes.

This is something to build up to as you gain more confidence and skill. Even the grids provided do not give you this great a depth – these are mostly to give you an idea of how to budget for things, using your XP per Scene or Episode budget. This also gives you greater flexibility per adventure in building out your challenges and other elements, so that the larger picture is neither easy, nor simple, and that you can craft a truly challenging encounter while still having options that have no encounter or that approach the budget in a non-combat way.

Character Development

Each Episode should reveal something new about the characters and their development. Whether it is their motivations, personalities, or relationships. A great episode should reveal something new and meaningful about the characters, whether it is their motivations, personalities, or relationships.

Episode to Adventure

When developing out an Adventure, the approach is different, though it still uses the core budgets allowed. Instead of Arcs, an Adventure will rely on a Framework.

Scaling Adventures

The Scale is the region that is affected by the challenge, and the focus of the adventure. Scale is not a requirement, as entire campaigns can be held in a small, concentrated area. But in terms of knowledge and engagement, it helps to know the scale when designing an adventure.

An Adventure can cover multiple levels. Writing a series of 20 Adventures, one for each level, can easily be done, but most adventures cover a range of levels, with the lowest one being the beginning of an adventure and the highest one being the level the PCs come out at.

In general, the following breakdown is suggested:

Level	Scale	Campaign Arcs	Purpose
1 – 2	Hamlet	First Arc	Learning about their Character
2- 3
3 – 4	Village		Learning tactics and roleplay
4 – 5		Second Arc	Begin Backstory elements
5 – 6	Town		Coming to understand their role in the wider world and interacting with it
6 – 8			Continue to deal with Backstory elements
8 – 10	City	Third Arc	Learning their abilities and getting comfortable with them
10 – 12			Finish backstory elements
12 – 14	Region		Thinking challenges and Strategy development
14 – 16		Fourth Arc
16 – 18	Country		Brings all the disparate parts together
18 – 19
19 – 20	Continent	Final Arc	Wrap up the whole campaign

The Arcs are what is used if a campaign has an overarching story – not all campaigns have one, and it is not necessary, but some folks like to have a grand design of successive challenges.

The Purpose is the general idea of what the Players should be dealing with or learning.

This creates a scenario where there are roughly 13 Adventures of increasing difficulty as the PC’s grow and become more powerful, and when used with the Experience Point Budgets, help to ensure that the challenge is adequate to challenge the PCs.

Tiers

For folks new to Wyrlde, it is suggested doing Campaigns by Tier: Novice, Adept, Maven, Master, and Maestro, with one to three Adventures in each Tier. There will be more about how each Adventure is a part of the larger story in a moment.

There are five Tiers on Wyrle, and the each have a particular role to play in the development of a PC:

Tier	Scale	Development	Sub-plots
Novice	Village	Learning about their Character	Hints
Adept	Town	Learning tactics and roleplay	Beginning
Maven	City	Learning their abilities and getting comfortable with them	Middle
Master	Region	Thinking challenges and Strategy development	Endings
Maestro	Country	Brings all the disparate parts together	Afterwards

Tiers can also increase Honor, Renown, and Piety through a bonus on completing each tier. This reflects their growth in the eyes of the wider world, and potentially enables them get Bastions and other boons you might feel are useful to them.

Score	Novice	Adept	Maven	Master	Maestro
Honor	1	1	2	2	3
Renown	1	2	3	4	5
Piety	1	2	2	3	4

Adventure to Campaign

Wyrlde Campaigns tend to be a larger story about the small band of intrepid folks who risked their lives and defied the odds and building that story from a combination of the Player Character backstories, the events of the world at the time they are in it, and the reactions of those PCs to those events and circumstances.

A Campaign always starts with the idea(s) for one or more stories. These stories do not have to be connected or related to each other; they can all be stand-alone stories. There is no limit on the number of stories that can be part of a Campaign, nor do they all have be told in any particular order beyond that imposed by the ability of the PCs to handle the challenges.

One of the possible tools you can use to organize your campaign is a grid, which gives you suggestions for how to interlink adventures. In the example above, there are spaces for a host of adventures that interconnect, alongside side quests that can be dropped in as needed.

The grid above is one that is used in Wyrlde for the process of developing a new campaign in a “web” style. There are cards for doing it in an “on the rails” style and a “Tree style”, as well. It features several different elements that will follow down through the layers of Adventure into Episode into Scene.

There are also two points to cover that are key specific to a campaign: The Change in the World, with a Win or Fail.

Success

Success is a rough guide for what happens if the party successfully overcomes the greatest Challenge. In our case, that would be defeat the dragon (not always slay it) and rescue the princess. The success state then is the princess rescued and the kingdom celebrating.

Failure

Failure state is what happens if they don’t succeed, if they do not overcome the challenge. It is important to know the failure state and what happens because not all adventures are successful – and a failure state can sometimes lead to more or create a situation where there is greater investment by players. For this effort, we will say that the dragon will kill the princess and burnt the town to ash.

This is for the note about what is going to change in the world if the Party Succeeds (defeats or overcomes the challenge) or Fails (succumbs or fails to defeat or overcome the challenge). A Partial success is also always possible, but the grid only lists the primary two.

Determining the Success or Failure and what the changes will be often relies on the nature of the storyline in use for the campaign, and a storyline has some factors that feed into it: Inspiration, Genre, Plot, Theme, and Villain.

Working Backwards

When you do opt to develop out a full campaign, you start with the Climax Adventure and then work your way backwards.

The Climax Adventure is the penultimate chapter, the final moment, the climax of the campaign. It is the most difficult, most challenging, highest sakes, most deadly, part of the whole. By starting with this one, you can set it up to rely on the capabilities of the most powerful of adventurers, and you can lay in the essential things that they will need to have, set up what they will need to overcome, and build up to it most effectively. It is still just like crating any other adventure, but there are few limits on you in terms of monsters you can use, difficulties that can be faced, and hardships to endure.

This adventure is the one you think of when you start out imagining a particular boss fight – it is where they fight the rulers of Hell, the masters of the Abyss, the Lords of the Feywild, the greatest of monsters.

The place they fight is part of it – the Demon Lord’s castle is a massive complex with a dozen lieutenants and hundreds of traps, requiring climbing and jumping and navigating lava pits and all the assorted and sundry things you imagine about a massive final battle.

It is the great battlefield, with the two sides about to leap into a war that only can win. It is the moment of truth and testing, the point where the party learns what they are made of.

If you start here, you know what the most challenging, most difficult of things will be – and then everything else just has to be a little easier than it is. This is why you start with it and work back, staying within the boundaries of the experience budgets.

One exception to this is the “Conclusion”. You do the conclusion last, as it allows you to gather up any remaining plot or subplot threads, as well as give you a chance to determine what the heroes of the realms will do next – their futures now that they have had their turn to save the world. This is the closing stuff, a point where what has gone before is looked at and remembered.

Remember that Adventurers are celebrities, in the end. They are the people about whom songs are sung, plays are written and performed, and tall tales are told. The conclusion is the time when you do that – and gives you a chance to look back on how far the party has come from their time as 1^st level novices.

By stepping backward, you can be sure that each adventure is compelling and that each one is “easier” that the previous one, while also avoiding doing the same thing. It also allows you to build in connections more easily.

These high difficulty, “boss” creatures do not engage in just general battle, they are strategic, tactical, and they use the area around them and the abilities they have in extremely effective ways — 20th level PCs might smirk at Guards & Wards or Glyphs of Warding, but they are stunningly useful in making a high-level space dangerous. A space that the Villain has had lots of time to prepare and set defenses around. That they have designed to make them tougher and more dangerous.

These final Climaxes are not just going to be “anywhere” — the place around their lair is going to be part of what has to be dealt with, and then you have the army of followers and the rest. By this time there is a strong chance that the Villain knows the players exist, and will be targeting them — to keep them from short rests and long rests, to use up ammunition and special abilities, to get them to burn through spell slots. Villains don’t let the heroes take a break right before the big fight. They work to wear them down, to make them desperate.

These things change the world on some significant level — there will be before this thing happens, and there will be a new and different thing after this happens. Evil is vanquished, but the battle destroyed small villages for miles, drove families from their homes. Rebuilding must happen. Or the evil wins, and now all things will be destroyed.

This is the scale of impact — in a dozen years, the event will be the songs sung in taverns, the plays performed on stage, the bedtime stories told at night. Exaggeration of it will be common, as well. These Capstone events change the way that the people in The world see the world and the way they live their lives in it.

Building Encounters

Inevitably, there will come a time when you have an encounter. Whether through the lassitude of misfortune or the grand design of an eon, the calculations of some unseen for of the machinations of a petty noble, you will find yourself faced with one or more somethings and it will be a fight, flight, or negotiation to overcome it.

In a given day, one is anticipated to stumble across half a dozen to a dozen of these moments, these experiences. Day in, day out, they seem to be unending and eternal and often the only escape from them is to hunker down in some pleasant circumstance until the boredom drives you forth once more to conquer the vicissitudes of an unfeeling and unflinching world.

Thankfully, such opportunities are also how we improve.

An encounter is exactly that: something one encounters. It might be a bunch of bad guys, it might be a little old lady, it might be a chest, it might be a puzzle or a trap, it might be a scroll with ancient information or a full-on description of what they need to do.

The key is that it is something that the Player character have to interact with. It is an engagement with something that presents an interaction for the characters. Encounters are not just combat; they can be a rumor or a bit of lore or an NPC interaction, or a task that needs to be done.

Encounters can be Random, generated by the roll of dice on a table, or planned. Since we’re talking about designing planned things, we will focus on Planned Encounters.

Social Encounters

Any kind of Role Playing or social encounters falls under this grouping. Our young toughs will apologize and say that they were sent to spy, but they didn’t want to – the whole town is under the control of the gang and those who defy them get beaten or worse.

Yes, they will just blab the whole thing out, in a scared and desperate way. Their goal is to get the PCs to believe them, and they will offer to show the PCs the gang’s hideout (our next Lure to get them to the big fight) the next day, when the leader of the gang will be there.

Social Encounters use the social encounter rules under Adventuring. A social encounter can use as much or as little of the Scene’s available XP budget as you want. The default is that a Social Encounter will use 500 XP per PC of the budget for that scene.

Object Encounters

For our purposes, this will include dealing with nature and survival in general, as one is interacting with dirt and trees and rocks and roads. But it is generally meant to engage with encounters and the use of or examination of objects. An Object encounter can use as little or as much of the XP Budget that you want. The default is an Object Encounter will use 250 XP per PC of the budget for that scene.

These encounters fall under Adventuring, outside of interacting with other folks (social).

Combat Encounters

The most common sort of Encounter is a Combat encounter. A scene is where encounters are built, where they happen. Each scene has an XP Budget – you can use some of that budget from a different scene to beef one up, or you can go higher and lower than the budget for that scene, in different ways.

The baseline XP budget for a scene is shown in the table by the difficulty of that encounter that you want. So, if in an early scene, you want the encounter to be easier, you will use the Easy budget number, while if you want it typical, you will use that number. Deadly encounters are always the most dangerous, and will use up most of a given Scene’s budget.

This number is for one character. You multiply that number by the number of people in the Party – the number of PCs and their companions.

The Total XP Value of the given creatures involved in that Scene should be right around your budget. If you have 56 XP as your budget, and you have two creatures that are worth 27 XP each, then you can use two creatures. Your goal is to get as close as you can to the budget, without going under. It is alright to go a little over, but going under makes things a bit easier on your team.

Here’s the default chart.

XP Budgets & Encounter Design

Generally, you will create a series of Adventures composed of Episodes, and the budget for an Adventure will be divided into the total number of episodes. This, in turn, is modified by the minimum, average, and maximum number of combat encounters per Adventure.

This allows you to budget a given encounter in a manner that meets the needs and challenge expectations of the adventure for that party.

Number of Creatures

The number of creatures that a PC can face is determined by the XP value of the creatures and the total budget for that Scene. If you plan to have scenes without any creatures, you can add their budget into this one, thus upping the stakes and creating a more complex encounter.

You can also up the number of creatures is you opt to do so in any given encounter, even in the midst of playing through it.

XP to CR Determination

XP Value	Level	5e CR	Wyrlde CR
22	Initiate	1	0
75	Novice	2	1
150		3	2
275		4	3
375		6	4
800		7	5
1000	Adept	8	6
1225		9	7
1550		10	8
1950		11	9
2350		13	10
3000	Maven	14	11
3450		15	12
4000		16	13
4550		17	14
5550		18	15
6800	Master	19	16
8100		21	17
9600		22	18
11350		23	19
14200		24	20
15798	Maestro	25	21
17395		26	22
18993		28	23
20590		29	24
22188		30	25

Once you know what your Experience Point Budget is, you can use the XP to CR chart to convert that into a rough Challenge Rating that you can use to select your monsters.

This also means that if you divide up your pool of XP, you can use more monsters of a lower CR or fewer monsters of a Higher CR, for each scene.

Wyrlde’s CR ranges from 0 to 25, and has no fractional measures.

Wyrlde uses a custom Challenge Rating due to the system for creating your own monsters that will follow, and the variable difference in the way that XP values are assigned here.

For that reason, there is a conversion available for a standard 5e CR.

This conversion places the values of the monsters into the range used in Wyrlde. So, you can use any monster from the Monster Manual here, but their experience point values will not match, while everything else is the same.

As you can tell, a single PC is never going to go up against anything higher than a CR 18, simply because they are alone.

Encounter Difficulty

Encounters come in five levels of difficulty. To determine the difficulty goal of a particular encounter, you have to decide how difficult that encounter is going to be for the party. The higher the party level, the easier it will become.

Difficulty	Description
Novice	These encounters can look more difficult, but still be within the ability of the characters.
Adept	This is the encounter where multiple characters must be involved, and there is likely to be a need for healing afterward.
Maven	This kind of encounter will truly test the ability of the PCs at their level.
Master	This kind of encounter is a real test of the capabilities of more than two members of the party, and may completely deplete ammunition, mana, and other resources, typically needing a rest afterwards.
Maestro	This kind of encounter is an extreme challenge to the Players. It requires communication, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the other players, and playing to them, using their combined skills to defeat the foe.

Once you have that difficulty level and CR figured out, you can start to populate your encounter with whatever foes you choose to use against them.

	Advancement				Story		Budget		Combat Encounters / Adventure			Budget / Encounter
Level	MS Lvl	XP Lvl	MP to Adv	XP to Adv	Adv	Epi	Adv	Epi	Min	Avg	Max	Min	Avg	Max
1	0	0	0	1000	1	5	1000	200	2	4	7	566	283	141
2	3	1000	3	2000	1	5	2000	400	2	4	8	1000	500	250
3	6	3000	3	3000	1	5	3000	600	2	4	8	1500	750	375
4	9	6000	3	5000	2	10	2500	250	2	4	8	1250	625	313
5	15	11000	6	7000	2	10	3500	350	2	4	8	1750	875	438
6	21	18000	6	9000	2	10	4500	450	2	4	8	2250	1125	563
7	27	27000	6	11000	2	10	5500	550	2	3	7	3230	1615	808
8	33	38000	6	14000	3	15	4667	311	2	3	6	3111	1556	778
9	42	52000	9	17000	3	15	5667	378	2	3	6	3778	1889	944
10	51	69000	9	20000	3	15	6667	444	2	3	6	4444	2222	1111
11	60	89000	9	23125	3	15	7708	514	2	3	6	5139	2569	1285
12	69	112125	9	27025	4	20	6756	338	1	2	3	8220	4110	2055
13	81	139150	12	31050	3	15	10350	690	1	2	4	10350	5175	2588
14	93	170200	12	35000	3	15	11667	778	1	2	4	11667	5833	2917
15	105	205200	12	39050	3	15	13017	868	1	2	4	13017	6508	3254
16	117	244250	12	44050	3	15	14683	979	1	2	4	14683	7342	3671
17	132	288300	15	49050	2	10	24525	2453	1	2	5	20020	10010	5005
18	147	337350	15	54050	2	10	27025	2703	1	2	4	27025	13513	6756
19	162	391400	15	59100	2	10	29550	2955	1	2	4	29550	14775	7388
20	177	450500	15	74500	2	10	37250	3725	1	2	4	37250	18625	9313

Creating a CR

From time to time, you may need to modify an existing creature or create a new creature and gain its CR from that process.

This process can change the CR of a creature, and so change the XP value you have for it, so hold onto the base CR as your guideline.

When modifying a creature, you can never go below 0 or above 25. You then begin to use different aspects about the creature to add or subtract from this base number or the different factors of the Creature’s Stat block.

These factors and the change to CR they provide can vary, so each factor has its own modification. You identify the factor, look it up, and see what the modification to the CR is.

To start from scratch, you start with the CR you already know you need, and then adjust according to the abilities of the creature you seek to modify or create.

One starts with the default values:

CR Basis

CR Determination		Stat Blocks									Encounter Design
Wyrlde CR	XP Value	AC	Hit Points		# Atks / Rnd	Dmg / Rnd		Prof Bonus	Atk Bonus	Save DC	XP Novice	XP Adept	XP Maven	XP Master	XP Maestro
0	22	10	1	6	1	0	4	0	1	10	10	16	22	28	34
1	75	11	7	46	1	5	17	1	1	11	50	63	75	88	100
2	150	12	47	85	1	18	30	1	2	12	100	125	150	175	200
3	275	12	86	125	2	31	44	2	2	12	150	213	275	338	400
4	375	13	126	165	2	45	57	2	3	13	250	313	375	438	500
5	800	14	166	205	2	58	70	3	4	14	500	650	800	950	1100
6	1000	15	206	244	2	71	83	3	4	15	600	800	1000	1200	1400
7	1225	16	245	284	3	84	96	4	5	15	750	988	1225	1463	1700
8	1550	16	285	324	3	97	110	4	5	16	1000	1275	1550	1825	2100
9	1950	17	325	363	3	111	123	5	6	17	1300	1625	1950	2275	2600
10	2350	18	364	403	3	124	136	5	6	18	1600	1975	2350	2725	3100
11	3000	19	404	443	4	137	149	6	7	18	1900	2450	3000	3550	4100
12	3450	20	444	482	4	150	162	6	7	19	2200	2825	3450	4075	4700
13	4000	20	483	522	4	163	176	6	8	20	2600	3300	4000	4700	5400
14	4550	21	523	562	4	177	189	7	8	21	2900	3725	4550	5375	6200
15	5550	22	563	602	4	190	202	7	9	21	3300	4425	5550	6675	7800
16	6800	23	603	641	5	203	215	8	10	22	3800	5300	6800	8300	9800
17	8100	24	642	681	5	216	228	8	10	23	4500	6300	8100	9900	11700
18	9600	24	682	721	5	229	242	9	11	24	5000	7300	9600	11900	14200
19	11350	25	722	760	5	243	255	9	11	24	5500	8425	11350	14275	17200
20	14200	26	761	800	6	256	268	10	12	25	6400	10300	14200	18100	22000
21	15798	27	801	840	6	269	281	10	12	26	7120	11459	15798	20136	24475
22	17395	28	841	879	6	282	294	11	13	27	7840	12618	17395	22173	26950
23	18993	28	880	919	6	295	308	11	13	27	8560	13776	18993	24209	29425
24	20590	29	920	959	7	309	321	12	14	28	9280	14935	20590	26245	31900
25	22188	30	960	999	7	322	334	12	15	29	10000	16094	22188	28281	34375

This is the Basis for determine a CR.

The principle features are the AC, Hit Points, Attacks per Round, Damage per Round as a sum of attacks, and general challenges.

The table scales linearly, and while there may be a strong urge to match the level of the PCs to the CR, that can sometimes lead to challenges that will be outside the ability of the PCs to handle.

CR Modification Table

CR Change	Size	Space	HP / Die	Ability Score	Hit Points	Armor Class	Atk Bon	Save DC	Prof Bonus	Atk/Rnd	Dmg Die	Lair
-5	Micro	1 in \| 1 in	1	4	1	3	-2	4	-5	1 / 4	d2
-4	Bitty	3 in \| 3 in	3	5	5	4	-1	5	-4	1 / 3	d4
-3	Wee	6 in \| 6 in	3	6	10	5	-1	6	-3	1 / 3	d4	Far Away from Lair
-2	Tiny	9 in \| 9 in	4	7	20	6	0	7	-2	1 / 2	d6
-1	Little	18 in \| 18 in	4	8	30	7	0	8	-1	1 / 2	d6	Unusually out of lair
0	Small	3 ft. \| 3 ft.	5	9	40	8	1	9	0	1	d6
0	Medium	6 ft. \| 6 ft.	6	10	50	9	1	10	0	1	d8
0	Big	9 ft. \| 9 ft.	6	11	75	10	1	10	0	1	d8
1	Large	12 ft. \| 12 ft.	7	12	100	12	2	12	1	2	d10	In lair
1	Huge	15 ft. \| 15 ft.	8	13	200	14	2	14	2	2	d10
2	Gigantic	18 ft. \| 18 ft	9	14	300	16	3	16	3	3	d12	prepared Lair
2	Massive	21 ft. \| 21 ft.	10	15	400	18	3	18	4	3	d12
3	Immense	24 ft. \| 24 ft.	11	16	500	20	4	20	5	4	d14	Deadly lair
3	Monstrous	27 ft \| 27 ft.	12	17	600	22	4	22	6	4	d14
4	Humongous	30 ft. \| 30 ft	13	18	700	24	5	24	7	5	d16	Dimensional Lair
4	Gargantuan	36 ft. \| 36 ft	14	19	800	26	5	26	8	5	d16
5	Colossal	42 ft. \| 42 ft	15	20	900	28	6	28	9	6	d18	Planar Lair
5	Titanic	48 ft. \| 48 ft	16	21	1000	30	6	30	10	7	d20

Each factor has a different impact, and this provides extreme flexibility in determining the rating, allowing you to take a single creature and adjust it according to the needs you have for the encounter.

There are several measures that can modify a base challenge rating:

Size: How big is it? Wyrlde has many more sizes of creatures and size determines the kind of hit die they use, and some critters have either bigger or smaller hit dice, which impacts the CR. The size of a creature also determines the size of the damage die it uses.
Ability Score: the average of all their ability scores.
Armor Class: Is the armor class greater or lesser than the base for that creature? This impacts CR.
Proficiency Bonus: The highest proficiency bonus of the creature.
Attack Bonus: the highest attack bonus of the creature.
Save DC: The highest Save DC of the creature.
Attacks: How many attacks per round does the creature have? Some creatures have no attacks, others have many more than 1.
Lairs: A creature fought in a lair is more difficult to deal with than one outside of it. Simple Lairs are easier, more well defend and difficult to deal with lairs are harder.
Creature Type. Some types of creatures increase the or decrease the CR for an encounter.
Situational. Some situations change the CR of an encounter.

Size Modifiers

Size can determine several different elements of a creature that affect their challenge rating. Size is the most obvious, but also both the die and the number of dice that a creature has, as well as the average number of hit points they might have and as a factor of their size, the potential damage they can cause to poor unsuspecting adventurers.

Capability Modifiers

Any Resistance or Immunity a creature may have affects its CR as well. These modifiers are for each one.

	Normal Weapon	Magical Weapon	Elemental	Planar	Nebulous	Damage
Resistance	+2	+4	+1	+1	+1	+2
Immunity	+4	+5	+2	+2	+2	+4
Vulnerability	-2	-0	-1	-1	-1	-2
Weakness	-1	-1	-1	0	0	-1

Creature Type Modifiers

Some types of Creature modify the Challenge rating due to the nature of the being.

Creature Type	CR Modification	Creature Type	CR Modification	Creature Type	CR Modification	Creature Type	CR Modification
Aberrations	+2	Abominations	+3	Grimms	+1	Horrors	+1
Constructs	+1	Corruptions	+1	Rumored	*	Salathen	+2
Denizens	+4	Dragons	+5	Trolls	+2	Spirits	+1
Elementals	+2	Giants	+1	Undying	+3	Water Monsters	+2

Situational Modifiers

Certain situations further modify the CR in a planned encounter, much the same way that a Lair structure does.

CR Mod	Situation
-1	Minimum hit points
+1	Maximum hit points
+2	Legendary Actions, each
+1	Difficult Terrain
+2	Unstable Terrain
+1	Lightly Obscured vision
+2	Obscured vision
+3	Heavily Obscured vision
+1	The whole party is surprised, and the enemy isn’t.
+2	The enemy has cover, and the party doesn’t.
+3	The characters are unable to see the enemy.
+2	The characters are taking damage every round from some environmental effect or magical source, and the enemy isn’t.
+4	The characters are hanging from a rope, in the midst of scaling a sheer wall or cliff, stuck to the floor, or otherwise in a situation that greatly hinders their mobility or makes them sitting ducks.

Balancing

Finally, you balance by adjusting the hit points and the combined damage done in a single turn. Balancing CR is based on the combined hit points of the party and the foes, followed by the combined average damage of each side.

To determine average damage, multiply one half the damage die by the number of attacks of the creature. A balanced encounter on Wyrlde is considered to have a Ratio of Foes to Party of 1.5:1. The creatures should have a ratio of 1.5 on HP and Damage over the party.

Assigning Milestone Points

The budgets are provided on the basis of a per person award for Milestone Points as well as Experience Points. Thus, your budget for a party of 6 people is higher than your budget for a party of 3 people.

Milestone points are awarded by dropping them into assorted, chosen Scenes – complete the scene, get a milestone point. To complete a scene, of course, means to solve the particular Challenge the scene is built around. Not all Scenes will award a milestone point, nor do they have to do so.

It also assumes you are using the Encounter ratios that are normal for Wyrlde. A balanced encounter on Wyrlde is considered to have a Ratio of Foes to Party of 1.5:1. The creatures should have a ratio of 1.5 on HP and Damage over the party.

For a general, long-term Campaign, Wyrlde recommends that there be a set of 15 adventures. The first one will be a simple introductory adventure, and bump PCs up to second Level. The final adventure will be after they have Reach 20^th Level, where they can use all their mighty powers.

This is merely a suggestion, however – a Campaign can stop at any level and start at any level. The table, however, includes budgets for the awarding of XP and Milestone Points, for each of the different adventure forms that are shown.

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