Daily Adventure Prompts

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DM Tip: The Scales

Recently I ran into a problem where a campaign I was running was nearing a point where the party was going to have to do some political finagling that would have wide reaching consequences later in the story. The problem was that this group wasn’t actually a big fan of political finagling, and I could feel the momentum of the session bleeding away from the table every time they waded into the quagmire of debating what they were going to do when the time came.

It took me a couple weeks to come up with an idea, but eventually I hit upon the concept of gamifying the decision process, giving them as players just enough awareness of the narrative to make an interesting decision about the story they were telling. My solution was “ The Scales”, a concept I introduced to my party by describing that this moment was especially important, and that the fates would be weighing their choices to determine the outcome.

Afterwords I presented a few different options to the problem: who in the negotiations would be pleased by particular choices, who’d be offended, as well as one potential good and bad thing that would happen shoot they pick that path. I ensured that the handful of options I mentioned were highly distinct from one another, and would each lead to a meaningful choice of what would happen later down the line. Cutting their options down into distinct choices meant that the party were less worried about the details leading up to the decision, and were able to spend less time arguing in circles about possibilities, meaning I could fit more into the game.

I’d advise you to consider using the scales should you see that your campaign is nearing a similar muddy crossroads, as it lets your party take a step back and really focus on what they want rather than endlessly rehashing old options. Foreshadow the decision point, bring them to the point, discuss their options, decide as a group, and then move forward.  It’s as easy as that.