Creating Adventures

A lot of Directors prefer to make their own adventures rather than use published ones. Creating your own adventures lets you tailor the story to perfectly fit the motivations of the heroes in your game, thus maximizing the fun for the players.

Every good adventure includes villains, a task to accomplish, NPCs, and interesting locations and adventure sites.

Player Ambition Writes Adventures

Players have ambition driven by their characters' complications, personal stories, and desires for titles, supernatural treasures, and other rewards. Indulge these desires! If a hero wants to go on a quest to gain a Blade of Quintessence, let them know where they can find one (after they put in the proper research or questing time, of course). You can then plan an adventure, even just a short one, around the weapon's retrieval!

Villain

Every good adventure has a villain behind the trouble the heroes are trying to solve. This is a game about fighting monsters, after all, so give the heroes something to fight!

Villain Sins

You probably know the old idiom, "Actions speak louder than words." This applies to heroes and villains alike. The thing that primarily makes a villain a force of evil the heroes—and players—will stop at nothing to defeat? The villain's actions.

The best way to let the players know that your villain must be defeated is to have the villain do some unquestionably evil stuff! Before the heroes even meet the villain, they should find the corpses left behind, witness the burning villages, or be harrowed by the accounts of those lucky enough to survive the villain's wrath. The outcomes of the villain's actions let the players fully understand the depth of the evil they face. Villains don't hesitate to take or ruin the lives of others to get what they want, and most have no qualms against collateral damage.

The two most important things that make your adventure's villain worth the heroes' time is what they've done—and what they're planning to do. What they've done shows that they're not just evil but capable. What they plan to do is worse than what they've done, and by golly, someone needs to stop it.

Give your villain a history of evil that the heroes can uncover. It might be a short history. Maybe the villain just performed the first in a series of murders a few hours before the heroes come to town. Or it could cover years spent as a warlord, tyrant, or entity of destruction leaving behind entire worlds reduced to rubble. Let the sins of the villain be what hooks the heroes into the adventure—and remember that there's no motivation stronger than the players deciding they must stop the villain before being asked to. A self-inspired goal works better than having an NPC beg or pay the heroes to get the job done. Still, what starts out as a job often becomes a personal mission, so don't be afraid to start there if doing so feels like the best idea.

Once a villain discovers that the heroes are meddling in their plans, they don't sit idly by and wait for the fight to come to them. No! Great villains are proactive, sending lackeys to battle the heroes, frame them for crimes, capture their loved ones, or burn their hometowns.

Villain Goals

Many villains don't see themselves as evil. In fact, most heroes and villains have similar motivations—ambition, revenge, and even protecting others and saving the world. The difference is that villains believe their personal goals are more important than anything else, and they are willing to sacrifice the well-being and lives of others to get what they want.

Any of the following options make a great quick villain goal, or can serve as inspiration for goals of your own:

• The villain has a deadly personal vendetta against another person or group of people who wronged them.
• The villain believes that rulership is theirs by birthright, or because they see themself as the most qualified.
• The villain wants to live forever to protect their people, possessions, land, or legacy.
• The villain knows of a great threat, and they require ultimate power to defeat it.

Instead of achieving their goals through diplomacy and heroics, villains take what they require to achieve their goals, and destroy anyone and anything in their way.

Of course, some villains want to cause violence and mayhem just for the sake of it! These villains can be fun to throw into an adventure from time to time, but many are the type of folks who are typically being manipulated by villains with even greater motivation. As such, they shouldn't be the focus of every adventure in every campaign.

Stealing is Encouraged

When you're coming up with ideas for campaigns, adventures, and scenes, you should feel free to steal plots, action set pieces, characters, and anything else you want from your favorite movies, television shows, novels, comic books, and podcasts. You can then modify a few cosmetic details to make things your own. Borrowing a character who's a human man in your favorite novel to make an NPC? Make the NPC a dwarf woman with a new name and no one is the wiser. Got an idea for an encounter based on a battle scene from your favorite science fiction flick? Make those invading aliens gnolls instead! Let your favorite stories inspire you, especially when you're looking for new ideas.

Adventure Goal

Every adventure should give the heroes a clear goal to accomplish. While most every goal can be boiled down to "stop the villain from doing a bad thing," it helps if the heroes have a specific idea of how to stop or minimize the consequences of the villain's plans. Ideally, they'll be able to accomplish this goal in more than one way.

The heroes' ultimate adventure goal should be one that stops or prevents the total achievement of the villain's goal. If the heroes live under the oppressive rule of a tyrant who usurped a lordship and imprisons any who question his authority, they could fight to help the rightful heir regain the lordship. They might engage in political intrigue to get close to the tyrant before deposing him. They could lead others in a wide rebellion that creates a new form of government. "Depose the tyrant and install better leadership" is the heroes' ultimate adventure goal, though they have many ways to accomplish that goal.

An adventure's goal doesn't always result in a total failure for the villain. Sometimes the heroes need to simply prevent as much destruction as they can while surviving to fight another day. For example, if Ajax the Invincible attacks the port city of Blackbottom to force its leaders to bend the knee, a group of 1st-level heroes lacks the resources and power to stand directly against the siege and stop it. As such, the adventure's goal might be to escape the city leading as many innocent folk as possible to safety—and staying alive to face the villain later. The heroes are still heroes for saving people, even if they can't stop the villain's plans.

Discovering the Goal

An adventure's goal isn't always clear to the players at the start, but the heroes should always have a good idea of how to keep pursuing the story. Gameplay and fun can grind to a halt if the players don't have any idea what their characters should do to further their goals.

Every adventure should have an inciting incident that either sees the heroes discovering the adventure's goal, or that puts them on the path to discovering it. If the characters start an adventure by finding the freshly murdered body of a noble in the streets of Capital, they're likely to look for clues that could lead them to catching a murderer—a solid, straightforward adventure goal. Or it could be that the murder leads them to uncovering a grand conspiracy in which one of Capital's Great Houses is planning a coordinated and violent takeover of the city. The heroes must stop those plots—an adventure goal that might take them several scenes to fully uncover. But each of those scenes should lead directly to the next without leaving the players wondering, "What should we do?"

Complications and Adventures

If the heroes in your campaign have taken complications (see Complications and Campaigns above), it's a good idea to have at least one complication make trouble for a hero during an adventure, or play some other part in the adventure's story. Rotate the hero whose complication is highlighted each time, so that every player gets a chance to be at the center of the story.

Creating NPCs

The heroes and the fell monsters they slay shouldn't be the only folks in an adventure. A few friendly (or at least nonhostile) NPCs can supply the characters with information, equipment, and—most importantly—a good reason for putting their lives on the line. If all the people the characters come across are villainous, apathetic, or selfish, the players won't feel very motivated to get their heroics on.

The NPCs the heroes meet during their adventures should be complex people. They have personal motivations for helping the heroes, personality and behavioral quirks, and character flaws. An adventure typically features at least three or four NPCs you'll want to flesh out, depending on how many scenes you plan to play out and how many NPCs each scene requires.

When you create an NPC, quickly jot down the following information about them.

Personal Details

What's this NPC's name? What do they do for a living?

Features

What's notable about the NPC's appearance? Do they have distinguishing features such as a streak of gray or color in their hair, a bushy beard, a tattoo of a snake skull, or a scar over one eye? Do they have a specific scent (good or bad)?

Voice

When the NPC speaks, how does their voice sound? You don't have to put on a character voice every time you speak as the NPC, but telling the players, "This elf talks like a pirate," or "This dwarf has a high-pitched voice that keeps cracking," helps them remember and differentiate that NPC from others.

Behavior

What noticeable behavior does the NPC have? Maybe they maintain constant, unbreaking eye contact, or maybe they rarely look up from their feet. They could pick their nose, repeat a catch phrase, talk to themself, bite their nails, whisper whenever they say something profound (or profane!), or constantly clear their throat. Giving an NPC just one distinct behavior helps cement them in the players' minds and makes them more authentic.

Flaw

What character flaw does this NPC have? They might be selfish when it comes to wealth, ignore their personal hygiene, lie to cover up their insecurities, or act cowardly in the face of threats. A single flaw does the trick. Too many flaws, and your NPC will go from authentic to authentically unlikable fast.

Helping the Heroes

Why would this NPC want to help the heroes during this adventure? They don't have to be fully on board with helping the characters at first. It might take some convincing, in the form of a test, a negotiation, or a task the heroes need to accomplish to win the NPC's help. But there should be at least a kernel of motivation in the NPC already—or they have no reason to help. It could be that they don't want the villain to succeed, they see a profitable opportunity in working with the heroes, or they feel they owe the heroes a favor thanks to a previous adventure.

Denying Aid

What would prevent this NPC from helping the heroes? It's possible that the answer is "nothing," but most people have something or someone they're not willing to risk even if the fate of the world hangs in the balance. What could the villain threaten that makes the NPC think twice about helping out the heroes? It might be a loved one, a meaningful location, or a valuable treasure.

Interesting Locations

A good adventure has interesting locations for the heroes to visit. Such locations don't need to be fantastic to be interesting (though it doesn't hurt to throw in one or two fantastic locations in any adventure). A small farming village can be an interesting location if it's home to engaging events and intrigue. Even small-time drama such as who has been poisoning farmer Yelena's crops or who Jon the shepherd seeks to marry can make a location engaging.

Make a list of the different locations the heroes might visit during the adventure, including both general locations and specific adventure sites.

General Locations

A general location is a settlement or a defined wilderness region that the heroes visit during the adventure.

If the adventure takes place in a giant, sprawling metropolis like Capital, then different city districts and large landmarks such as catacombs and parks count as general locations. If the adventure takes place in and around a regional area larger than a city but no bigger than a planet, then full settlements and biomes such as deserts and forests count as general locations. If the adventure takes place across the timescape (or in a similar milieu of many worlds), then a general location could be an entire world and any specific settlements or biomes the heroes visit in that world.

You don't have to define everything about these general locations, because you'll develop more in-depth information about the specific sites the heroes might visit in any location later. You can use the following questions about each general location as a starting point for what you'll want to cover (and you might already have done some of this when creating a starting area during your campaign preparation):

• Mood: What is the mood of this location? Is it safe and peaceful? Dire and gloomy? Tense and dangerous? Do the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you're here, or is it the kind of place where you can relax?
• Senses: What are the first things you notice about this location with your senses? What do you see, hear, or smell? What does the air taste like? How does it feel on your skin? Which of the things you observe stand out or are unique?
• Creatures: What nonhostile creatures can be encountered here? This might include passersby, street merchants, animals, or unknown somethings moving in the shadows.

Having these details will help you set the scene as the heroes travel through these general locations to get from one specific site to another.

Specific Sites

A specific site is a location where an adventure scene takes place. It could be a building, a complex of buildings, a city street or square, a forest clearing, an oasis, a bridge, or the like. Combat encounters and noncombat scenes in an adventure happen in specific sites.

When you create a specific site, ask the following questions in addition to the questions you would ask about any general location:

• Why would the heroes come here during the adventure?
• What types of scenes might play out at this site?
• Which NPCs who the heroes might interact with are found here?
• What information, items, or confrontations might the heroes discover here that will help them advance the story of the adventure?

Plan Scenes

Once you have your villain, your adventure goal, your NPCs, and your general locations and specific sites, it's time to start stitching those elements together to create scenes. Your adventure will have combat encounters, montage tests, negotiations, respites, and scenes of exploration and social interaction. Creating Scenes below has more information about detailing the scenes in your adventures, but planning out those scenes is the first step.

When you're thinking about scenes, write down which sites and NPCs are tied to those scenes, then try to arrange the scenes in an order that makes sense for the story. It might be that after your inciting incident, certain scenes can be tackled in any order. For example, if the adventure goal is to recover three pieces of an ancient staff before the villain does, the heroes might be able to explore the three sites where the pieces are hidden in any order they choose. Their choice might even have consequences. It might be that the first site they choose has none of the villain's lackeys investigating it yet, the second site features a showdown with those lackeys, and the third site has already been cleaned out by the villain by the time the characters get there! Other scenes might have to happen more linearly. An investigation typically includes a trail of clues that takes the heroes from one scene to the next, but the players can surprise you.

Don't get married to the order in which you plan your scenes. If the heroes have terrible luck with dice in a couple of combat encounters, they might stop to take a respite and regain their Stamina and Recoveries before you anticipated they would. If the heroes are unraveling a mystery, they might make unexpected deductions or good guesses that allow them to skip a scene altogether! This is part of the fun of the game. The dice and the players will surprise you.

Embrace this unpredictability by keeping an open mind as you plan out your scenes and allowing yourself to be flexible. Odds are that a combat encounter the characters skipped over during one session can be tweaked and moved to another session, so don't sweat it. The game is most rewarding for you and the other players if you let the heroes' choices and actions mean something and affect the game.

Once you have all your scenes planned, it's time to put together the adventure outline.

Adventure Outline

Your adventure outline is a document you can use to run your game sessions. It contains information about the villain, the adventure goal, NPCs, locations and sites, and scenes. You can format this outline however you like, whether as fully written sentences, bullet points, a plotting web, or anything else that makes sense to you.

A standard adventure outline contains a bit of overview information regarding the adventure's villain, goal, and NPCs. It then contains a list of locations and sites, with specific sites breaking out the details of each scene that occurs there. The outline then wraps up with a conclusion section discussing the impact the heroes' actions have on the overall campaign and the game world.

Creating Scenes

When you're preparing scenes for an adventure, keep in mind that you cannot and should not try to control how the heroes interact with the challenges set forth in a scene. As a Director, much of the fun of the game comes from seeing the players creatively solve the challenges you set forth with their own ingenuity and their heroes' abilities and features. You want to plan obstacles for the characters even while knowing that they'll think of solutions you haven't. So let them try those solutions and see where the story goes!

It's best to set up scenes along the lines of: "Here's the situation when the heroes arrive." The game world is an authentic setting. Whether or not the heroes show up, bandits still pillage and plunder, politicians still plot and backstab, and vast sandstorms still sweep across the desert. Each scene should thus start with the question: "What's happening when the heroes arrive?"

After setting up your scene, make a list of the narrative elements the heroes can discover or achieve in that scene that can advance the story of the adventure. When running the game, you'll allow the players to approach how they discover or achieve those elements in their own way. However, you might have ideas as to how they could accomplish those goals, such as which tests they might make to find clues leading to a murderer, or a possible negotiation to secure safe passage across the sea. Note these possible solutions and any rules you need to prepare to make use of them as you set up your scenes.

Not everything the heroes do is worthy of a scene, and you don't need to play out adventures in real time. If the characters want to walk from a farm to a castle, don't turn the walk into a scene unless doing so is fun for you and the players, or if something significant happens along the way (for instance, a bandit attack or the discovery of a dead body). You don't need to narrate every shopping trip or boat journey if they're just going to be a bore. It's a game! Run the scenes that are fun for you and that move the campaign story along, and your games will be better for it.

Director Sheets

Director sheets are a resource you can use to prepare and track the progress of characters during combat encounters, negotiations, and montage tests. These sheets allow you to track the objectives and numbers relevant to the challenge, such as the Stamina of enemies, NPC interest and patience, and the number of successes and failures in a montage test. Each sheet has an optional second page you can use to track narrative details, potential rewards, and supporting NPCs in the scene. You can download these sheets at https://mcdm.gg/DS-Resources.

Creating and Running Combat

There's a lot to be said about building and preparing great combat encounters for Draw Steel. So much so that we had to put that advice in another book—the one with all the monsters and other stuff you need to build combat encounters. Go check it out in Draw Steel: Monsters.

One tip that we will note here (and it's also in the other book because it bears repeating) is that combat encounters should hold narrative weight. Draw Steel isn't a game of attrition, where a few small, trivial combat encounters are meant to weaken the heroes, winnowing down their resources to make the final, important, epic clash with the villain more of a struggle. A quick combat encounter with two bumbling guards at a gate is likely over in a matter of less than a round and shouldn't award the heroes a Victory. These can be fun scenes to roleplay, but they aren't going to make full use of the characters' features and should occur infrequently. Most of the time when combat takes place, the stakes for the heroes and the story should be high!

Creating and Running Exploration

Exploration scenes are narrative-driven moments where the heroes investigate their surroundings to advance the story or uncover rewards. Any such setup, from searching a murder scene for clues, to scouring ancient ruins for a portal to Axiom, the Plane of Uttermost Law, is an exploration scene.

When running exploration, your job is to set the scene, listen to the players describe their heroes' actions, and then respond with how those actions affect the environment.

Necessary and Unnecessary Information

When preparing an exploration scene, you'll want to come up with answers to the following questions:

• What information or objects do the heroes need to recover in this scene that will help them advance the story?
• What bonus pieces of information and other rewards can they earn during this scene if they explore fully and successfully?

Information or objects the heroes need to obtain from an exploration scene to advance the story should have some way of being found without a test. Simply by entering a monarch's private chambers, the heroes learn that the king is dead and has been slain by a knife, because his body and the murder weapon are plainly visible. They should also automatically notice that the knife bears the crest of a noble house, providing an obvious path to continue the adventure. Other details in the room might help speed along their investigation of who killed the king, but they can find the bare minimum of what they need to continue for free.

It's okay for a test to be the best way to get necessary information or objects. But if the heroes fail or don't make the test, make sure there's another way—likely a more difficult way—for the story to continue. When searching a necromancer's tower for a book that will help stop a ritual, characters might miss all the clues pointing to the book. But they can later run into the necromancer's apprentices, who know where the book is—and who aren't willing to give up that information without a difficult fight.

Other information and rewards the heroes can earn in an exploration scene can be hidden behind tests that can be failed or missed. If heroes don't think to check under the dead king's desk, they don't find the chalice that rolled under there. If they do find the chalice but fail a Reason test to examine it, they don't learn that the chalice carries the residue of a rare poison, potentially leading them to a nearby alchemist who sells it. They can still solve the mystery without this information,

but it'll take them a little longer. However, the longer it takes them, the more time the assassin has to prepare for their arrival, so missing those details has consequences!

Once you have your list of information and objects the heroes can find, make a list of where those things can be found, and how. Some reveals might require a test. Some might simply require a player to say that their hero performs a certain action, such as searching a bookshelf or desk. But as you note what's required to find information or objects, don't try to cover every option. Even if you do so, the players with their multiple brains will think of other options that you never would have, and you'll have to adjudicate their choices on the spot. Knowing where and how information and objects are hidden or guarded from the heroes is more important than knowing how they're going to obtain those things. If you can think of at least one option and are open to other possibilities, the heroes have a fair shot.

Setting the Scene

When an exploration scene starts, tell the heroes what they notice around them. Opening with what sighted heroes can see is a good idea, but all characters have other senses. Mention what they can smell, hear, and feel in the environment if it's applicable to what they're investigating. These little details can help the players better imagine the scene, and can lead them to important narrative beats within it. Before you run the scene, write these details down so you can give them to the players right at the start, rather than trying to think them up off the cuff.

You don't need to list every single detail of an environment. That can lead to players spending a lot of time having their characters interact with details you included just for flavor, and can have you saying things like, "Yes, I know I described the tapestries for 5 minutes, but there's really not much more to them. Now, the pile of bones at the center of the floor, on the other hand..." Many players will also zone out if you provide too much environmental detail, even if you're giving an Oscar-worthy narration. Instead, stick to the pieces of the environment that are worthy of the characters' notice.

As an example, if the heroes are exploring an abandoned bandit hideout in a cave for information about where the criminals relocated, you might describe a refuse pile in a corner of the cave, a mud-covered floor, and the smoking remains of a doused fire. Why point these things out? Because the refuse pile holds a torn-up map to the bandits' new hideout that the heroes can assemble, the muddy floor means the bandits left tracks that can be followed, and the smoking fire means that at least a few of the bandits left not long ago and might still be en route to the hideout. You've given the characters and players three important elements to interact with, each of which gives them information they can use to advance the story or get an idea of events to come. You don't need to describe the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, or the sound of the wind blowing through the entrance to the cave, or the wood pile next to the campfire, or the slugs crawling on that wood. Though one or two such details can be atmospheric, too many will distract folks and pull them out of the game. Instead, fill in those secondary details as the players ask questions while their characters explore.

Heroes Investigate

After you've set up your exploration scene, let each player ask questions about the environment and describe how their hero is interacting with it. If a player asks a question their hero wouldn't know the answer to, you can encourage them to explore more. For instance, if a player whose character is standing at the cave mouth asks, "What can I see in the refuse pile?", you might answer, "From where you're standing, it looks like mostly scraps of cloth and old bones, but there might be

more if you dig through it." This encourages players to be more active in the process of searching.

Allow the heroes' investigation to drive the action. In an exploration scene, you take on the role of the environment, reacting to the characters' and players' choices. Don't tell the players what their heroes do. Instead, describe the consequences of their actions. If characters take the time to carefully search the bandit hideout for traps, they should have a chance of finding any traps you've set up there. But if a hero runs into the cave and triggers a hidden trap because they didn't move into hostile territory carefully, that's on them! It's an important lesson the player can learn for next time.

The Players Will Surprise You

Even the best-prepared adventures rarely survive first contact with the heroes. Your session notes expect the players to have their characters enter the bandit hideout from a secret back entrance, but one player has the bright idea of entering through a crack in the cave roof. It's perfectly fine to go off script and adapt to the players' plans if doing so is fun for everyone.

This isn't to say that it's okay for the heroes to ignore the bandit hideout entirely and go looking for cultists somewhere else. But as long as the players are participating in the spirit of the adventure, rolling with the unexpected is some of the most fun you'll have running the game.

When to Call for a Test

The heroes can usually obtain basic information just by interacting with their environment. If a player asks, "Does it look like the muddy floor of the cave would cling to someone's boots?", getting confirmation doesn't require a test. However, following the tracks that lead out of the cave toward the bandits' new hideout does require a test, because that's a harder task whose failure gives the bandits extra time to prepare an ambush for when the heroes arrive! If a character wants to meticulously dig through the refuse pile and examine each piece of trash, no test is required to find the torn-up pieces of the map unless they're under serious time pressure to do so. However, a character piecing the map back together needs to succeed on a Reason test to do so, because failing that task means the heroes obtain only incomplete information as they continue their search.

Chapter 9: Tests explains tests in detail and provides examples of different difficulties of tests. A lot of other fantasy games reflexively ask for a roll of the dice anytime a hero attempts a task. However, Draw Steel is built around the idea that the Director calls for tests only when failure would make the story more interesting for the heroes and not grind the game to a halt. You might end up asking for fewer tests than you're used to—and that's the way the game is meant to be played!

Additionally, if a player has a particularly clever and plausible idea for attempting to overcome a challenge, you can have them automatically succeed on a task even if failure would make the story more interesting. It's important to reward clever thinking with success once in a while, so that the players are encouraged to think outside the box and create memorable moments!

By contrast, sometimes a player will propose what they think is a plausible or clever idea, but you'll think there's no way it could ever succeed. It's fine for you to tell the player, "That's not going to work." You're under no obligation to allow a player to attempt a test that should automatically fail.

Test Difficulty

Tests in Draw Steel have three levels of outcome, and all players know those outcomes and the dice rolls that generate them. Making a test always means something because every test comes with risks and stakes! Before you call for a test, you need to set a difficulty for the test of easy, moderate, or hard.

A hero always succeeds on an easy test. It's just a question of whether they might incur a consequence or earn a reward alongside success. For this reason, you should use easy tests sparingly in your adventures.

A hero who has a modifier of +1 or more on a test will likely succeed on a moderate test. Success with a consequence is common for heroes if their bonus to the test is lower than +4, so they're succeeding at a cost. Odds are that most of the tests you'll call for in your games will be moderate tests. They give most heroes a decent chance of success without it being a sure thing, and the story gets interesting whenever consequences are involved.

Hard tests do exactly what it says on the tin. Success on a hard test requires a roll of 17 or higher, which means a hero has better than a 50 percent chance of success only if they have a +6 or higher bonus on the test. At 1st level, that means a character using their highest characteristic, using a skill, and having an edge on the test. Failure on a hard test often means consequences beyond failing, making hard tests really risky! You likely find that hard tests aren't as common as moderate tests in your game, but they're used more than easy tests.

Setting Difficulty During Play

When you call for a test, you can tell the player making the test the difficulty. Saying "Make a hard Reason test" can create a dramatic moment at the table as everyone holds their collective breath to see whether the outcome is success, failure, or failure with an additional consequence.

On the other hand, not sharing the difficulty of every test with the players lets you do a little fudging of those difficulties if you want to. You might call for a test and then realize that a test really wasn't necessary even as the player makes the roll. It's easy to simply say, "Hey, sorry. I shouldn't have asked for a test. You just do the thing." But if you want to play it cool, remember that every level of an easy test is a success. It's simply a matter of whether a consequence or reward comes with it. If a hero gets an 11 or lower on a test and you think they should still succeed, then the test was easy difficulty.

Test Outcomes

After a hero makes a test, it's up to you to narrate and decide the outcome, keeping some basic guidelines in mind.

If a test is a failure with a consequence, the hero doesn't just fail—they make things worse. This might mean drawing the attention of nearby foes, setting off a hazard or trap, taking damage or causing an ally to take damage, taking a bane on a future test, losing a mundane item, making a friendly NPC angry, or even earning you a little future Malice. The consequence is up to you!

If a test is a failure, the hero doesn't do what they set out to do. But even though they don't incur a formal consequence, negative effects can still accompany a failed test depending on circumstances. If a hero attempts to move silently past a group of guards, a failure on the test might draw the guards' attention, but the character should have a chance to react before the alarm is raised. But if the character had incurred a failure with a consequence, they would be spotted immediately as the shouting guards rush to the attack.

If a test is a success with a consequence, the hero succeeds but suffers a significant negative effect. They might sneak past the guards successfully but lose their belt pouch in the process, forcing them to decide whether to return for it or move on.

If a test is a success, the hero does what they set out to do! You can even let a player narrate the outcome of a successful test by asking them, "How did you pull this off ?"

If the test is a success with a reward, the hero does what they set out to do—and then some. A reward might grant another character who needs to make the same test an automatic success, grant an edge on a future test for the hero, reveal a hidden treasure the hero wasn't looking for, inspire a nearby NPC to come forth and offer aid, or earn the group a hero token. A reward on a test is yours to choose.

Sample consequences and rewards for tests are detailed in Chapter 9: Tests.

Creating and Running Hazards

Hazards include traps, natural dangers such as quicksand and avalanches, and supernatural dangers such as magic-irradiated ruins or floating clouds of unstable psionic energy. Hazards can appear in combat and exploration scenes as dangers the heroes need to contend with as they solve other problems. An elaborate hazard can be a scene all on its own as well, whether tackled in a montage test or run round by round as if it were a combat scenario.

A good hazard presents a real threat to the heroes and stands in the way of something they want. Crossing a pool of lava isn't much of an issue if the heroes can simply walk around it. But if the pool is too big to walk around, or if the treasure the party seeks is at the bottom of it, it becomes something they can't easily ignore.

The hazards you'll create and use in your adventures come in one of three types:

• Activated Perpetual: An activated perpetual hazard might be triggered by a tripwire, a loud noise, a pressure plate, or some other mechanism that responds to the heroes' actions. The hazard then remains active until it's dealt with, such as a pendulum scythe trap that's activated by a tripwire and then swings indefinitely across a bridge.
• Activated One-Time: An activated one-time hazard is triggered and then creates one instance of danger. Sometimes that danger ends almost as soon as it begins, such as a trap that fires a single poison dart. Other times, that one instance of danger can create other lasting problems the heroes must deal with, such as a cave-in that deals damage, then leaves the party trapped in an abandoned mine.
• Obstruction: Obstructions are hazards the heroes must find their way over or around, such as pools of acid, chasms, and rivers of lava. Since obstruction hazards are typically static, a hero takes damage or suffers other effects from an obstruction only as the result of a failed test made to traverse the hazard.

Terrain as Hazards

Some of the best hazards are the terrain options found in Draw Steel: Monsters. These dynamic options work great in combat encounters, but you can also use many of them as hazards the heroes must cross (such as acid pools and lava) or contend with (such as the arcane object known as the black obelisk) as they travel from one destination to another. You can use these hazards as is, or rework them to match your story. For example, you might convert an acid pool to a pool of toxic sludge by having it deal poison damage instead of acid damage.

Activated Hazard Triggers

All activated hazards have some kind of trigger, and the heroes should be allowed to make tests—typically Reason or Intuition tests—to notice and then disable that trigger. The deadlier the hazard, the harder the test.

If a hero doesn't think to search for a trigger before stumbling into a hazard, you can still call for a test to let them notice the trigger when the hazard is about to activate, provided it makes sense to do so. If a hero is about to cross over a tripwire that triggers a trap, you might call for an Intuition test to notice the wire at the point when it can be clearly seen. On a failed test, the character walks into the tripwire and activates the trap.

Once a trigger is noticed, the heroes might get a chance to disarm it if that's possible. There's probably nothing to be done short of renovating an old mine to stop it from collapsing when anyone damages its walls, but the characters can try to disable a magic rune in a corridor that teleports any creature moving over it into the middle of an ocean. Just remember that trying and failing to disarm a trigger might trigger the hazard!

Hazard Damage

The damage dealt by a hazard depends on two factors. First, how deadly would you like the hazard to be? Do you want it to leave the heroes just a little banged up, or should it cost them a Recovery or two? Second, is the hazard a perpetual hazard or a one-time hazard? If it's an obstruction, answer this question by asking whether you expect a creature to be able to take damage from the obstruction more than once? If the answer is yes, treat it as a perpetual hazard in terms of damage. If not, it's a one-time hazard.

A hero might get a chance to mitigate damage from a hazard, such as by making an Agility test to outrun or dodge an avalanche, or making a Reason test to resist the psychic damage of a psionic cloud. You can decide what sort of test needs to be made based on the circumstances.

The One-Time Hazard Deadliness and Perpetual Hazard Deadliness tables show the damage dealt by hazards. Hazards are organized by level, indicating their relative threat compared to the level of the heroes. Each entry features three damage expressions for a tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 outcome on the test made to mitigate the hazard's damage. The worse the test outcome, the higher the damage.

One-Time Hazard Deadliness Table

Perpetual Hazard Deadliness Table

Hazard Effects

Some hazards deal effects in addition to or instead of damage. A hazard that is part of a combat encounter can impose just about any effect, including conditions, and can have a real impact on the story. However, if the heroes are facing a hazard outside of combat, you want any effects it imposes to be something more impactful and lasting. The following effects each reflect the interesting and lasting consequences a noncombat hazard should have:

• A character loses a Recovery.
• A curse leaves a character with a demonic-sounding voice that imposes a bane on Presence tests.
• A character receives a gaping wound that causes them to take 1d10 damage whenever they roll a natural 2 before they next finish a respite.
• A character is teleported into the middle of a nearby body of water.

But although lasting and interesting consequences are fun, make sure they don't derail your story to the point where the whole game becomes about solving the problems created by a hazard—unless your group thinks that's fun!

Creating and Running Interaction

Interaction scenes are similar to exploration scenes, except that the heroes obtain the information and objects they need by talking to one or more NPCs instead of exploring an area. Just like with an exploration encounter, you make a list of necessary information that the NPCs can offer to the heroes freely. NPCs might then have other information or objects they can be convinced to give to the heroes if they make a persuasive argument, do something kind for the NPC, or succeed on a test.

Interaction scenes aren't full negotiations, which are reserved for adventure-changing conversations. Still, keep in mind that different NPCs react differently to various forms of persuasion. A coward might be easy to intimidate, while a battle-hardened soldier might be impossible to awe with displays of ferocity. A bribe might work for a corrupt noble, but a goodly queen who already has wealth beyond measure likely has no interest in whatever riches the heroes possess.

Refer to the details you wrote down for your NPCs while you roleplay them. Keep in mind any distinct behaviors or attitudes you can throw in to help make the scene fun. You don't have to be a great actor to create a memorable interaction scene! Simply describing how an NPC looks, sounds, and acts goes a long way even without doing funny voices. If you want to put on a character voice, go for it—but there's no obligation to.