Acknowledgements
First off I would like to thank the OSR and specifically
and his “Arbiter of Worlds” series as well as the whole BroSR and specifically Jeffro Johnson for his writings and interviews. Combined these people taught me how to run a game well and what to avoid doing in order to run a great game, without ever even knowing I exist. I similarly want to thank the Black Lodge Games and the Classic Adventure Gaming Podcast guys, who I have also shamelessly cribbed notes from as an unseen, lurking anon on the internet. I don’t always see eye-to-eye with anyone above, but I greatly benefited from their thoughts and opinions. In short, I came up with almost none of this myself.This is I the start of a series on Anti-Patterns in (mostly Fantasy) TTRPGS, in which I will cover some of the most common anti-patterns and the best solutions to them that I have found to date.
What Are Anti-Patterns and Bad Games
Anti-pattern is a term common in certain types of engineering, that is roughly defined like this:
“a common, well-intentioned response to a recurring problem that is at best ineffective and usually highly counterproductive.”
Most TTRPGS are full of anti-patterns, and some seem to be entirely made of them. The result is poorly made games running terribly. What do I mean by this? Well here are some common outcomes and signs of games running poorly:
• Bored Players on their phones.
• Campaigns that burn out after 1-4 sessions.
• Fake Player Agency.
• No Meaningful Consequences for failure or success.
• Terminally special characters.
• Slow, dull combat encounters.
• Players with "Main Character Syndrome".
• Boring dungeons, boring lairs, and an afterthought of a world.
No one wants to have an experience made up of things from that list but almost everyone does. Why? In short like many others everything I was taught about how to GM and play a TTRPG back in the day (2003 in my case) was dead wrong. It resulted in games never running more than six sessions, frustrated players and DMs, sessions that were not fun or interesting, and me giving up on TTRPGs back in 2014 because “they just don’t work.” After discovering the OSR and the BroSR in 2024, I know see that I was not only playing in mediocre to bad games, I had the fundamentals of the game wrong.
The Anti-Patterns
Players with Nothing to Do
The first issue is players who have long stretches of nothing to do and who then zone out and maybe even start scrolling on their smartphones. This most commonly happens in combat. The common trope in modern D&D is that each player's turn takes 5-7 minutes and with a party of 4-5 people it can easily be 25 minutes from the end of your turn to the start of your next turn, with nothing to do in the intervening time. Similar things can happen in social interactions with NPC's. If social interactions boil down to a dice roll with a modifier applied, then the party is highly incentivized to have whoever has the highest modifier do all the talking whenever it is even slightly reasonable, and the other players either sit and twiddle their thumbs or get bored and start being actively disruptive whether in game or out of game. There is a useful acronym made by
of Questing Beast called “TUNIC” which stands for “Time Until Next Impactful Choice,” if the TUNIC is too long for any given player the game is in trouble. No one likes having 25 minutes of nothing to do while playing a game.GM Created Stories and Railroading
Anyone who has tired to run a conventional modern TTRPG where the GM makes up a story or plot can tell you that players will never do what you expect or want to keep a story going. Here's the secret, that is not a fixable problem. The actual problem is trying to railroad the players into a story that the GM/Referee invented without player input. How many times has a party almost killed the main villain of some DMs plot, only for said NPC ass-pull a teleport spell and get away. Lots, and no one enjoys it. Similarly how many players try some scheme but the GM decides how it will end before it even begins and then forces a bunch of contrived nonsense so that the PCs get to the next “plot point” in his story? Lots, and no one enjoys it.
Terminally Unique PCs
Another common issues with RPG's is how to meld all the various player's ideas of what their character is and why they are special together into a believable group. Why EXACTLY would a random talking-Crow magic user, a lawful-good Dwarven barbarian, a psychic goblin, and a chaotic-neutral human cleric of the god of death, who all have their own complicated backstories that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with each other all go adventuring together? Maybe some forced situation like prison or a surprise invasion by ... something? But even if successfully forced together for a short time, why would they stick together? Yes, I have actually seen that exact setup at a real in-person Pathfinder game I ran back in the day, and unsurprisingly that game did not last long. That's not even mentioning the backstories that would never meld together. Everyone was so "special" and "unique" that the only way to make the charters work together is to ignore everything in their backstory and honestly even their race and alignment most of the time. No one likes this.
Players With Main Character Syndrome
Some players get the odd idea that their character is the most important or center of the story. They have the most "main character" backstory and personality, and thus assume the "story" of the game should revolve around them. They then try to be the star of every interaction of the PCs to the great detriment of the other players. The problem is not actually exceptional or gifted PCs, the issue is people who should not play those characters are the people who generally want to play them. Over the course of play some characters may organically become more central to the happenings than others, and this is fine. The issue is people trying to set themselves up as this from the start or thinking they are entitled to this. We have all seen this to a lesser or greater extent, especially with Terminally Unique level-1 PCs. No one likes playing alongside these characters, and games should not encourage the behavior.
Fake Player Agency and Lack of Consequences
If a player feels for even a moment that his choices don't matter or will always turn out well (or poorly), the game loses most of its interesting qualities. Why bother with strategy if the GM “fudges” dice rolls to make sure the PCs always survive? Similarly why try to think about which path to take at a fork in the road if they players feel that there is no real choice since the GM will force both choices to lead to the exact same set of encounters and locations? Even if the PCs are wrong about these assumptions, the feeling itself will destroy the game.
Boring exploration, Boring Lairs, and Boring Dungeons
This is a problem of nothing unexpected or wondrous happening. Why go adventuring at all there is no surprise? Players will get bored if all they do is exterminate orcs and undead skeletons. The locations and encounters need to varied and honestly unexpected. Oh another pit trap. Hooray. Oh another 5 room goblin lair with some poison traps. Joy. Oh look we traveled 500 miles across the map in 4 seconds. Woohoo. No one likes any of that. There is no tension, no feeling of adventure and discovery. The DM needs to be creative, but that’s a tall order if the game isn’t designed to help him with that.
The World Feeling Like a Joke or Afterthought
This is a big section with several subsections. You’ve been warned.
That Fast?
It is commonly accepted that for a conventional TTRPG game that has been going on for a year or so of real time that on average only 3-4 weeks of time will have passed in game. This make the world feel dead, like it only exists for the PCs, and possibly only exists when they are nearby.
PCs going from level 1 to 20 in 4 weeks of game time is literally insane, in the “my hand is a talking banana” sense.
This conversation is what NPCs should sound like in these games:
“Hey I haven’t seen Frank in a few days, what happened to him?” asked the first NPC.“Oh,” answered the other “Haven’t you heard? Last month he quit his career as a journeyman blacksmith, MASTERED black magic in a single day, traveled a bit, killed the God of Death and now sits upon his throne in Hades. We likely wont be seeing him for a while.” “Oh…” replied the first. “Why is he so slow? Jim did all that last year and it only took him a week.”
Useless NPCs
Another example is this, why exactly don’t high level NPCs who can literally kill gods or NPCs with literal armies handle their own problems? Why exactly isn’t the local monarch waging war on the nearby orc clan, and for that matter why isn’t the local orc clan doing likewise right this second? They should be. What exactly are the goblins in that cave that the PCs ignored planning? They ARE planning to DO something, RIGHT?
What’s an “Economy?”
Can the PCs make money with commodities trading or on other speculative ventures? Why not? How about running a Mercenary Company? Why not? How about just being a hired guard during downtime? Why not? Why is there no economy? Trading companies of one form or another have existed for most of human history as have mercenaries.
Also how exactly do magic item shops exist economically? How is there enough demand for +3 swords of Vampire slaying that they had a couple in stock? Why on earth are they willing to buy the crap I just pulled out of some ruins? Exactly who in that agrarian town has the money and need to buy +5 Plate Armor for 30,000 GP? Magic Item Shops make no sense outside videogames.
Is Distance Just a Figment of Your Imagination?
If we travel “point crawl” style across the map with no risk of a dangerous encounter, and it takes 5 seconds to do so, why even have a map? Why even have multiple cities or towns?
The Time Warp Again
If it takes the wizard 5 weeks to research a new spell, and the GM can just say “okay you guys relax in town for 5 weeks while he works,” why even have spell research times? Why not just let players make up any spell they want for a small in game fee?
What’s a “Teacher,” Precious?
Does anyone need to train the PCs or are they all idiot-savunt autodidacts who instantly figure everything out on their own after spilling enough blood or crossing off enough ridiculous GM-made plot points? Does it even cost money to figure this stuff out? Do they need reference books? No? At that point why not have the PCs level up with a visible flash of golden light like in World of Warcraft?
…
At this point, why even have a world?
This is an excellent description of the problems. Are you prepared to present the solutions? I don't mean just the Whats, but the Hows and the Wherefores as well. I just subbed, because I want to see you succeed or go down in flames trying.
This article solidifies why I prefer playing solo.