In a recent D&D session our merry band of adventurers had found out that, high atop a mountain, a piece of a powerful staff was sequestered in an ancient crypt. But a rival gang of evildoers also knew and was heading there, so we set out to beat them to the prize and prevent the Big Bad from gaining the power to raise an undead army and rule the world.

We had scarcely arrived at the top of the mountain when we realized the had stumbled upon the rival gang at the moment they had just entered the crypt. We knew that the gang was more powerful than we were, and we argued for a short while about whether to ambush them sooner or to let them fall into some of the inevitable traps of the crypt before taking them on. We couldn’t let them get hold of the staff piece because we also knew that at the Tabaxi leader of their team had the ability to teleport and could disappear forever. Before we had a chance to decide, they popped back out with the staff piece in hand! With the knowledge that they could teleport the piece away at any moment, we had no choice but to attack. We sprang up and, with a surprise round on our side, took the Tabaxi down. Our paladin snatched up the staff piece, but the battle wasn’t over. Their cleric brought the Tabaxi back up and the Tabaxi tried to grapple the staff piece back and teleport away. She failed at the snatch, but teleported away anyway, leaving us and the other two members of their gang. Immediately their fighter disarmed our paladin of the staff piece from our paladin with his superior strength and picked it up. With the rival cleric supporting the fighter, we knew the chances of them getting away with the piece were still high. Desperate, the Paladin used the one wish in her luck blade to disintegrate the fighter, preventing any further healing from the cleric. Almost exhausted of our abilities, we dispatched the cleric and regained the piece.

It had been an exhilarating session and we were glued to the process the whole way through. That’s when I began wondering what made it so exhilarating. We had done countless battles before, many where we almost died! But they didn’t have the same impact, the same imperative drive as this one. The answer, it turns out, comes from a well-known narrative feature: constant tension.

If you go read almost any narrative guide on how to write interesting stories or how to write an interesting movie, the answer inevitably boils down to creating and keeping tension. It is what drives the reader to keep reading a book, or the watcher to keep watching a film. Oddly I, as the blog writer, must keep enough tension about what might be in the rest of this article to keep you reading.

As dungeon masters, we are not often cognizant of the tension that is necessary to make both our adventures and our encounters interesting. Sure, we set up “the tension” when we start the adventure or the session or the encounter. But from there, we figure the tension has been created and we’re concerned with encounter balance, tactics, strategy, the pieces of information we are or are not sharing, and running the mechanics of the world. While those things make for narratively contiguous world-building and good simulation in the game, they do not make a good story. Tension is not a button that you press and it works, it’s a fire you have to feed constantly.

Dramatic tension has been widely discussed and written about for literature, film and the stage. Role-playing games share some similarities with all of these. Sessions are played out in real-time with ‘actors’ (the players and NPCs), much like a play, but the players somewhat determine the pace at which they progress, much like a book. As such, you have access to many of the tropes and tension-building strategies in both. Below, I discuss the most common sources of dramatic tension across media and how they apply to RPGs. Note that the categories are not independent, and often the tension in a scenario will be caused by several overlapping sources.

Conflict

Role-playing games are rife with conflict. Mostly in the form of wars and fights. This is understandable given the wargaming roots from which RPGs derive. However, there are many types of conflict that can be worked into a game to add diversity to your tense moments. Importantly, it is not merely the presence of conflict that creates tension, but the progress of the conflict. While two nations may both covet a piece of land, things don’t get tense until the stalemate is threatened. Narrative conflicts are usually broken down into a few archetypes:

Person versus person: When two people have a difference of opinion, you’re almost guaranteeing problems (which, if you’re confused so far, is what you want). You can stage this a territory squabble between leaders, a rivalry between officers, a disagreement about strategy or politics, or a disagreement between your characters and other people. There are so many combinations possible here, all you need is something to disagree about and you have good interpersonal conflict.

Person vs self: Think internal struggle or cognitive dissonance here. When one person or character holds two values which are at odds, that’s conflict. When it comes to your player characters, feel free to play any flaws they have against their bonds or traits. But this conflict really shines when you can set it up in an NPC for players to try to sway one way or another.

Person vs nature: Natural conflict is often set up as small-scope obstacles in RPGs. Rocks fall and everyone dies, survival checks vs freezing to death, etc. But this source of conflict can be embodied in many ways. How do you deal with global exhaustion of natural resources? What about impending volcanic eruption? Pandemics?

Person vs society: When the wants and needs of the many clashes with the wants and needs of the few, revolution happens! Or gets squashed. Or rises again! Maybe it’s as large as a civil war, maybe it’s as small as a poor boy stealing to eat. How will the team deal with trampling on civil liberties or the good of the nation to get their quest completed?

Person vs Technology (progress): While conflicts with technology are most often brought up with reference to science fiction, the same issues can be applied to almost any era or setting. Are all the zombie-servants people keep buying truly under control? Do the artificers get to usurp things wizards traditionally got paid for? Are miniatures or digital tabletops better?!

Person vs Fate or the Supernatural: While there are many supernatural things in most RPG campaigns (fairies, gods, demons, elementals, etc.), these do not really count. This is simply because anything that falls within the bounds of ‘normal’ for your RPG world and its rules is not ‘supernatural’ to that world. The essence of supernatural or fateful conflict comes from a changing of the normal rules or an external force usurping control. For example, the protagonists may come up against an enemy that can only be hurt by wooden weapons even though this type of monster and rule doesn’t exist anywhere in your game’s handbooks. You must exercise caution here. If you end up usurping control from your players or doing things that feel like you are not following established rules of the game, it could lead to feelings of helplessness and resentment on the part of the players. It is important to balance any divergence from ‘normal’ by augmenting your players’ control. Give them ways of finding out the new rules and overcoming the conflict.

The tension of relationships

The tension of relationships is steeped in the view that characters have for each other. Does the bartender hold an unrequited love for the potion-maker? Does the barbarian long to get revenge on an evil ex? Do the knights tolerate the old viceroy’s outdated tactics because he could have their heads? The tension of relationships stems ultimately from a source of conflict from the last section and how they clash with the relationship bonds that exist between characters. Romance novels and soap operas lean heavily on relationship tension, but if you look carefully at the interactions between characters, the best fiction of any genre will have relationship tension. The items below are good starting places when setting up relationship tension between your NPCs and PCs or between different NPCs.

Values: This was touched upon briefly in the last section. Characters that have opposing values often come into conflict. However here we are more interested in how the differences of opinion affect relationships. Sometimes, the values will cause rifts between people. The sudden discovery of opposing values could threaten an otherwise happy couple. Values differences between a couple and their respective families could cause family drama. It could lead to subterfuge, deceit, or secret alliances.

Roles: The second thing to consider is how the relationship affects the opinions of the people and how they express them. For instance, consider two characters of opposing political views. If those characters are rival shopkeepers, they may disagree loudly and for all to hear. If those characters are a husband and wife, perhaps it is an area of quiet disagreement or careful tolerance. On the other hand, if characters are supposed to be enemies, they may adopt differing stances simply because their relationship of ‘enemies’ demands it, not because they truly believe differently.

Power dynamics: When one side of a relationship has the ability to influence or outright control the actions of the other, it dramatically changes how people interact. Subordinates do not question their superiors for fear or repercussions. Superiors take advantage of their position to coerce or control the situation. Sometimes these even happen without the knowledge of one or both parties. Power dynamics can come in many varieties. For instance, employer/employee, royalty/commoner, parent/child, privileged/underprivileged, etc.

The tension of the task

When the protagonist has 60 seconds to cut the right wire, must race to disrupt the wedding so the love of their life doesn’t marry the wrong person, or the ring must be carried across the nation and dropping in a mountain of fire, that’s the tension of the task. The tension revolves around the audience’s uncertainty as to whether the task can or will be completed. The uncertainty can come from a vast variety of possible failure scenarios, but there are four main facets that should be considered and balanced to create tension around a task:

Time: A task must be completed before a certain time is up! On a small scale, this could be the seconds remaining to defuse a bomb. On the medium scale, this could be the race to stop a murderer on the way to assassinate the king. And on the long timescale, this could be the need to collect all the parts of a magic item that stop a volcano from erupting.

Importantly, the time must be selected so that the time remaining is comparable with the time to do the task. If it will take 60 seconds to defuse the bomb and the protagonist has several minutes, there will be no tension at all. Similarly, if there is simply not enough time to complete the task, there is no tension because the task becomes impossible.

In a novel or film, the time remaining can be engineered to exactly match the task time to create the most tension. This is more difficult for a DM where the players have the freedom to make choices and may or may not follow the time frame you planned. Obstacles and surprise boons are your best friend here. Are your players starting to feel relaxed because they’re ahead of the game? Throw them a curve-ball that sets them back. Are your players too far behind and they’re realizing they can’t complete the task? Throw them a boon that sets them back into the running.

Difficulty: If a task is trivial, what is there to worry about? If the task is impossible, then there is no hope. Much like the need to balance the task time and time remaining, the task difficulty should be matched with the skill of the character attempting it. If you want to create tension from the difficulty of the task, then your players should be left uncertain as to whether the task will succeed or fail. This is true whether it is their task, or if they are watching an allied army march off to defend a breach.

That being said, RPGs are mostly unscripted, and the task results are often determined by a roll of the die. Unlike in a novel or movie, as a DM, you do not have the luxury of just saying your protagonists succeed at the last moment. Your players could easily sweep through the task with a bunch of high rolls, or fail miserably with a bunch of low ones. As such, you must be prepared for the contingency of failure. Sure, there is lots of tension if the players all have to roll a save-or-die check, but if they don’t pass… you just TPK’d the party and tanked your session. If you aren’t prepared to move forward from every random possibility, do not have the dice determine the outcome.

Importance and consequences: This is somewhere where thinking like a maniacal asshole is beneficial. You must make your tasks relevant enough to your players that they are motivated to participate. Make sure that the outcome of the scenario impacts your players’ characters or your players may opt to ignore the task entirely. This doesn’t always necessarily mean consequences directly to your protagonists, also consider their backgrounds, acquaintances, etc. Also be clear about the consequences should the players decide to ignore the task. If the players lose something they value without the perceived choice to intervene, you can expect significant frustration.

Again, be sure you can handle the consequences of failure in your story. Unlike a book or movie, you do not necessarily control the success of the players. One thing you may consider doing is setting the real consequence lower than the perceived consequence. The players may think they’re disarming a nuclear bomb, but if they happen to fail, perhaps it was a dud. This sort of bait-and-switch of consequences ensures that you can have significant tension and yet play up some comic effect after the fact.

The tension of mystery

While the consequences of tasks should be crystal clear to the players, other facts about the task do not have to be. The bomb will blow up 16 city blocks, but no one’s sure where it is, or how to disarm it. One of the city counselors is planning to murder the king, but which counselor is it? The unknowns allow your players to think critically, offer ideas, argue, and develop plans to find out the missing information.

But… can you be sure the DM even knows the facts? Maybe the DM didn’t plan on where the bomb was, or which counselor was traitorous, but waited to see what ideas the players would come up with and run with that! Can you tell? What a mystery!

The tension of mystery can be quite evocative, especially in an RPG where the point is to get players involved. But as the mystery is the thing which causes tension here, two things are important: First, don’t metagame here. It’s very tempting to talk shop with your players. But every bit of slipped information or suggestion stabs your tension in the back. Keep your hand well hidden on this one. Second, always be prepared to switch gears fast. Your players may be fast or slow in figuring out the facts, and as soon as the mystery is gone, you must be prepared to replace it. Ramp up one of your conflicts, or drop in a surprise!

The tension of surprise

Did you expect another source of tension? Well, there isn’t one!

Just kidding. The element of surprise is a DM’s best pocket tool. When things are feeling a bit bland, the best response is to add something unexpected. Surprises can come in all shapes and sizes. Big surprises are usually what starts out an adventure – war breaks out, a Big Bad emerges, some inciting thing happens. But surprises don’t always have to be big and they don’t have to be bad.

Consider the point in a battle where a TPK looks inevitable. At that point, you’re actually losing tension because the players have resigned themselves to losing. A sudden change in the players’ favor, like the arrival of an ally or an environmental change, could bring the odds back into balance, regain the lost uncertainty about the outcome of the battle and heighten the tension.

You can pull a surprise on your players at any point in or out of an encounter. Are the players feeling a bit lost as to what to do next in an investigation? Deliver them a message that they need to investigate. Are the players feeling cocky about the encounter they just waltzed through? Have them discover that their camp has been ransacked and something is missing.

Dramatic irony

Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters in the story do not. In horror films, this is the shot over the shoulder of a character where the audience can see the murder sneaking up. It’s the audience’s knowledge that the protagonist is cutting the wrong wire on the bomb. This tension mechanic does not work very well in RPGs because the audience controls the protagonists.

Anything that the player knows but the character doesn’t is meta-knowledge. When a player has meta-knowledge, there are only two things that a player can do on behalf of their character: act on it, or try to pretend they don’t know the information. In my experience, both of these break immersion and end up frustrating for the player. At the very least, neither option provides any tension to the audience.

In truth, the player at the table who benefits most from dramatic irony is the dungeon master. Having insider knowledge about everything that happens in the world while the players figure it out can be greatly satisfying for a DM.

Wrapping it all up

The best piece of advice I can give to avoid slog and monotony is to make sure you don’t overstay your campaigns, adventures, sessions, and encounters. When your tension resolves, wrap it up and move on. When your players kill the big bad, don’t make them finish off all the remaining minions. When your players get the bartender and the potion-maker together, clean up all the open sub-quests with a narrated montage. Even if the players find a way to resolve the tension much earlier than you anticipated, don’t stay there. Allow the players to revel in their success and then find some new tension to work with.

No single source of tension that I have discussed here is going to make your game complete or entertain your players. When you are planning your campaigns, sessions, and encounters, think about all your options and pick a few that fit. Or play with some sources that you haven’t tried yet to mix things up. Go back to the top of this article, read the story again, and see how many different tension sources you can spot.

And as always, have fun!