Why Telegraphing Danger Improved My DMing

My players kept getting annoyed with me when it seemed like every single time they turned a corner it was a deadly encounter. So they sat me down and basically had an intervention with me about telegraphing danger so they dont feel blindsided. It has very much improved player morale and the game overall.

Funny thought, when we get a tpk it's from a random fight. When the party goes into an encounter they know is going to be hard, they operate like a well oiled machine of death. So I totally agree with this philosophy.

I remember one DM's story about a bottomless pit. After throwing a light source down it and confirming that it was, in fact, at least several hundred feet deep, the player said "I jump in". He had no way of slowing his descent or anything. He died, and got mad at the DM. Some people are so stupid that you cannot blame yourself for their failure to have fun.

Important to remember, you can also telegraph individual attacks by monsters, especially the big flashy powerful ones. Having the red dragon take its turn, and finishing it by telling the players that smoke is coming from its nostrils and flames are licking out between its teeth is a GREAT way to tell him that it's going to use its Breath Weapon next round. The evil mage grabbing a lodestone and staring dead-eyed at the Rogue, mumbling arcane curses over and over, can let them know that Disintegrate is incoming. This let your players mitigate this incoming threat, by diving behind cover before the dragonfire hits or knocking the component out of the mage's hand. Your players will also feel badass and clever and that's always good.

This is why I love meta-knowledge; sometimes I don't need to do more than tell them what monster left its tracks amidst the bones.

As a DM occasionally I just tell my players how likely they are to succeed/how hard an encounter is. Not only would the characters in game likely have enough experience to know this, but some players don't always pick up on your hints that this encounter should be avoided. That way everyone can equally understand the risk and blindly run into it anyway.

I totally agree that the rule set is a HUGE factor in this! I tried to do an OSR style game in a later edition of D&D and then when I tried to telegraph my players just straight up ignored me and thought it was just "flavor text" or "setting the tone". It totally didn't work because they just fought their way through every problem and they assumed that was what the game was. And they were kind of correct, the info wasn't needed because there was no real threat to their lives or any read set-back or roadblock for ignoring info. Now I run an OSE game and WOW my players LOVE getting their hands on any info they can! They balked at the chance to "buy" rumors about the dungeon once, and then when that lack of knowledge meant they almost died they were happy to pay their hard-earned gold to learn where the ghouls lives and where the treasure is buried, etc. They don't ignore my telegraphing anymore, they actively seek more of it out!

Telegraphing Traps is a really cool exercise on thinking how the trap works, and it also makes traps fair, and more of a puzzle than n antagonistic "gotcha!" moment.

"The more dangerous a threat, the more obvious it should be." -Electric Bastionland, p239

Another insightful take! This philosophy also helps ramp up the tension and excitement. Cleary understanding the danger keeps players engaged and on their toes as well.

I especially enjoyed the NPC 's fighting each other. Just a couple tips. I would avoid directly saying "you're outmatched". Rather, I would say something like "your gut instincts tell you that you're outmatched". It helps to not break immersion by speaking directly to the player. Another tip would be to allow the players to come across a monster they struggled with recently; only to have a new entity show up and easily dispatch the target. It sets the tone by using a relatable power scale.

This is pretty great advice. For a long time I felt like telling my players what was ganna happen would ruin the game, like spoilers in a book. But as a player it always annoys me when the DM let's me walk into certain doom unaware. This video explains the issue I was having

I always consider that the actual characters are using all of their senses and have experience in the world. The players just get the description from the GM. I've had cases where they wildly underestimate or overestimate bad guys. So I've started telegraphing this a bit more.

I love the “Earlier, Yesterday, Moments ago” approach to the intro. I’ve seen it in a number of indie modules and it’s just a great framing device. I do my best to telegraph danger. It’s still something I am learning to better incorporate into my workflow. I try to do it even in my 5e games as I still find it better to let the characters know what’s going on and I tend to carry over lethality levels out of habit even to the 5e environment.

Every time I’ve let my party know something’s dangerous, they took it as a challenge and charged in without preparing.

This is honestly something I will be using in my 5th edition campaigns, largely because I use house rules the most important one is if a creature is reduced to 0 hit points and then is brought back from the brink of death they suffer a -1 penalty to all their attack rolls, damage rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. This penalty stacks for each time the creature is brought to 0 hit points and only wears off after that creature takes a short or long rest. Short rest removes a number of penalty points equal to their proficiency bonus, long rest removes all penalties. I also don't allow back to back short rests, there must be a window of at least 4 hours between short rests. This house rule alone makes players really have to think on if a fight is worth it or not, and has lead to some characters being stabilized but left at 0 hit points for a brief few moments if the hostile creatures are more intent on bringing down the active threats than killing already downed threats. I also buffed healing spells to be equivalent to damage spells (and nerfed fireball to its appropriate 6d6), while this makes it slightly more difficult to bring a player to 0 hit points, it allows the healers to do something other than heal ever single turn meaning more players enjoy playing a healer style character. All this said my next campaign takes inspiration from Out of the Abyss but I expand upon it and mold it into my homebrewed world, it's fairly safe to say not all the original characters are likely to survive by the end of the campaign as the fights will be grueling, and they will have to pick and choose at various times if they fight, find another route, or simply attempt to flee.

Last night, in the Werewolf the Apocalypse game I play in, were fighting of way through tunnels full of enemies, while some allies were talking a different route through the tunnels. When we found the central ritual chamber, the leader of the bad guys had just entered from the other direction, carrying the head of the leader of our allies. We entered combat anyway, and one of us died. At least we went into it knowing that death was an option.

I honestly like all this stuff. It helps with adding flavor into description also. I think my main struggle is... Well best way to put it is being able to back up the front I place. Because honestly nothing feels worse than making the players scared of something and then they go to face it and... they just push it over. And I have gone to extremes sometimes to try and make something both sound like a threat and play like a threat. On paper it's threatening but in practice it comes out just kind of...

Great point. Super easy to understand and apply. Thanks.

First time watching you. I like your vibe. Calm and concise in explaining your philosophy. Also the fact that i mostly agree with you ofc helps. Thumbs up from a DM enjoyer.