What makes a good DM and good players is understanding the assignment. There is a reason that meme exists. Most role-playing games give players and referees specific roles, often resolved through specific die rolls. Understanding which choices matter, which rolls apply, and what the consequences are is critical to fun and successful play.
I used to be a teacher, and one of the hardest lessons to learn was how to create a good rubric.
X2 Castle Amber made me a better Dungeon Master because it forced me to understand the difference between player agency and railroading, and how inconsistent expectations around choices and die rolls undermine good play. In teaching terms, Castle Amber shows what happens when a game’s rubric changes without warning. Learning to recognize that made me a better DM in every game I now run.
A rubric, as I like to define it, is this:
“A scoring guide that clearly defines the criteria, expectations, and levels of achievement for an assignment.”
In role-playing games, this means understanding how different roles and different die rolls are meant to work. When those expectations are clear and consistent, play improves.
I have touched on learning before. The White Box Set teaches gameplay through tangible examples. My five-star review of the 2000 Dungeons and Dragons movie is about how not to run a campaign (or a movie). My earlier X2 post describes a real learning experience at the table.
The first thing a DM needs to learn is what is and is not a railroad.
In my Keep on the Borderlands series, I ran the same end scenario three times. I prepared over one hundred monsters for a large fight. Two runs ended in total party kills. One did not. The difference was player agency. In the successful session, the players did the unexpected. I did not force them into a fight simply because I had prepared one.
Players do not know or care what the DM prepared. If they show agency, they should not be pushed into a predetermined outcome. The thief might back away. The wizard might find a clever solution. The cleric might use magic. The fighter might decide the fight is not worth the cost. That is not avoiding play. That is play.
From the DM’s perspective, this should be a success. The players are engaged. It's a consequence of having great players, not a failure to anticipate what is needed or desired.
Yes, it is frustrating to prepare material that does not get used. Too bad. That is part of the job. Having those monsters ready does not mean they must appear exactly as planned. Presenting the same material in a different way is not railroading.
If the party disguises themselves as enemies and talks their way into the leader’s tent, only a few of those creatures might ever be used and probably not in a fight. If they encounter the group of 100 creatures in smaller pieces and defeat them through magic, logic, or trickery, that is also not a railroad. In each case, the party made meaningful choices despite what the DM planned.
De-escalating a railroad situation is not railroading.
X2 Castle Amber works differently. It presents a series of changing criteria and expectations. It uses alternating rubrics, and structurally it is a railroad. The players are trapped and pushed from scenario to scenario like a movie. The fun comes from recognizing the railroad and finding the exits. The module describes only one exit, but players are savvy and smart. They might come up with 3 exits.
This only works if the players are competitive and willing to play that kind of game. If they are not, the DM should not run it. The same warning applies to “you wake up in a prison,” “the king summons you,” or even “you meet in a tavern.” Any of these can become a railroad if handled poorly.
At this point, you are getting spoilers for a 44-year-old module. I don't feel bad, but if you don't own this, perhaps you should stop reading here and buy it at DriveThruRPG.
Consider the boxing match in X2. It is a straightforward sequence of attack rolls with the option to quit. The rules are clear and the odds are fair. The very next encounter, the dining room, is completely different. Survival depends on a chain of choices and saving throws. A saving throw is not the same as a combat roll.
An attack roll rarely kills a character outright. A saving throw often represents a single moment of survival or death. In the dining room, players are given chances to avoid those saves, but they are not told that those choices matter. The consequences are not clear. If the DM presents this poorly, the players may never realize they had a choice at all.
From a teaching perspective, combat is a series of connected decisions that lead to random outcomes. Each result feeds into the next choice. The character has agency.
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| Dice are uncertainty. Don't roll them if everyone is certain. |
This reminds me of another lesson about rubrics.
In school, passing is often set at sixty-five percent. That may not sound impressive, but context matters. On a spelling test of seven to twelve words, that threshold makes sense. It balances difficulty, memory limits, but not the fairness.
Problems arise when teachers scale assessments without adjusting expectations. A twenty-word spelling test with a ninety-five percent passing requirement allows only one mistake. That is unreasonable. It also confuses failure with consequence.
I remember having to write misspelled words ten times each. That was not failure. It was reinforcement. I was not retested, but I learned the words. That is a consequence, and it is good teaching.
The passing bar stays at sixty-five percent because some people have advantages. Some know spelling rules. Some do not. Knowing when to apply “I before E” is like knowing what the Deck of Many Things is before drawing from it. The situation is stacked whether you realize it or not, and there is nothing hard and fast about applying rules of thumb. "I before E" is often wrong and a Deck of Many Things is usually a deal from the bottom.
In role-playing games, failure and consequence are often treated as the same thing. In real life, they are not. Surviving Castle Amber’s infamous meal, where the rules and consequences change from roll to roll, is hard. It can work, but only if players understand the choices they are making.
I have already scripted out the meal and the boxing match to conform to how I should have done the meal years ago and to match how I really handled the boxing match. One is what I wished I had done and the other will be a retelling of a good experience. I hope you roll with the creative drama. There will be spoilers warnings on the dramatic turn in my posts. And hopefully some sage advice.
To survive Castle Amber and enjoy it, both the DM and the players need agency at the table. Once you understand what choices are available, you can make decisions that lead to success as a player, a character, and a DM.
I hope you will follow my future series on Castle Amber. I will be running it solo so I can explain the choices I make from both sides of the DM screen.
I use Necrotic Gnome's Old-School Essentials but picked up the boxed sets from a Kickstarter. You can approximate this with two titles:
The Referee's Tome and The Player's Tome.
I hope that I can replace my original D&D books someday.
You can get the Basic PDF from DriveThruRPG, and they offer both The Expert Book and B2 as print-on-demand. I cannot tell you how nuts that makes me. Why offer parts 2 and 3 as POD but not part one? Pull it together, WotC. You do crazy stuff.
And for that matter, if they had the BECMI titles in POD, I'd own those, too. But alas, WotC.
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