Building a Binder, Part 3 - Filling Your Table
This portion of the series concerns the steps and procedures of actualizing the games at the table. It is the most general part of the series, featuring my own interpretations of advice, fills, and ideas digested and spat back up.

Finding Your People
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to playing indie tabletop games is finding players. The marketing giant behind 5e pitches the game as a mystical experience where stories and characters come to life. This is just marketing, playing a tabletop game is no more transcendental than playing baseball or gardening. Yet consumers are so focused on the ubiquity of D&D that they are hardwired to view other options as knock off or store brand. Too many people are more focused on the phenomenon of themselves playing the game than they are about enjoying it with the people they play with. This is where you may begin to hear horror stories of people acting out their wish fulfillment in number-go-up fantasies at a table when everyone is just trying to play along.

So how do you find your people? I am concerned mainly with playing games in person at a table. Online games do not cut it for me, and I am lucky enough to have a group to play with while living in a major city. Just the other week I bought some old warhammer miniatures off a guy on craigslist. Meeting him at the local cafe, he seemed nice enough that I invited to my monthly DCC game. Likewise I extended an invite to an acquaintance I met at a party who I talked with about movies. And again, I extended an invite to an online mutual who lives just outside the city limits. A part of growing older comes with the hardship of making new friendships. Be willing to extend yourself outside of your own comfort zone and you may find new connections.

Missing or Absent Players
I honestly never got the need to fill in the blanks for a character when their player is missing. They are following their own quest. They are passed out in the tavern. They are helping an old friend. Etc etc” Stop being so precious. They load in and out of the game. Relinquishing a real life fact to in game narrative is exhausting. Such is the consequence when character stories are at the center of a game.

If a missing PC is truly detrimental to the story, then switch the game up for a session until the player can return. The same is true if an absent player wants to be around for certain progression with planned absences be accommodated for. Board games, movie night, a one-shot, card games, etc. It’s more important to hang out with your friends regardless if a game is occurring.

Player Facing Advice
Running games for so long as a DM you should be able to recognize what a good player is for you. Be attentive, a good listener and get along with other players. Not much else to it. As a player, I’m excited to see what my DMing friend has cookin’ up. I want to see their ideas and explore what interests them. I want to get outside my own head for a moment and experience the vision of another person. I’m interested in seeing a person’s singularly crazy vision that is controlled by the actions and whimsy of the people envisioning it. Simply put, enthusiastic players make DMs enthusiastic.

What to Reveal and What to Conceal
I prefer to make the game elements the most visible part when playing. I have no interest in running things realistically”. I’ll reveal the game parts fully. This has nothing to do with the ethics or fairness of showing my hand as a DM, it is entirely due to expediency and clarity. When moving through dungeon halls, counting squares and light, we are playing a board game. When we get into combat, we are playing a small scale wargame. When I tell a foe’s HP and AC, it’s simply because I hate having to confirm hits and shroud conditions as bloodied” or he actually looks pretty messed up”. Don’t be hesitant to present the game as you want to. Hey peeps, for overland travel I’m working it out like a board game where you can move X spaces a day, sound good?”.

You might think there is some challenge being lost by hiding such information, and I truly ask you to tell me in what meaningful way this matters to the play experience. I remind my players about secrets they’ve discovered or knowledge their character would know in the fiction without hesitation. The more information given to a player the more agency they have in their decisions.

Long Term Time Tracking
The simplest way to mark the passage of time in sandbox/hex crawl games is to create a calendar. Buy an outdated planner or puppy dog photo calendar and start from the very beginning. Likewise, create your own to match your setting’s passage of time. For the upcoming Meatheads megadungeon, Sea Hill Tomb, I split time into seven day weeks, with four weeks creating a month to compile a thirteen month calendar. From here you tick off the day gone by, write in upcoming events/secrets/holidays/etc.

In a similar vein, day countdowns have been handy in my Spellfinder house game as well. Being a space travel game, there is no clean way to construct a year. As a solution, I create a countdown starting at 30 days that counts down to 0. This is presented as the month” to my players, in which I periodically remind them of upcoming events and how much time remains. Whenever a temporal event pops into play, I notate then track them as the days pass by.

Example
Days until Month’s end - 24 days
Barrels of ale ready to pick up- 14 days
Trade Caravan Arriving - 7 days
Sun explodes in Hunkosphere - 3 days

Once the month reaches 0 it is reset. There’s probably not even a reason to include a month countdown, but in Spellfinder the players conduct all their fleet business (counting profits, paying crew members, etc) at the end of the 30 days. You could easily inverse this method and create a counter to go up instead.

As another example, I’ve started to use a 1:1 time for my DCC game, meaning that whatever time passes in between one session to the next passes in game’s fiction too. This has the benefits of players planning larger projects and individual pursuits while also having the fictional world’s season align with your own. I’ve found it beneficial when I’m explaining the weather that I can just look outside instead of having to remember what season the game is in when we last left it. The exceptions to this are sessions left on cliffhangers or if the party is deep in the process of exploring a location, such as a dungeon dive. My solution to this is to simply finish out the scenario then advance time forward by the amount that has passed since they first began their incursion.

For example, in game the party started an assault on the wizard-ape-king to the north who threatens their nascent community. This dungeon dive began in September of 2024, nearly five months ago IRL. Once they complete their incursion and (maybe) defeat the wizard-ape-king, time in the fictional world will jump five months ahead. During that time lapse, players choose downtime pursuits for their characters, completing personal or communal projects. Common pursuits have included tilling the land for crops, researching arcane tomes, building parishes for their gods, further scouting the landscape around them, or making trade routes with nearby settlements. This particular game meets sporadically, at best once a month, so a 1:1 passage of time has proved helpful to being able to play outside of the table itself.

On Roleplaying & Improvising
There are times when you won’t feel like doing a funny voice. Maybe your pet died or you were dumped, you just don’t have it in you and you’re not particularly up to feeling embarrassed. When using games that elide social mechanics, it can seem daunting to roleplay out entirely in-game conversations. Here is the blatant secret: just summarize the interaction. Instead of acting out conversations between characters, simply stating facts like they go over the details of the trade agreement and offer you these terms” is perfectly acceptable and sometimes preferable for expediency sake.

There are times when you will have to make up stuff out of whole cloth, unprepared. There is something freeing about the act of creation, the terror of embarrassment. You will not find liberation in the predetermined.

Keep an ear out for theories or musings about the game from your players. There have been plenty of times when a player’s suggestion or idea is better than what I had planned. Listening to player theories can help to develop further hooks or stories they are interested in pursuing. It also benefits the players. Oh that hunch you had several sessions ago? Turns out you were right, look how clever you are. Cry about the sanctity of rules and fudging, who cares. You’re here to have fun, not be the cleverest in the room. Kill your ego and know your biases.

Writing Characters
More so than lore or history or world building, you should develop social relationships between the characters of your game. Ideas for world building will follow from thinking about the dynamics between belligerents as large as nations or as few as two people. Think about how your own life is affected by the decisions of a few of the stupidest people on the planet.

Bubble or flow charts work well to visualize the connections between characters. Such charts are helpful to connect the dots and lead to further hooks or plots. In basic terms, go over NPC wants and needs, haves and have-nots, who they like and dislike, what they are proud of, what they are insecure about, etc etc. How do they act behind other characters’ backs? What do they ask from the party? What’s stopping them from getting what they want? How does the introduction of the party change this? Simple stuff, nothing mind blowing, but it takes time to sit and really think about it.

I like to have somewhat of an idea of what a character sounds like, who I am mimicking when speaking as them. For voices I am usually doing an impression of a comedian doing an impression of a celebrity. Adding mannerisms or defining features will make noteworthy characters stand out to players. These can be physical features or personality traits or ticks in their routines.

You may find yourself improvising quirks and characteristics while roleplaying. Write any new info down for later to have it identifiable to that character. When a character is easily associated with a mannerism or trait, they can easily be identifiable to players even when they are not immediately present in the scenario.

Writing Antagonists
In games I run it’s usually the party who decides their adversary and I try to make it clear who is in the company they keep. Totally evil bad guys have their place, but consider what makes someone antagonistic to the player party. The chance to explore an arc where the party befriends a former foe is more interesting and leads to further plots. Think of antagonists in Miyazaki movies: the Witch of the Waste, Fujimoto, the Mamma Aiuto sea pirates. Former foes made into pals create small breaths of character development for both the NPC and for the party characters. Failing morale checks means surrender and chances for turncoats. The fun of having the guy who once hated your guts to now thinking you’re just the absolute coolest is always a hit at the table.

I like to give a right-hander or two to big boss bad guys that help enforce their presence. A kiss-ass pipsqueak and a real scary dude make for a good goon duo. When ending an antagonist, think about how their absence affects the subsequent fiction. What happened to their second-in-commands and their minions? Do they schism into factions? How has their presence been filled? How has their power been transmuted and where does it now lie?

Creating Factions
You don’t need to represent everyone in the faction, just one person who represents everything about the faction. This is usually the leader and a few diehard idealists. Thinking about the leader and their quirks first is helpful as the lackeys are likely to follow their tastes and fancies. Then you can allow for complications, big-dicking and clashing goals to throw into question their whole identity and motives. String together 2-3 motifs, ideals, desires or possessions into a blanket. A good point of measure is a prototypical Axe Gang”, fitting into nearly any game in any setting.

Rumors
While its use is largely for baiting hooks, using the rumor table against the party helps cement them into the fiction. When the party has enemies, rumors are spread against them. Take a d20 or d100 table, fill a slot in whenever the party does a noteworthy deed. This is not dissimilar to Luke Gearing’s Reputation Tables. When rolling on this table and the result lands on an empty slot, fill it in with a nasty rumor against the party. When this rumor is disproven, replace it with a previous deed made by the party or a new rumor made by the party.

A great way to determine whether rumors are true is to have them answered by the encounter table. If there is a village rumor that the old water mill is haunted, perhaps there is a band of goblins dressed as ghosts stalking the locale nearby.

Traps & Puzzles
You basically have two choices. Traps that are really obvious and make the player feel smart (but can subvert expectations later on) or traps that are really sneaky (poison blade hidden inside the chest to stab you as you open it you dumb idiot didn’t you think to check the inner lip you absolute rube??)

A common example of how OSR games are played differently from Trad games is with the disarming a trap” shtick. Instead of rolling a higher number you explain in minute detail how and where and why and what method yadda yadda. I’ll be honest, I’m not into that. If a trap isn’t obvious then it is hidden. My middle ground is that if a party encounters a trap they aren’t looking for, there is a 2-in-6 chance they spot it by accident, bonuses here and there when applicable. When they spot it, I explain the nature of the trap to the best of their perception and how it might be triggered. It’s up to them to decide if they want to avoid it, turn back or set it off intentionally (but perhaps not safely).

Some simple trap templates to get you thinking about what you want traps to do.
Traps to weaken: impairing characters by lowering stats/debuffs/icky poisons.
Traps to impede: halting or delaying progress/time warps/glue traps.
Traps to alarm: alerting others to your presence/”false” traps/projecting ghosts on the fog.
Traps to kill: says it right there, pal.

I’ve read trap supplements where there’s an invisible wall obscuring lava with a mirror reflecting a false light blah blah. You don’t need traps like that. At that point just have a wizard cast an illusion. You’re not impressing anyone with your super cool trap. Work on a level that’s fun for your gaming group.

Puzzles are admittedly a weak spot for me, but they offer a chance to reach outside the rules and system for solutions. Something as simple as plopping down the connect four board or tic tac toe and referring to them as ~magic sigils~ is more than enough. People usually get a kick out of these. Straight forward puzzles have the benefits of making the players feel smart without relying on too much brain power while also avoiding roll high” solutions.

Items, Treasures and Artwork
Explore museum websites and their social media accounts. Most museums have an offering of open access images or public domain work. Start saving pictures of items. Learn what they are made from and how to describe them visually. Chances are -just like items in your game- they are stolen!

I have a discord channel that I paste artwork images into. When I need to pull a random treasure out of my ass, I scroll wildly on the channel until abruptly stopping to see what comes up. The shit that people made so so so long ago is absolutely fucking crazy. You have the entire history of human creativity to draw on.

Drawing Maps
Sitting to practice drawing maps will be a great benefit to you. Bubble charts are some of the simplest ways to plot dungeons, both in terms of functionality, scale and relationship. In a sense all crawls (point crawl, dungeon crawl, hex crawl) operate in a similar manner. Size of scale doesn’t need to correspond to complexity. Practice drawing maps in a variety of functions and utilities.

Collect pamphlets from museums, hiking trails, megamalls, water parks, zoos, state parks, public transit, fire escapes plans, etc. Travel when you can, learn how long it takes you to walk a mile. See how many square miles your hometown takes up. Try to cross a stream. What wildlife lives around you. What small things happen without you present, without you as the center of the universe? For when you can’t physically be somewhere, imagine yourself there. We might never have been in a dungeon, but we know the smell of mold and what coldness feels like.

The proximity of phenomena - natural, mortal, monstrous - to each other is where you will derive the most game writing. Like characters, consider these connections on multiple levels: societal, political, mystical, yada yada. Furthermore, think about what it will mean when something is gone. Empty rooms are a bit of a misnomer. Stick a fountain in there. Bam. No one can get mad at you now. Obviously, empty rooms can be utilized as safehouses, campsites, chokepoints, traps, whatever player creativity can come up with. The player who looks at an empty room and doesn’t see the potential to create something possesses an incurious mind.

One of the best mapping exercises you can do is to improvise maps on the spot. Write a list of dungeon ideas on a single sheet. Don’t even connect them with arrows or anything, this is a free form exercise to get creativity going. Now run that dungeon for some eager pals, choosing any ideas that interest you right off the bat. You’ll start to draw connections and develop ideas for good beats in the dungeon. As you are introducing each new idea, start to draw out the map on a marker mat or paper. Go until you run out of ideas or space to map. This is a great way to practice improvising. Being a good DM - like being a good lover - largely boils down to confidence.

Hex Filler
Mutated from Luke Gearing’s and Stella Condrey’s hex fills, the following is a procedure I use to create ideas for hex maps. I do not apologize for the nested tables.

Don’t hesitate to literally plop a published adventure into your map. All those adventures you’ve read and have always wanted to play? They now exist in your fiction ready to be explored. Stapling together a collection of disparate hex maps will create a beautiful quilt for adventure.

1d6 Hex Fill
1-4 Nothing
5 Settlement (1) Encounter (2-3) or Lair (4-5) or Dungeon (6)
6 Special Feature (Roll again and combine)
1d6 Size Settlement Population
1 Thorp 2d20*2
2-3 Village d100 + d66
4 Town d6*100 + d88
5 City d6*1000 + d100
6 Fort 3d6*3
1d6 Settlement Features
1-3 Relationship to nearby hex
4 A boon or treasure that is in the open (1-3) or furtively out of sight (4-6)
5 An ally (1-3) or rival (4-6)
6 Roll again & once on Special Feature
2d6 Settlement Attitude
2 Hostile, attack on sight
3-5 Testy, treats you like dicks
6-8 Ambivalent
9-11 Friendly, +2 Reaction Rolls
12 Helpful, offers a favor without repayment
1d10 Special Feature
1 Magical element
2 Natural landmark
3 Strange merchant (1), tutor (2) or ally (3)
4 Resource that is abundant (1-3) or scarce (4-6)
5 Constructed landmark
6 Animal behaviour (1), plant physiology (2), or both (3)
7 Strange weather patterns
8 Historical location
9 Treasure. 2-in-6 chance to be hidden
10 Roll twice and combine
1d8 Dungeons.
1-4 Small (1-2 levels)
5-7 Large (2-4 levels)
8 Mega (5+ levels)

In the case of small dungeons, the 5 room dungeon model is rather handy. It’s a fine building block for improvising. Zhuzh it to your tastes.

To get into the real weeds of stocking dungeons, stop what you’re doing and read Actual Dungeon Mastering. I’m not even going to pretend that I have something better to offer. What follows is what I’ve gleaned from it to suit my general needs.

Plenty has been said about Jaquasying dungeons. I would stress that this doesn’t simply boil down to adding extra entrances and exits, but creates loops, chokepoints, false ends, one way routes. I would stress Dungeon Literacy: what does that space communicate that makes sense of the world it inhabits? What does it mean that this hallway is 50 feet long with a corner steering left, how does that bend in the hallway affect the party movement? How does light bouncing from the walls obscure what’s around the corner? How does the placement of a locked door change the scenario from a stuck one, or even a rotating one. How can we infer the history of a room from the placement of the doors, the secrets, the marks of skirmishes and abandoned treasure? What can a room say without saying it outright?

You may hear the adage that real tombs and dungeons aren’t shaped like this! Smoke from torches would choke the dungeoneers” Right. This is why we are playing a game. I don’t know what would attract people to this hobby who must prove they are smarter than a fantasy.

Template for small dungeons.

  • 5-7 rooms per level
  • 2-4 monster types
  • 2-3 traps
  • 1-3 art objects
  • 1 magic item
  • 2in6 chance of a hidden room with treasure

Large dungeons

  • 2-4 levels
  • 5-10 monster types
  • 4-6 traps
  • 4-8 art objects
  • 2-3 magic items
  • 1-2 hidden rooms with treasures

Mega dungeons

  • 5+ levels
  • Go crazy, go stupid
1d10 Dungeon Room Fill
1 Death Trap
2 Teleportal
3 Makeshift Campsite
4 Hindering Trap
5 Looted
6 Treasure
7 Pool/Statue/Fountain
8 Puzzle
9 Hidden Treasure
10 Monster Lair

Places with Territories
Roll 1d6 and consult the left column. Then roll 1d6 on the top row*. Cross reference and find the result. The number generated is the number of surrounding hexes influenced by that power placed on the map. For example, a roll of 3 on the column and 4 on the row results in a town with an influence of 12 hexes. Don’t be afraid to overlap territories.

*A handy note: a column goes up and down, like it’s holding up a ceiling. A row goes left to right, as a boat rows down the river.

d6 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 1 dwelling 2 thorp 3 village 4 village 5 fort 6 fort
2 2 thorp 4 lair 6 fort 8 town 10 town 12 city
3 3 village 6 fort 9 lair 12 town 15 city 18 city
4 4 village 8 town 12 town 16 underkingdom 20 city state 24 wizard
5 5 fort 10 town 15 city 20 city state 25 dragon 30 kingdom
6 6 fort 12 city 18 city 24 wizard 30 kingdom 36 underworld

Places with Terrain
Roll d6 and consult the left column. Then roll 1d6 on the top row. Cross reference and find the result. The number generated is the number of hexes of that terrain result. For example, a roll of 5 on the column and 2 on the row results in a plain spreading over a range of 10 hexes. Experiment with overlapping terrains. A forest overlapping with a sea might produce mangroves.

d6 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 1 Volcano 2 Mountains 3 Hills 4 Hills 5 Forest 6 Forest
2 2 Mountains 4 Lake 6 Forest 8 Plains 10 Plains 12 Plains
3 3 Hills 6 Forest 9 Lake 12 Forest 15 Plains 18 Forest
4 4 Hills 8 Plains 12 Forest 16 River 20 Tundra 24 River
5 5 Forest 10 Plains 15 Plains 20 Tundra 25 Marsh 30 Desert
6 6 Forest 12 Plains 18 Forest 24 River 30 Desert 36 Sea

Climate will further affect your terrain. Hot/Cold or Humid/Dry. Cold and dry climates may have evergreen forests and frozen rivers. Hot and humid climates feature jungles and fast flowing rivers or rapids. These change further as seasons are introduced.

1d20 Lairs
1 Dragon
2 Manticore
3 Chimera
4 Werebeast
5 Giant Bug
6 Undead
7 Cockatrice
8 Ogre
9 Bandits
10 Dire Beast
11 Plant or Fungus
12 Troll
13 Vampire
14 Slime
15 Griffon
16 Demon
17 Basilisk
18 Elemental
19 Orc
20 Roll 2 and combine. Roll Reaction to determine their relationship.

Dungeon Motifs
Human - Whatever is relevant to your player group.

Dwarven - Widened halls, false gold traps, more secret doors and hidden stone work. Geometric brick work, tall columns, plated beards, stone slabs and sigils. Runic and logic puzzles. Stone guardians that petrify trespassers.

H*bbit - Narrow rounded tunnels that tallfolk must crouch or crawl through. Musical puzzles, curses on luck, traps that trigger for heavy footed characters. Luck worship and ancestor reverence. Spiral, star and foot motifs.

Elven - Verticality in structures, towers or pits. Lost cities that were once splendorous are now empty. Art nouveau, haughty, extra planar with portals and cracks to hidden places. Lost splendor and the pursuit of its return. Traps to seclude, tempt or age.

Reptilian - Winding tunnels leading to a central chamber with auxiliary burrows. Hot, humid, and always dark for infravision. Molted skins or regurgitated food piles. Worship of the primordial or life-giving monarch. Traps to pin and later collect, pits or collapsing tunnels.

Chaos - Dizzying halls of shining stone cut into strange geometric patterns. Sacrificial rooms, chains and gates, holding chambers. Eerie presences and ghost sounds. Traps to torture, maim, imprison, corrupt or outright kill. Hints at old powers, temptations as end goal, the abandonment of the self for power.

Cities
A beast not unlike a dungeon. Roads lead to districts, buildings or landmarks much like hallways to rooms. The right touch is to keep a city feeling nebulous. It is unconcerned with the dealings of individuals. Cities are great opportunities to accomplish collaborative world building with players. Coming up with a city, its institutions and major figures together helps create a shared fiction to draw on. It also creates less work for you as a GM. Emphasize transport in the city, walking creates opportunities for random encounters more so than taking a ride. Having a few street names, factional groups, and named places is enough to start creating a familiarity within a city as creating a sense of location is key. Even if you’re not mapping out street by street, it still is important to know basic details, like how the Old Man Club meets at McGalrgin’s Pub on Fish Hook street on Fridays at the crack of dawn to drink espresso and gamble coppers.

Why does any of that matter? Well you know that Howie hasn’t attended Old Man Club since last week, and that McGarlgin’s is a known hang out for ne’er do wells late into the night, and that the fish mongers of Fish Hook street are known for hauling in more than just eels and carp. Like when creating relationships between characters, create relationships between characters and locations, and between the locations themselves.

Like a dungeon, cities feature secret places that are only found by those looking for them. The popping club in the grimy alleyway, the mystical shop in the rundown part of town, the hole in the wall sandwich shop in the jewelry district. Secret places that feel totally alien, peaks in between realities that show something completely different.

Also like dungeons, cities can swallow people whole, un-peopling them, leading to a designated class of undesirables who face state sanctioned oppression.

Building neighborhoods or districts can be tricky. The following categories have helped me to break up basic districts when planning out settlements.

  • Residential - Housing, agriculture, green spaces.
  • Commercial - Trade, entertainment, administration.
  • Industrial - Storage, manufacturing, waste.

Furthermore, here is a list of occupations to be found in most settlements. For each size of the settlement (Thorp - City), roll a 1d6 on the table below. Compound dice rolls onto the previous result, so that higher results have more chance to appear in larger settlements. If surpassing the table’s end, restart from the beginning with the remaining value.

1d20 Occupations
1 Witch
2 Herder
3 Forester
4 Trapper
5 Farmer
6 Trader
7 Tanner
8 Smith
9 Innkeeper
10 Fishmonger
11 Ostler
12 Baker
13 Tailor
14 Cobbler
15 Carpenter
16 Commissariat
17 Barber
18 Mason
19 Jeweler
20 Banker

Date
February 20, 2025