The Rule of Threes

 I used to dread prep for my 5e game-- I think most GMs do. The nature of how I ran my games meant I had to prep detailed characters and motivations, locations, nigh-scripted events even before I got to the actual meat of enemy stat blocks and magic items. Incorporating player backstories as well meant I had to comb through docs of varying length for detail and re-record them in my notes for quick use during play. 

This was exhausting. So I changed how I prep. 

How much do you need to run a game? That's an unanswerable question. I've ran some games on no notes at all. 

Let's rephrase: how can we set a benchmark for creating engaging details for your players?

3.

...

:)

Three is a great number for basically anything that you'll need for an average game. When you prep an NPC, location, fight, etc, think of three things that will create an engaging play field for your players. Think about what players can engage with-- what can they latch onto, or find out? What can change the game?

When preparing an NPC? Give them three traits to strategize around, and three secrets. These three things will give you much more of the NPC's mindset than you'd think. Let's take a look at a Voice character who recently died in Inkwarren. 

Caslan the Anvil

Badger Mercenary, muscle for the Smith's Guild. Wants gold and the loyalty of his Hammers. 

Traits (woodlanders must deal with these in order to beat him) Unquestioned loyalty of his Hammers,           impeccable armor, never EVER quits. 

Secrets betrayed his loyalist battalion during the Rebellion by leading them into a death trap, trains his Hammers from birth, feeds his Hammers druid root to numb them to pain-- takes none himself. 

Caslan here now has a fully formed character with just a paragraph or two of information, easily reference-able during play. If my players try something I didn't think of (like listening in on a conversation between the Hammers or searching through his desk), I can take a look at this block and pull some knowledge for them to use. 

What about a location? Locations need more than three things. That they do! But you can still organize them around the Rule of Threes. Try it like this: three rewards to find, three dangers to avoid, three details for information, and three weird things that break the rules. 

The Old Selwyck Hold 

Flooded former castle of the defunct Selwyck family. A great, moldy archive sits within. 

Rewards Cloudstrike - their ancestral axe, tomes of knowledge on many topics, the remainder of their wealth from a clockwork vault within.

Dangers Looters, flooded passageways, imminent cave-ins.

Details Their old house crest, skeletons under heavy rivermoss, a section of roof crushed by a tree.

Weird Things A heavy clockwork door protecting the inner vault, secret passageways accessible only by placing a book in place of a brick, a lever to open the roof and see the night sky

There we go! A place for your characters to explore. If running Inkwarren, I would draw Minor Arcana and lay them on the table as 'rooms', and go from there. Again-- I did this in five minutes, and this can be used for an hour or two of play. Convenience without sacrificing depth is the goal here. 

You can do this for world history too by organizing it around three major moments of social change, or for rules of magick, or of places where the old fey Tallwood can be found. Three things is enough for a lot of play. 

What about player characters? I would argue that player characters are where the Rule of Threes are most applicable. In a story-driven campaign that wants to take a deep look at its characters, it's often useful for these characters to have some sort of history to draw upon. Some players will feel overwhelmed by this though, and some will give you a full treatise on their character history. How do they meet in the middle? 

Three major life events, of course!

Niclayis Bright

• When Nic was young, his mother took him into the woods to escape allegations of sorcery. There, he was raised amongst his mother and several witches, and learned some secrets of witchcraft.
• Later that year, his mother ventured off to the North, and never returned. Niclayis was left motherless. 
• Niclayis was then sent to ward with House Harchild of Gwynt, where he learned swordplay and politics from Feldhall Harchild, with the older Lutig and Loveday as his siblings. 

This backstory already gives us a ton of threads to pull from, and an informed idea on what Niclayis is at in life. He's weird! He was raised in the woods, lost his mother, and lived with another noble family for much of his childhood. We already have a great idea of who he is, with just three bullet points. 

Rule of threes! Play works best when you have the tools that you need to flow with the conversation of play-- there is a happy middle ground between relying fully on improv and writing out a full adventure yourself. Three works well by giving you three possible paths for players to take, but also sketching out the edges enough that you can think of more paths on the fly. If I need another trait or another secret for Caslan, I already know he's an honorless, lasvicious mercenary who grooms his underlings into numb-to-the-world servants-- maybe one is his kid! Maybe he learned this method of subjugation from someone else, or maybe it's not as foolproof. The world is my oyster. 

Rule of three. Adieu, farewell, goodbye!