https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-yYZdrUi_Zw
Transcription from vids, so it's not super fancy prose... it's just basic info, which is just fine. It'll be updated a couple times a year.
He says "Download link is right here https://tenkars-tavern.games/TavernGuide
— no email, no signup, no store page. It's CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so print it, share it, post it in your Discord, hand it to your table. Read the chapter that matches whatever's actually broken at your table this week, pick one procedure out of it, and run it three times before you judge it. Then tell me whether it held up."
Extra good parts:
- The Three Steps, on page 7.
- Telegraphing Danger: The Escalation Ladder, on page 8.
- Room Description: Scene, Oddity, Risk
- Adding These Procedures Without Burning Your Table Out
- What This Handbook Assumes: The B/X Loop - ...common sense first, dice only if needed....
Step one: the player states intent, and "I search" doesn't count. "I'm checking the fireplace for drafts." "I'm feeling the mortar lines for a seam." "I want to know if that chest's lid seam looks tampered with." Intent tells you what kind of clue to hand back.
Step two: you respond with information, not a verdict. Not "you find a secret door" — "the soot above the fireplace is thicker on the left, but there's a clean arc on the right, like something's been swung open, and you feel a faint cool draft near the right inner stone." You've told them nothing is confirmed and everything is worth pursuing. Layer the clues if a player keeps investigating: one standout detail, one suspicious detail, one confirmation of safety.
Step three: roll only when time, risk, or precision are actually in question. Not "did you find it" — "can you do this quickly," "can you do it quietly," "does this trigger while you're working it." The roll stops being permission to discover and becomes a cost for speed or stealth.
Applied to traps, the same three steps hold, with one addition: think about what job the trap is doing. Traps exist to make the dungeon feel engineered — somebody built this place and expected intruders — and to make time matter, the same way searching does. If a trap doesn't create a decision, it's just random damage.
WORKED EXAMPLE — THE NEEDLE CHEST
Slot-machine version: "I check for traps." Roll. Fail. Open it. Save vs. poison or die. Nobody learned
anything — that's a death tax, not play.
Clean version: "Before we touch it, I check the lock, the lid seam, the hinges — anything out of place."
You: "There's a hairline scratch around the lock plate, like it's been removed and reset. The keyhole smells
faintly of bitter almonds." Now the table has a real decision — rotate the chest so the lock faces away and
work it with a pole (slow, safe, a turn); force it (fast, loud, risks the contents); or hand it to the thief with
time to work (a roll, but a chosen one).
Give real credit to good tools and good method. A 10-ft pole probing ahead, chalk or flour dusted on a floor to catch a disturbed seam, a mirror on a rod checking behind a statue, water or oil poured along a seam to reveal airflow — if the approach is sound, let it succeed outright. The thief's Find/Remove Traps skill isn't the only way into this system; it's the cleanest option for a fine, dangerous mechanism under time pressure. Everyone gets to investigate and attempt a bypass. Only the thief gets to neutralize the hard ones cleanly.
Telegraphing Danger: The Escalation Ladder (just a piece of his write up below)
Three rules keep this from turning into spoilers. Give clues, not labels — "little animal skeletons in the corner, all frozen mid-scream," never "this is a basilisk's lair." Make every warning actionable — a scratched note reading "mirrors help" is useful; a vague sense of dread is not. And keep the truth accurate but incomplete — the player should be thinking it might be poison, might be gas, might be something on the ceiling. Uncertainty creates tension. Ignorance just creates resentment.
- 10 second delivery
- Scene -Shape and obvious function of room.
- Present one oddity - something that invites interaction.
- Imply one risk. What it might "cost" to interact.
- If it doesn't fit your table, don't use it at your table.
- Add one tool at a time, so you can keep up.
- The referee describes a situation. The players ask questions and declare actions. The referee resolves — common sense first, dice only when needed. Time passes, resources get spent.
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