You know how sometimes, in a module, there’s a guard who’ll let you through if you know he likes pizza from that one place? But there’s no way to know? Or there’s a door that opens if you walk around it three times clockwise, but there’s no way to find that out? I call them forsaken easter eggs, and they’re the worst.

Every piece of information in a module is either referee-facing or player-facing. Player-facing information is anything that the player can reasonably find out through interacting with the world in play. Referee-facing information is anything they the player’s can’t reasonably find out through interacting with the world in play.

There’s a place for referee-facing information in modules, and they all sit under one umbrella: Their goal is to make help the referee better run the module. If something is referee facing and doesn’t serve the goal of helping the referee better run the module, what is the information for? Forsaken easter eggs do not help the referee better run the module, but they are referee-facing rather than player-facing. They’re easter eggs, because they’re a secret message, and they’re forsaken, because they’re the one so well hidden that they’ll never be found by the kids on the hunt.

An excellent example of referee-facing information that helps the referee better run the module, is the time-line. The timeline helps the referee understand the overall situation surrounding the module, particularly when it’s complicated. It helps the referee maintain the cohesive world for the players. I think Another Bug Hunt (above) is an exceptional one, which literally displays the two types of information on one page.

Three granite minotaur statues stand around the room. Dust is thick in the air and on all surfaces. To left of the central minotaur statue, there is a square where the dust is less thick. Hidden: The central minotaur statue moves, to allow entry to a secret exit.

This is an example of player-facing information. It is possible for the players to figure out there is a secret door to the next area, even though the information isn’t obvious.

A granite minotaur blocks the entrance, blocking the exit completely. It will move aside if offered a glass of milk.

This is an example of a forsaken easter egg. The glass of milk is entirely referee-facing, and there’s no indication that the glass of milk is going to impact the granite minotaur. It’s a blind guess to get through the exit. The only way for them to find out about the milk otherwise is for the referee to intercede somehow by modifying the module or just telling the players (whether in or out of character), and that is, in my consideration, not good design. It’s easily fixed by adding a clue elsewhere, but also milk is a bad choice here because it’s inherently random. Let’s try to fix it:

A granite minotaur bearing a massive splitting axe blocks the entrance. It blocks the exit completely, but will only attack if attacked. If it is offered a block of wood, it will step away to split the axe.

Simply by adding a clue — the minotaur has a splitting axe, which is a type of axe used only for splitting wood — you’ve improved the quality of the encounter. But we can make it more obvious:

A granite minotaur bearing a massive splitting axe blocks the entrance. It blocks the exit completely, but will only attack if attacked. If it is offered a block of wood, it will step away to split the axe. Hidden: There are wood blocks in the forest in 4B, already felled by the granite minotaur there.

The truth is, making the clue very obvious by adding a second minotaur that’s associated with wood chopping, and having a stack of logs available for the minotaur to chop, isn’t actually too heavy-handed in my opinion. Players are being overloaded with information in a roleplaying game session, and separating clues by room can often itself be a huge barrier. But now we have 3 vectors into solving the problem, all of which are immediately visible to the players. But, there’s another option.

A granite minotaur blocks the entrance, blocking the exit completely. The minotaur misses his mother, desperately. It will abandon its post if reminded of her; it will be driven to anger if she is threatened or aggrieved. Hidden: The minotaur’s mother is the medusa Shallax imprisoned in 4B.

By describing the minotaur’s emotional status and relationships, the description, it transforms it from player-facing to referee-facing, and helps the referee better run the module.

Let’s summarise, then. To prevent forsaken easter eggs, we need to make sure that each piece of description either:

1. Provides the referee help to better run the module or
2. Is reasonably learnable by the player characters in-world without the referee interceding.

If you find a piece of description that isn’t reasonably learnable by the player characters in world and doesn’t help the referee better run the module, you can fix that by:

1. Giving the solution a logical connection to the description as a clue.
2. Adding an immediate clue inside the description.
3. Adding analogous clue elsewhere in the dungeon.
4. Use multiple clues (either of the same type or different types) to make it more obvious.
5. Redesign the description so that it helps the referee better run the module.

I hope that helps next time you’re designing a module or adventuring location.

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