As a game master, you have seen this situation many times: The players already received their quest hours ago, but are still sitting in the tavern doing a mixture of roleplaying and off-game chatter. It is clear that they do not have a sense of urgency in regards to your quest. After all, killing the necromancer in the woods can wait until tomorrow, right?

Mythic Bastionland's Omens

While playing Mythic Bastionland, my friend Dungeon Merlin introduced me to their flavor of written adventures, the myth. While there are many interesting facets to their structure, the thing that inspired me the most were the omens. Omens are a series of six escalating moves that can be triggered without the players involvement (so essentially if they do not stop the myth in time). Here is an example from the Inferno on page 155 of Mythic Bastionland:

1. A faint heat can be felt from the soft parts of the ground, like embers of yesterday's fire.
2. Smoke rises from behind a row of trees. A crackling forest fire burns. It can be stopped if the Company acts quickly, else this small patch of forest burns down.
3. An orchard lies burned to ash, the young farmer weeps among the embers. They're left with no choice but to plead for aid at the nearest Holding.
4. A smoldering rift in the ground yawns open, the Red Serpent emerging, writhing through the hot air like a great eel. It demands gold and will engage in no other topic of conversation.
5. A stone watchtower, two guards within, slowly sinking into the ground. The stone appears to be melting as the ground opens up, swallowing the tower in a pit of flame.
6. The Serpent encircles a pile of riches, taken from all over the Realm, slowly sinking back into the molten earth below.

While the book makes it clear that the players can engage and stop these occurrences, it is clear that they will also happen if the players do nothing. While I do not think that the scale of the Omens necessarily fits every game, the structure itself seems quite universally applicable to me.

Using Omens as Escalation Moves

Let us revisit the scenario of the players sitting in the tavern, while they should be out hunting the necromancer. But this time, let us assume that we did a preparation similar to the Omens. So, what happens if the players continue to do nothing?

1. Animals flee from the forest through the village the players are staying at. It starts small, with birds and hares, but escalates to deer, wolves and even bears bursting throw, sowing chaos.
2. The villagers start to repair the damagers to the village, like runover fences and broken doors.
3. A farmer comes into the village and attacks the inhabitants. He is undead, killed and resurrected by the necromancer. If he is not defeated, he collapses after a while.
4. The undead farmer is buried by the villagers, with a eulogy being held by his teary eyed parents and the villages priest.
5. A group of undead creatures attacks the village.
6. The church burns down, as an undead creature erupts into flames.
7. The necromancer appears, spouting dark prophecies.
8. The necromancer resurrects the dead from the village (the ones that died in the attacks, plus the ones buried in the ground) in a long winding ritual.
9. All the undead from the forest and village combine into a terrifying army of the dead.
10. The army marches onward to the nearest town.

It is important to note that the players can absolutely stop these escalating moves from happening, so you do not need to go through all of them. But with them, you have a tool to gradually escalate the situation if you want to create more tension, give the feeling of a living world or just get your players to move a little more.

As you might have noticed, I used ten instead of six moves. The reason for this is that in my experience, you sometimes want a little more granularity. If each move is a huge deal, you might feel more hesitant to spring them on your players. But feel free to just use two at a time, if it feels appropriate.

Creating Escalation Moves

Creating these moves is pretty simple. I usually just think about what the antagonist of the story would do, if left unchecked. This usually gives me around five escalation moves. As you can see above, the necromancer sends the undead farmer, the group of undead, the undead that burns down the church and gets there to summon his army from the fallen villagers, leading them to the nearest town.

After that, I think about how the environment would react to these occurrences without the players influence. The animals flee the forest, the villagers repair damages and they hold a eulogy for the undead farmer... Combining these two points of view, it is usually quite feasible to come up with eight to ten moves.

Using Escalation Moves

It can take a while to get a feeling on when to trigger one of these moves. While talking about the article, Dungeon Merlin rightfully asked me on when to trigger escalation moves. And I was surprised that my answer basically boiled down to: When it feels right. This is not a satisfying answer, right? When is it appropriate to spring these escalating situations on to your players, when are you overreaching or taking away your players agency by becoming the most proactive participant at the table? I have written some general guidelines on when it is ok to spring these bad boys onto your players:

1. The Beginning. The first escalation move might as well be the start of a game, kicking the session off with a bang!
2. Every Hour. Having tried this method out quite a bit, a good rule of thumb is to escalate the situation at least every hour sitting at the table, even if the players are moving along. This creates the feeling of a living world that moves even without the players.
3. On Failed Rolls. If you do not have a good idea about inflicting consequences on a failed skill check (history checks are always tough for me), you can always just use your next escalation moves.

Further reading

One of my favorite books on game mastering, The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Sly Flourish, has a structure that quite neatly fits this structure. If you are new to his work, I recommend checking out his blog. I especially recommend using his secrets in conjunction with the escalation moves. While the moves can be used as a stick, the secrets can function as a beautiful carrot, drawing the players deeper into the world. If you are interested in more articles like this one, I recommend checking out my newsletter or taking a further look and my other articles.