Dungeons & Dragons Games Excellent Ways To Promote Character Play & Development Through Playing An Antithesis Adventure

Anti......wha?

Antithesis play is playing your base Dungeons and Dragons character but you have lost all your primary abilities of your character. This type of play is difficult, challenging and cerebral. There is more a reliance on roleplay, problem solving, team work, occasional fast decision making and planning and achieving goals.

Wait a minute you say, I play D&D to kick back, relax have fun and consume my favourite beverage and snack foods with my friends.

But what if you played a game and you were not able to rely on your prime character abilities for just one adventure?

Let me express it this way. What would you think for your character to do if you woke up and found yourself in a large cell and your adventuring party is next door in a cell themselves.

Yes, not a problem I hear you say but wait, there's more and there is no free set of steak knives.

What if you found that for each character type you found the following.

Magic Users - cannot cast spells, there is an anti magic field in effect.
Fighters - you have no armour and no weapons
Clerics - you pray, yet your god is silent, hence no clerical spells are available
Thieves - your weapons, armour and thieves tools are gone

So, whatever character arch 'type' you are. Suddenly you find that you have to rely on wit, guile, cunning and learning about your current situation as you cannot use weapons, cast spells, call on the gods, disable traps etc.

OK take your jaw off the ground.

What next?

Well that jail cell your in, is locked from the outside and it is slowly filling up with water, of which it means your character will drown in about an hour or so. Unless you find a way out.

You need to now start thinking on your feet and suddenly you start looking at your character sheet in a new light. The first thing to do is look at ones skills and feats to see if they are of any use. Yes your attributes suddenly may become really useful too.

How to get out? Is the solution so obvious it is right in front of you? Have any of your party members discovered anything in their cell? is there any item slightly unusual in your own cell?

Dungeon Masters, herein lies a fantastic and unique opportunity, and also one of the hardest tasks you will complete as a DM in an adventure like this. Consider the plight of the adventurers, their entire world and understanding of their skills, attributes and abilitites has just turned upside down.

Magic doesn't work, the gods have gone on vacation, no weapons or armour or any valuables are around and they are suddenly in a dangerous situation.

It would be easy to be like Jigsaw from the Saw movies and lay grief on your players, don't be masochistic like this, you will probably live a short life as a DM. Be creative, challenging, but guide your players through this unique situation, make it so it is great fun, challenging, but fun for everyone.

This type of game module will put the adventure characters on the back foot, but now they cannot rely on their spells of fireballs and icestorms and their dual swords of 5+ . They now have to think on their feet, leave that trap alone and find another way out, solve puzzles, read strange languages (or die learning) and even make the decision to run away from monsters rather than fight (if they are smart enough).

Make your challenges interesting using the feats, skills, attributes and background of your characters to create situations for the party of adventurers to solve, or die trying.

I played one game like this, my character was a mage of some power, except the whole dungeon me and my party was in was bathed in anti-magic.

To top it of we had been burnt, nearly drowned, almost crushed between two walls when our thief wouldn't leave a trap alone and I made the almost fatal mistake of throwing a stone down a dark corridor only to find I had hit a Beholder and if it wasn't pissed off already, it was now.....

As players, you will be finding that your tools and abilities and no longer just at hand, but look around you, up down left right and ask the DM questions, there may be more than one way to skin a cat.

As the DM, have fun be kind to your players and lead them gently on occasion when the going gets too tough for them

Happy adventuring and hopefully you won't find any pissed off Beholders.