Dragna's Blog: Watsonian vs. Doylist Design in D&D

Why doesn’t the revised Reloaded give Ireena Kolyana a power boost?

Arc X of Re-Reloaded, codenamed Tatyana’s Legacy, provides a capstone to Ireena’s arc: By traveling to Berez and visiting Marina’s Monument, Ireena is able to view the tragedies of her past lives and achieve self-actualization by rejecting the Dark Powers’ cycle of despair.

Now, this arc will, in fact, give Ireena some form of power-up—by rejecting the Dark Powers, Ireena gains the power of hope, represented by an empowered form of the Inspiration power given to Strahd’s Enemy in the RAW module. But it won’t give her any sort of latent or innate magical gift as a direct result of her reincarnations.

It’s worth noting that the original Reloaded actually did this, fully replacing Ireena’s statblock upon the culmination of her arc in Berez. This “Ireena, Reborn” statblock provided her with new magical abilities (both divine and arcane), martial prowess, and some wilderness expertise, representing the compilation of her past lives’ strengths. But when I started working on Re-Reloaded, I realized that this capstone to Ireena’s arc was entirely incongruent with the actual themes of her arc.

In Reloaded—and, to be honest, in a lot of RAW as well—Ireena’s narrative is fundamentally dictated by the expectations and shackles of those around her: Ismark sees her as a damsel, Izek as his doll, Strahd as his property, and Sergei as his long-lost love. The Dark Powers, similarly, view Ireena as a perpetual victim: doomeed to die endlessly in an inescapable loop.

Ireena’s arc, therefore, is about rejecting and breaking those expectations:

• She defies Ismark’s expectations by choosing action (fight) over passivity (flight).
• She defies Izek’s expectations by choosing her adoptive family (Kolyan’s) over her biological one (Straznis).
• She defies the Dark Powers’ expectations by choosing hope (life) over despair (death).
• She defies Strahd and Sergei’s expectations by choosing her current life (Ireena) over her past one (Tatyana).

This last one is the most critical to her arc. Izek, one of the earliest major antagonists of the campaign, sets the tone for Ireena’s development by creating dissonance between her two identities. Again and again throughout the campaign, Ireena is presented with two identities: the one that others force upon her, and the one that she chooses for herself.

Her arc leads her to reject the former and embrace the latter—a decision entirely incongruent with a power-up that gives her abilities based upon the identity that others force upon her. A Tatyana-fueled boost is a confirmation of Strahd and Sergei’s beliefs, creating massive dissonance with the emotional stakes of Ireena’s development.

With that said, I do understand why some people were confused by my decision to remove this reincarnation power-boost. “Ireena, Reborn” is genuinely an evocative, cool power-up, and it really does resonate with the concept of a character whose soul has finally conquered an endless cycle of despair and defeat.

However, just because something makes sense doesn’t mean that we should actually do it in-game. That’s the topic we’re going to discuss today: the divide between Watsonian and Doylist reasoning.

Elementary, Dear Watson

You’re likely familiar with the Sherlock Holmes series of books, penned by author Arthur Conan Doyle. If you are, you’re probably also familiar with Dr. John Watson—Sherlock’s assistant and the books’ primary point-of-view character.

Imagine if, in a short story, Sherlock Holmes enters a restaurant. While he’s waiting for his appetizer, a murder occurs in the kitchen, leaving him to find the culprit.

Now, if I asked Dr. Watson why Sherlock had entered the restaurant, he might tell me something like: “He was hungry, he was working downtown, he didn’t have time to fix lunch that morning, and it was a restaurant that served his favorite food.”

But if I asked Doyle that question, he might look at me strangely for a moment, then say: “Sherlock was at that restaurant because I wanted to write a mystery about a murder that took place at a restaurant.”

This is the divide between how Dr. Watson reasons about the story and how Doyle reasons about it. Watson believes that he’s a flesh-and-blood person, living in a real world with real causes and effects. But Doyle knows the secret: Sherlock isn’t real, the restaurant isn’t real, and nothing happens unless Doyle allows it.

And so emerges the foundation of our two schools of reasoning:

• A Watsonian argues from verisimilitude and immersion. When deciding what should happen next, the Watsonian first asks, “What makes sense?”
• A Doylist argues from conscious design and intent. When deciding what should happen next, the Doylist first asks, “What do I want to happen?”

Think of a Watsonian as the text predictor on your keyboard—always predicting the most likely options based on what we already know about the characters.

Meanwhile, a Doylist never asks, “What does my character want?” because it, frankly, doesn’t matter—the character isn’t real, and can never want anything unless allowed to. To a Doylist, the proper question to ask is: “What emotions and experience do I want to provide to my audience?” Immersion can always be contrived later—the first step is always design.

If you’re following a Doylist path, once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you’re in a far better position to turn that goal into action. If you first decide that you’d like to write a story about a murder in a restaurant because you have a splendid idea for a twist involving mercury in the fish stew that you think will surprise and delight your audience, everything should follow from there.

Who Is Your Strahd?

I do want to be fair here: It is a lot easier for a new author, DM, or any creative to begin by asking: “What makes sense?” Humans are natural pattern-recognition machines; making order out of chaos is what we do best. But to truly strengthen our storytelling abilities and create narrative experiences that truly resonate with our audience, it’s absolutely essential that we write with intentionality.

And yet, a Doylist approach isn’t the easiest thing, either. A large part of the resources I’ve provided through this Patreon have been an attempt to help Dungeon Masters identify and then manifest their intent through narrative and gameplay—because even if you know what you want to achieve, executing on that vision is not always the easiest thing.

The first step, however, begins with a conscious decision to reject the concept of a world that exists beyond your head: to reject the concepts of verisimilitude and narrative integrity as ends instead of means. The world of your game is not real; it is play-doh—infinitely moldable to your whims, needs, and desires.

A few years ago, a friend of mine made me a Discord sticker called: “Who Is Your Strahd?”, named for a perennial question that cropped up reliably in the Patreon #campaign-help channel. Whenever a patron would pop by and ask: “What would Strahd do in X situation?”, I would reliably respond first with, “Well, who is your Strahd?”

It’s true that Strahd is a complex and challenging villain to run, especially given the power and agency he wields. But many of the conversations about Strahd make clear that there are a lot of different Strahds out there:

• There’s the “Gentleman” Strahd (a diplomatic and sociable noble who only turns on the players late in the campaign).
• There’s the “Monster” Strahd (a merciless tormenter who aims to make the players’ lives hell and brutally punishes them for any infraction).
• There’s the “Tyrant” Strahd (a distant count who only takes an interest in the players later in the campaign)

I soon came to realize that most of these help-seekers had different Strahds in mind when they asked for assistance—and so I began to start by asking, “Well, which Strahd are you using?”

But even this eventually ran into a problem: I would occasionally find that the DM’s vision for Strahd’s character was entirely incongruent with the kind of game they wanted to run. (The classic example, of course, was a DM who wanted to run the dinner at Castle Ravenloft as a diplomatic social affair, but whose Strahd was an abusive, brutal tormenter.)

To put it simply: The kind of experience created by their choice of Strahd was completely dissonante with the kind of experience created by the narrative they’d created.

And so I began moving one step forward. My first question became: “What kind of campaign experience do you want your players to have?” Grueling survival horror? Heroic dark fantasy? Aesthetic gothic horror? Once I knew the kind of experience that DM wanted to create, I could more easily work with them to mold who Strahd was, which then allowed for a much more constructive and resonant conversation about what Strahd should do.

This, in a nutshell, is the difference between Doylist and Watsonian reasoning: Ask not what you can do for Strahd; ask what Strahd should do for you. As real as our NPCs might feel in our games, their desires and personalities don’t matter. They are figments of imagination—real only when we allow them to be.

And so, if you’re ever tempted to ask yourself “What makes sense” when deciding what to do next, resist the urge. Instead, ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve?”, and let everything else follow from that.

Because at the end of the day, you can always make good design make sense—but you can’t always turn something that makes sense into good design.