How to Use Custom Instructions (Game Master)

For those who are new to Fables, or have avoided the “custom instructions'“ because they look to complicated, I’m going to mention some things you can do with it, and how simple it can sometimes be.

First of all, there are many different ways to use the custom instructions, and I’m still experimenting with this, but the most useful and important way I believe would be in the category of NPC dialog. Now, it seems underwhelming, but the NPC dialog is extremely helpful if you want to set up a little bit more of a story than a loose free roam world. For one of my worlds, I made it so that one of my NPCs that I had at the start of spawn would always give the character some gear. So far it has seemed to work everytime, and if you somehow miss the NPC, you can always come back and he’ll still give you the gear I requested. If I’m to guess correctly, you can still make story instructions with the other categories other than NPC Dialog, like the “Always” selection.

Secondly, you can set standards for your world. For example, when you have a world with multiple dimensions, you can add custom instructions to have the player or character always go through some kind of portal to get to each area/dimension. Another example is if you want a villain to ally to do certain things. Obviously, you can set the villain’s nature to Chaotic Evil, or something along those lines, but he may still talk to you, or interact with you but not start combat like you want (or even if you want the opposite). In the instructions you can change that. This can be the case with basically anything. You can explain to the gamemaster how a certain item is to be used. Maybe it can only be used once. Or an ally that you meet at the beginning of the game is supposed to die in some tragic accident. I hope this helped anyone who was in doubt, and I apologize for being long-winded. Have a good day and go enjoy some DnD!