If you’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for any length of time, chances are you’ve had to deal with a player leaving your group. Maybe they moved cities, maybe their schedule no longer aligned, or maybe they simply felt their time at the table had run its course. Whatever the reason, it’s never easy. The same thing happens When someone leaves the workplace. A great employee—someone who’s been part of the team, shaped its culture, and made meaningful contributions—decides it’s time to move on. Whether it’s for a new opportunity, family priorities, or a career shift, their departure can feel like a gap that’s impossible to fill.
But just like in D&D, the way you handle a departure matters. Here are some lessons that apply both at the table and in business.
Acknowledge Their Contribution
At the table, when someone leaves, it’s important to recognize the adventures you’ve shared together. Their character may have been the one who always took the big risks, or the one who brought comic relief when the dice rolled badly. Take a moment to appreciate those memories.
In business, the same principle applies. Celebrate what your employee achieved. A genuine thank you, a farewell lunch, or a written acknowledgment can leave the door open for future collaboration. Recognition shows that their time mattered.
Give Them a Good Exit
Nothing sours a campaign like a character disappearing mid-adventure without explanation. A strong farewell quest or an in-world reason for their departure respects both the player and the story.
In the workplace, helping someone exit well—ensuring knowledge transfer, supporting their transition, and respecting their future plans—builds goodwill. People remember how you handled their departure just as much as how you welcomed them.
Support the Group Left Behind
When someone leaves, the group dynamic shifts. Maybe the party no longer has a healer, or maybe the person who always drove the story forward is gone. You’ll need to rebalance roles, adapt encounters, and give others space to step up.
In business, a departure can feel like a hole in the team. Rather than rushing to replace the person immediately, consider how responsibilities can be shared or redistributed. Sometimes, their leaving creates opportunities for others to grow.
Keep the Door Open
D&D players sometimes come back—after a break, after life circumstances change, or even just for a one-shot reunion. Leaving the invitation open is a sign of respect.
In business, alumni networks, open communication, and goodwill can lead to “boomerang employees”—talented people who return down the line. Even if they don’t come back, they can still be advocates for your business from the outside.
See It as Part of the Journey
Campaigns evolve. Players come and go. What matters is that the story continues.
The same is true in business. A thriving company is never static—people join, contribute, and eventually move on. When you frame departures as part of a healthy cycle, rather than a crisis, it’s easier to stay focused on growth and the future.
Final Thoughts on When Someone Leaves
Losing a player in your D&D group or an employee in your business is never easy. It changes the chemistry, forces adaptation, and can feel like the end of an era. But with appreciation, respect, and a little creativity, departures don’t have to be endings—they can be transitions.
At both the table and in the workplace, the key is the same: honor the past, support the present, and stay open to what the future brings.
The festive season isn’t just for family gatherings, mince pies, and exchanging (hobby related) gifts—it’s also the perfect time to gather around the table for a one-shot adventure full of cheer, chaos, and maybe a little holiday magic. Writing a Christmas themed adventure lets you bring the spirit of the season to your game while giving your players something memorable and lighthearted to enjoy during December.
Here are some tips to craft a holiday adventure that feels like the festive season yet still delivers the excitement of a great RPG session.
Start with a Festive Hook
The heart of a Christmas-themed adventure is the hook that gets your players into the festive spirit. Think of familiar seasonal traditions and twist them into adventure prompts. For example:
Gift Gone Missing: A magical artifact meant to be gifted has been stolen—can the heroes recover it before sunrise?
Save the Festival: The annual Yuletide feast is under threat from a band of mischievous goblins.
Escort the Sleigh: A mysterious traveler with a sack of enchanted toys needs protection on a perilous journey across winter wilderness.
These hooks keep things simple and festive while setting up plenty of fun challenges. If you are looking for further inspiration there are plenty of Christmas movies to draw inspiration from.
Home Alone: defend the castle from nefarious, yet bumbling bandits.
Die Hard: save the hostages from the evil terrorists.
Christmas Chronicles: Help the odd red coated wizard retrieve his lost sleigh and flying steed.
Embrace the Tropes
Like any good one-shot you need to embrace the tropes of the setting. Christmas comes preloaded with heaps of imagery you can play with: twinkling lights, snowstorms, reindeer, candy canes, and towering evergreens. Incorporate these elements as set dressing, monsters, or puzzles:
Animated nutcracker soldiers guarding a snowy castle.
Gingerbread golems defending their sugar-frosted fortress.
A riddle hidden inside a Christmas cracker that must be solved to progress.
Go over the top with the whimsy—it’s a holiday game, after all.
Keep It Short and Sweet
The festive season is a busy time, so plan your adventure as a one-shot and make sure to stick to it. Aim for a session that can be wrapped up in a single evening, ideally with 3–4 encounters. You want something punchy, fun, and easy to fit between Christmas shopping and family visits.
Puzzle/Challenge: A frozen lake that must be crossed.
Setback: Rival adventurers also chasing the prize.
Climax: A showdown in the lair of the villain (Krampus, Frost Giant, or corrupted elf).
Reward/Resolution: Saving the holiday festival, restoring joy to the community.
Balance Humor and Heart
Like all good movies of the season, Christmas-themed adventures work best when they mix humor (silly monsters, over-the-top challenges, festive puns) with heart (themes of giving, kindness, and togetherness). Let the table laugh at a candy cane sword fight, but also give them a chance to do something meaningful, like saving a child’s wish or rekindling hope in a struggling village.
Add a Festive Villain
No Christmas story is complete without a villain threatening the joy of the season. Some ideas could include:
Krampus or a Mischievous Demon: Punishing the naughty in cruel ways.
The Winter Witch: Freezing everything to stop the festival.
A Bitter Toymaker: Creating cursed gifts to spread misery.
Make sure your villain has clear motivations, but don’t be afraid to keep it campy and fun. This isn’t a game to be taken too seriously.
Other Games and Scenarios
If you don’t want to take the time to write your own adventure you could always try one of these adventures and games:
Hark! it’s Santa a fun oneshot game relying heavily on improvisation
A Christmas-themed adventure is less about perfect balance or dramatic stakes and more about sharing joy at the table. Everyone will be beginning to feel Christmassy and running a game like this will amplify that. Fill it with festive flourishes, encourage your players to lean into the silliness, and above all, make it something they’ll talk about fondly long after the decorations come down.
So this December, grab your dice, hang some fairy lights around the table, and take your adventurers on a journey full of snow, laughter, and holiday spirit. Who knows—you might even start a new tradition.
Roleplaying games can be powerful tools for leadership development and team training—but they only work when they’re designed with intention. Over the past few years, I’ve been refining a custom ruleset called Play to Lead, which puts teamwork, communication, and pressure-tested leadership at the heart of the experience.
One of the most effective ways to use Play to Lead in a team training setting is through short, focused scenarios designed for under an hour of play. These sessions are tight, dramatic, and deliberately removed from the day-to-day office environment.
Here’s how to design a scenario that delivers impact—and leaves your team talking long after the dice are packed away.
Core Design Principles
When writing a team training RPG scenario, it pays to keep these core design elements in mind:
1. Keep It Short and Punchy
Total play time: under 1 hour
Structure: Maximum of three encounters, but plan for two core ones. The third is there only if the players are making good time.
Leave 10–15 minutes for a debrief at the end to unpack learning
2. Make It Dangerous
There must be risk—real failure (with potentially fictional character harm) on the table. If the players feel safe, they won’t act decisively or rely on one another. The best learning comes when people feel the stakes. Other types of risk can also work, perhaps a valley might flood taking the town with it, or an endangered species go extinct.
3. Encourage Real Teamwork
Design challenges that cannot be solved alone. Players should have overlapping roles, limited resources, and opportunities to lead, follow, and communicate under pressure. Give the players the tools, bit in a way where they must work together. For example, getting the spaceship under control requires players solving problems on the bridge and the engine room at the same time. Both locations interact and only together can the players get to the planet safely.
4. Include Time Pressure
Introduce a ticking clock. Whether it’s literal (“the bomb goes off in 10 minutes”) or narrative (“the bridge collapses in three turns”), urgency forces action and creates drama. Having the clock represented visually also keeps that sense of urgency very much alive.
5. Build Around a Theme
Each scenario should have a clear soft-skill theme. All the problems and challenges should be built around it. These could include:
Teamwork under pressure
Negotiation and influence
Making tough ethical decisions
Navigating difficult conversations
6. Use Familiar Tropes
Whatever you do, don’t set it in an office. Choose an accessible genre with clear stakes and vivid roles. Beg, borrow and steal from popular culture. Familiar settings help participants jump in quickly and focus on the challenge, not the setting.
Some obvious examples include:
Zombie apocalypse (28 Days later)
Pulp adventure (Indiana Jones)
High fantasy dungeon crawl (Lord of the Rings)
Sci-fi space mission (Apollo 13)
Spy thriller with double-crosses (James Bond)
Using popular films for inspiration helps players get into the game faster.
Team Training Scenario Examples
Here are two fun Play to Lead scenarios built around these principles:
1. “Outbreak at Sector 9”
Genre: Sci-fi survival Theme: Teamwork and resource prioritisation Setup: A distress signal lures your small team of engineers and security officers to an abandoned space station. Something’s gone wrong—and the infected are still inside. Encounters:
Navigate a power outage while restoring access to life support
Decide who gets the only dose of antidote when an ally is bitten
Escape before the AI initiates a total lockdown Time Pressure: 45 minutes before total station shutdown Teamwork Element: Only through clear role delegation and resource sharing can the team survive. The Engineer has to fix life support, while the Medic has the antidote and only the Captain has a key to the AI core.
2. “The Temple of Twin Flames”
Genre: Pulp fantasy adventure Theme: Negotiation and difficult conversations Setup: You are rival adventurers forced to work together to recover an artifact before a cult completes a dark ritual. But not everyone wants the same outcome… Encounters:
Cross a booby-trapped bridge with limited equipment
Parley with a cursed guardian who tests your morals
Decide whether to destroy the artifact or use it Time Pressure: Eclipse occurs in 60 minutes—sealing the artifact’s fate Teamwork Element: Conflicting goals mean teamwork isn’t just logistical—it’s emotional and strategic. Each player has a secret agenda for the artifact. Can they come to an agreement to enable them to escape. Or will their disagreement see them stuck in the collapsing temple forever?
You’ll be surprised how naturally players draw lessons from the scenario and link them back to work.
Final Thoughts on Team Training
Roleplaying scenarios don’t need to be long or complex to make an impact. With the Play to Lead ruleset and a focused scenario design, you can run powerful 1-hour sessions that bring out the best in your team—and help them grow through play.
If you’re designing your own sessions, start with a theme, wrap it in an exciting genre, and make sure the stakes are high. Just don’t forget to debrief—because that’s where fantasy becomes leadership development.
We all know that in both Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and the workplace, teamwork is essential for success. However, every group occasionally encounters a lone wolf—an individual who prefers to act independently rather than collaborate with the team. While independence can be a valuable trait in certain situations, a lone wolf’s behavior can be detrimental when it disrupts group cohesion, communication, and shared objectives. If left unchecked, a lone wolf can cause irreparable damage to a business or group.
What Is a Lone Wolf and Why Is It Detrimental?
A lone wolf is a player or employee who operates primarily on their own, often avoiding teamwork, disregarding group plans, and making decisions without consulting others. In D&D, this could be a character sneaking off to loot treasure without the party, or a player who constantly ignores group discussions in favor of their own agenda. In business, a lone wolf might be an employee who works in isolation, hoards information, doesn’t follow process or fails to engage in team projects.
Often individually a lone wolf can be successful. For example make great sales, or make a great in game fighter. However, their unwillingness to collaborate can cause significant issues, including:
Lack of synergy: The group is forced to work around the individual rather than integrating them into team efforts.
Poor communication: Important details are missed because the lone wolf operates separately.
Reduced trust: Team members may feel frustrated or disconnected when the individual ignores their input.
Lower efficiency: The group wastes time resolving conflicts instead of focusing on their shared goals.
Strategies for Dealing with a Lone Wolf in D&D
As a Dungeon Master, your goal is to balance individual player agency with team cohesion. Here are some ways to handle a lone wolf player effectively:
Understand Their Motivation – Talk to the player to understand why they prefer to work alone. Are they roleplaying a specific character concept, or do they simply dislike group decision-making?
Encourage Group Decision-Making – Implement moments where cooperation is necessary, such as puzzles, multi-step combat strategies, or social encounters requiring group input.
Use Narrative Consequences – If the lone wolf consistently acts against the party’s interests, have the world react accordingly. NPCs may become untrusting, or the character may face in-game consequences for their isolationist behavior.
Set Clear Expectations – Before the game, establish that D&D is a cooperative experience and that all players should engage with the group’s decisions.
Strategies for Dealing with a Lone Wolf in Business
Managing a lone wolf employee requires a balance of respecting their independence while ensuring they contribute to the team’s success. Here’s how leaders can address this behavior:
Identify the Root Cause – Is the employee avoiding teamwork due to a lack of trust, unclear expectations, or personal preference? Understanding their reasoning helps tailor your approach.
Encourage Open Communication – Lone wolves may not realize how their actions impact the team. Provide regular feedback and encourage dialogue to align them with team goals.
Assign Team-Oriented Tasks – Give them projects that require collaboration, emphasizing shared success over individual achievement.
Create Accountability – Ensure that responsibilities are clearly defined and that the lone wolf must provide updates and integrate their work with the team’s efforts.
Final Thoughts
While implementing the strategies above should bring a lone wolf around to integrating more with the team, there will be instances where they will refuse to do so. If this is the case and their behavior is having a detrimental impact on the team then you should seriously consider asking them to leave the gaming group. Or, in the case of a workplace begin enacting performance management. However, DMs and leaders alike can turn a lone wolf into a valuable team player. Whether in fantasy or the workplace, the best adventures—and successes—are built on cooperation.
Most of the time when we think of Dungeons & Dragons, we picture a single party of adventurers delving into a dungeon, working together, fighting monsters, and uncovering treasure. But what if there were two rival parties competing for the same goal, racing against each other in real time?
I first came across this idea listening to the excellent podcast Fear of a Black Dragon, where presenter Tom McGrenery described running the Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure Piercing the Demon’s Eye for two groups at the same time. It sounded chaotic, exhilarating, and utterly brilliant.
So of course, I had to try it.
Did it work? Read on to find out.
Two DMs, Two Rival Parties
Together with my fellow DM Rich, we set up a dungeon crawl for ten friends. The twist? Instead of one unwieldy group of ten, we’re splitting them into two rival parties, entering the dungeon (Piercing the Demons Eye) five minutes apart.
The rules of engagement are simple:
The dungeon closes in four real-time hours. When the clock hits zero, the dungeon magically shuts. Any characters still in there are trapped, experiencing a slow and agonizing death.
The party with the most loot wins. If they make it out in time.
We’ll keep tension high with regular real-time countdowns, making every decision feel urgent. One player from each team will be designated time keeper, reminding their team mates to keep moving, or to escape.
It’s part dungeon crawl, part pressure cooker, part competitive sport.
What Does This Have to Do With Leadership?
At first glance, this might just sound like a fun twist on D&D (and it absolutely will be). But it’s also a fascinating experiment in leadership under stress. Competition changes everything. When you know another team is out there grabbing treasure, time suddenly becomes your most precious resource. Leaders in the group will have to:
Prioritize quickly: Is it worth taking that side passage, or should we push deeper?
Manage risk: Do we burn spells now, advancing faster but bringing the catastrophic clock closer to midnight?
Balance the team’s needs: Some players may want to fight everything. Others may want to sneak past. Good leadership will mean finding the middle path without wasting precious time.
These dynamics mirror real-world leadership challenges.
Similar scenarios could be run as part of a leadership training exercise. Imagine putting your aspiring leaders through these:
Two groups of scavengers in a zombie apocalypse racing to loot supplies before winter. Only one settlement will thrive.
Rival companies bidding for the same contract, knowing only one can succeed.
Disaster response teams in a crisis where resources are shared between teams and time is brutally limited.
In each case, leaders need to stay calm, make rapid but thoughtful decisions, and keep their team united under pressure.
All of these scenarios can be run using my simple, easy to run Play to Lead ruleset.
Why This Works for Leadership Training
What makes games like this so effective for leadership development is that they feel real. As Jennifer Ouellette explains in Me, Myself, and Why, our brains encode roleplaying experiences as though they genuinely happened. That means when you practice making tough calls, prioritizing under pressure, and communicating clearly in a D&D dungeon, you’re exercising the same leadership “muscles” you’ll use in the workplace.
Adding competition into the mix elevates the stakes. The stress is simulated, but the feelings of urgency, pressure, and rivalry are real enough to create meaningful growth.
Bringing It Back to Work
If you want to use this kind of scenario in a leadership training environment, here are some tweaks:
Theme it for your group: Instead of fantasy loot, consider one of the alternative scenarios mentioned above.
Make consequences clear: Limited time, limited resources, and a final score that determines success or failure.
Encourage reflection afterwards: The real learning happens when teams debrief what worked, what didn’t, and how leadership showed up under pressure.
The happy participants!
Running the Game
What a blast to run! Rich had booked a community hall for the event. Everyone was primed to bring two 5E D&D characters, just in case. First we used a dice bag with coloured dice to randomly assign the teams. After explaining the premise we set the 4 hour timer and we were off.
Rich and I passed each other notes as the adventurers made their way through the dungeon. The players tables were facing each other so they were always aware of the rival party and their progress. Some of the highlights from the game were:
One party coming upon the other and sending an owl to trail them.
The first party setting traps for the second.
One party battling for their lives, the second popped their head in the room before beating a hasty exit.
The slow realisation that casting spells had an impact on the dungeon clock, but not knowing quite what it was counting down to.
One player sifting through the treasure horde and throwing unwanted bits into oblivion.
The teams were going to be judged by how much treasure they retrieved. So I made a series of treasure cards describing what they found, but with no value written on them. At the end of the session we totaled up the value of the rescued valuables to determine a winner. There was only 100gp between the two parties!
That being said noone actually made it out alive……
This photo shows our set up. DMs back to back, the bright yellow clock countdown to the left.
Did it Work?
Absolutely it did! The players really got into the premise of the game and told us it was a completely different experience to anything else they had played. There was great banter between the tables and the debrief dinner afterwards was great fun as they pieced together what each rival party had been up to.
Rich and I worked really well as a team. Luckily we had done a load of prep before hand so we knew the module well and how we were going to handle different parts of it. Passing notes between ourselves also added additional paranoia to the players. Always a win.
One interesting thing was that the players actually engaged with the adventure faster then we though they would. Between the two teams they covered every room and trap. This is a good lesson for next time.
I also made a mistake where my group were moving much faster than the others and caught them up without me realising. So we had two parties in the same place at the same time without seeing each other. Woops. Not to worry though, once I’d worked it out I managed to stall my guys long enough for it all to settle out again.
Final Thoughts
In the end, this experiment is both a thrilling way to play D&D and a powerful way to test leadership under competition and time stress. When two parties enter the dungeon, only one comes out on top—but everyone comes out having had a different and fun experience.
If this sort of thing appeals to you I would strongly suggest grabbing a co-DM and running this for your friends. It was a memorable event for everyone, with lots of pressure, paranoia and of course laughter.
