Quality Encounters, Not Quantity of Encounters.

When I was running my players through Rescue at Rivenroar, one thing that struck me as I did my session and campaign planning was the sheer number of encounters to be found in the adventure. Almost every room had a combat encounter and it turned into a grinder of predictable combat. My experience playing other adventures like Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth were similar. Even more recent products and adventures have a lot of combats. Although 4e combat is fun and it's far easier to write an adventure with combat than it is to write one with roleplaying (because it's hard to predict how players will roleplay and what they will do), it can make for a dull adventure if not done well. I always knew that myself, but my time spent with Rivenroar reinforced the lesson like few other things could. So I want to share what I think about this aspect of encounter design.

Make Every Encounter Mean Something
One of the major problems a lot of modules have is that they have combat encounters that don't really mean anything. Either by themselves or in the context in which they're presented. Combat for the sake of combat is rarely a good idea. For that matter, skill challenges for the sake of skill challenges are no better. The better way to approach encounters is to have a point to them. Encounters should always add to the adventure in some way. It may be thematic (establishing an undead area by PCs running into some), narrative (the PCs are attacked by assassins from the Big Bad), strategic (the orc raiders have scouts out on patrol), environmental (the PCs have triggered an ancient magical defense system), reactionary (the kobold who fled a fight has set off alarms in the warren), climactic (the players face off with the mastermind of an evil plot), or whatever.

Ask yourself why the players might have this particular encounter. Ask yourself "why" as many times as you need to until you either have a good reason or no reason at all. If you can't come up with a good solid reason for it, you should reconsider having that encounter right at that point. And honestly? Sometimes the reason might very well be "Because it's a cool encounter and my players will like it." As long as everybody is having fun, you're doing it right.

Make Every Encounter Unique
Sometimes even adventures with encounters that answer the question of "why" still end up feeling flat, dull, or boring. One possible pitfall is using too many of the same sorts of monsters. This can actually be a big problem, especially for someone like me who likes a strong theme to an adventure. You can very quickly run out of new monsters of the appropriate type to throw at the players and surprise them. Sometimes you want to broaden your theme or scope of the adventure to give yourself some leeway. To use my own game as an example, if I could have I probably would have just used goblins and hobgoblins for most of Rivenroar. But I would have found myself using the same enemies over and over. So I added in a reason to have undead around and I was able to better create encounters that all felt different from one another. Adding a different sort of monster from the ones that PCs have been fighting can be a breath of fresh air.

Another way to make encounters unique is the environment. An encounter can be drastically different in feel and result depending on where you place it. Add environmental effects like rain to cause penalties for ranged attacks. Let the terrain shape the battle by placing fields of boulders and rocks which count as difficult terrain. Put incentives and objectives like a magic circle which gives +1 to attack for creatures standing in it. Add in dangerous effects like a fountain which spews necrotic acid at random intervals. Add shelves that players can push over onto bad guys or to use as cover. If you make an encounter more than a simple straight up fight to the death, they're more likely to enjoy it.

Make Every Encounter Memorable
This can be both the easiest and hardest thing to do when making and playing encounters. Players should walk home from the game thinking about how fun, cool, or interesting it was. You want something they'll be talking about between each other for a while or that makes them want to go on a message board or Twitter to describe. Sometimes, making an encounter memorable can be nothing more than good roleplaying or description from the DM. Orcs who shout battlecries and taunts, mad necromancers who lecture and rant at the players, grim and silent assassins who use elaborate maneuvers and hand signals as they attack, feyborn creatures who laugh and sing as they draw blood, or whatever.

Altering the conditions of victory is another option to consider. If the players have to stop an evil ritual by destroying six magical idols while holding off mad cultists, that can be more fun than just going in to kill the cultists outright. Enemies who fight with hit and run attacks can leave the players excited to finally get the chance pin down and have it out with their tormentors. Encounters where players have to protect something can also be exciting and nerve-wracking. Put the players on the other side of the ritual example from earlier and have them defend a magical ritual from those disrupting it. Have the players fend off slavers trying to capture panicked townsfolk.

Throw the characters a curveball every once in a while, just to keep them on their toes and not take anything you present them for granted. A fight where high winds scream through the area, pushing people and knocking them prone every few rounds, can shake things up. Throw in an occasional fight in the air or under water where players have to think and act in 3D. Run an encounter where players are defending a town and have access to things like siege equipment or burning pitch but have to fend off enemies with ladders, ropes, and siege towers.

Conclusion
Are following these ideas guaranteed to get you awesome encounters every time? No. Sometimes even the best ideas and efforts will fall flat at the table. Sometimes what you thought was awesome, players will find boring. Sometimes your carefully crafted encounter will be undone in moments by bad DM rolls or good player rolls (or both). Sometimes either the DM or the players will be having an off night and end up with encounters that don't live up to their potential. However, I think that if you really try to incorporate these ideas into your adventures and encounter design, players and DMs alike are more likely to have a good time by eliminating flat or dull encounters that do little more to add to the adventure besides fill time and provide some experience and loot and replacing them with something which will hopefully be more interesting and engaging.

Guest Post: Random Me This

This is an awesome guest post that I'm happy to host here. My contributions can be found, but most of the credit is not mine. Comment and enjoy! - Aaron

Empty rooms and lint-stuffed pockets make for quite the boring D&D encounter. Snooze city, we say. Any RPG world setting has things worth keeping…whether they’re valuable or not. And nearly any item can be used to an adventurer’s eventual advantage if the player is creative enough.

The late great George Carlin said it best, “Everyone has their own pile of stuff. So, why in Dante’s Inferno would your monsters and NPCs be any different?

To celebrate and embrace the things’ obsession, we’ve created a helpful randomized common items table for your D&D gaming pleasure. You can download the 72 different choices in a single takeaway sheet here and a generic version here.

The initial instructions are rather straightforward: On a successful perception check of more than 12, the character then performs two different rolls on the chart for the result. Roll a d12 to first determine the item set. Now roll a d6 to determine the actual item found.

There’s real rhyme to every reason in this sheet. We’ve purposely picked common items that a gamer, who’s got his thinking helm on, can turn into his advantage. For example:

• Chalk: mark spots in the dungeon to increase your skill check on finding your way back.

• Metal Toy Knights: A perfect bribe for streetwise information

• Rigged gambling dice: The possibilities are endless.

• Black Powder: Gather components for single spell working for or against you on a cast.

And for zestier randomization, we’ve added 2 heck-yeah items and 2 oh-no items:

• Whestone +2: To attack and damage for 1 encounter. It’s a classic.

• Potion of Healing: Can you ever have enough?

• Mold trap: Goop gets on your weapon for a -1 to attack/damage for a day.

• Pressure Gas Release trap: Sealed for too long – d12 damage ensues.

Finally, there’s a couple for a DM’s discretion:

•  Music box: Yes but what type of figurine is in there and why?

• Tiny hand-stitched doll: Who/what does that doll look like? What happens when poked?

We’ve purposely left the traps open-ended. You can increase the damage, add an effect, determine the range, etc. Flush these out how you deem fit. You could even put in a whizz-bang effect with no real damage (ya know – just spook ‘em).

The entire chart truly built for your flexibility. A 1 in 72 chance leaves lots of re-playability. You can easily swap ‘em out as time moves on. You can even describe them differently on a re-use. We wanted to ensure the sheet had some real legs.

For added fun, print out item descriptions from the WotC character builder and make cards to handout. Mix those with Paizo item cards for even more awesomeness.

Have fun with this one. Let us know how it goes. Share additional item ideas with us. If we get enough, who knows? You may just find a second sheet.

So about that dead monster, I search him and this room and I find…

- Ben

About the Guest Author
Ben Bertrandt is the co-founder of Gamers’ Inn in Mesa, Arizona. He also co-created and currently maintains Ben’s RPG Pile – a social network of D&D gaming goodness. You can enjoy his weekly blog of product reviews, watch a how-to video on YouTube and read his endless banter on Twitter.

Stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
Common Items Table
Blank Items Table
WotC character builder
Paizo item cards

Gamers’ Inn: http://store.gamersinnaz.com/
Blog: http://www.bensrpgpile.com/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/bensrpgpile2
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bensrpgpile

After Action Report #4: Finishing Rivenroar

After the disaster for the party that was the Von Jallach Crypt, the party moved on. They didn't take an extended rest or even ask me to, figuring that I probably wouldn't let them take a third one while in Rivenroar. I actually might have in this case, given where they were at. Serd, the goblin who wiped the floor with them, wasn't liked and was more or less left to his own devices there in that crypt, but the players had no way of knowing that. So they didn't. They were in bad shape. As I think I mentioned before, I'd penalized them in exchange for not outright killing half the party. The penalty being that they lost 5 healing surges (but were at full HP) and anybody reduced below 0 healing surges would be weakened until they got an extended rest. The runepriest tried to argue, saying that if he removed a condition from someone, they should be fine. But I pointed out that this was a special circumstance and the most he could do would be to remove it for a single turn in combat or 5 minute span outside of it. Nobody except the monk and wizard were below 0 healing surges and they actually weren't even around for one session of this report. The party decided that they would instead be safeguarding the still living NPCs as well as removing villagers bodies from Rivenroar to where they could be buried outside.

PAX Prime Recap

I was one of the lucky few (and by "few" I mean "about 68,000") people who went up to Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle last week and I'd be totally remiss to blab about how awesome it was. I admit, I kind of skimped on the video game side of things and instead focused a lot on the tabletop side. Although I didn't play any D&D or any other tabletop games while there, I went to a lot of panels and events about them. Even the video game panels I went to had appliciablity to tabletop. So let's get into the details, shall we?

Continued Campaign Planning, part 2

So, when last I left off the campaign plan, the PCs will have just finished at the Remorhaz's Rest (aka, the Halfway Inn) and will probably head up the rest of the way to the monastery of Bahamut.

Continued Campaign Planning, part 1

So, I've theoretically planned my campaign through the completion of Rivenroar. I've got tentative plans for afterwords. Some of those have changed since I first started drawing up the campaign. I'm going to start to go into the details now because before too long I'm going to need them.

Cataloging the collection, part 2

Time to continue posting my RPG book collection. I'm undoubtedly missing a lot and I'll have another post coming at some point, if only to tally up my Shadowrun and Heavy Gear stuff.