PDA

View Full Version : A question about encounter structures.



Wandering Saint
2014-01-06, 07:00 PM
So, as the DM, it is my job to create a functional encounter for my players. However, it is also my job to create a system that is so flexible and seamless that the players are allowed the all-coveted feeling of a free-roaming campaign.
We all know the scenario:
1. Party goes to town
2. Party asks mayor/guard captain what needs to be done, and gets their answer.
3. *** Party goes to dungeon/whatever, and defeats all inside, completes all the puzzles, and rescues all the damsels. ***
4. Party returns to town to lick their wounds, get their reward, and sell their loot.

As someone who is trying to create their whole campaign from scratch, I am having a serious problem with step 3. I have a limited amount of time to work on dungeon maps, dungeon encounters, and plot lines in a weekly campaign, limiting the number of roads for the party to follow.

If anyone can understand my dribble and give me some tips on how to fix this, I would be most appreciative!

Airk
2014-01-06, 07:25 PM
Well, step #1 is to make sure your party decides to go do the dungeon at the END of the session, so you have until the next game to prep.

Step #2 is to realize that a lot of maps are somewhat interchangable, so getting a "stash" of maps (maybe even from something like the Random Dungeon Generator (http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/index.cgi) if they really are just caves/warrens type stuff) and then peopling them appropriately can reduce your prep somewhat.

Step #3 is to realize that if you really want to do a prep light game, sandboxes full of dungeon crawls is not the way to do it. ;)

Fiery Diamond
2014-01-06, 07:30 PM
Well, step #1 is to make sure your party decides to go do the dungeon at the END of the session, so you have until the next game to prep.

Step #2 is to realize that a lot of maps are somewhat interchangable, so getting a "stash" of maps (maybe even from something like the Random Dungeon Generator (http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/index.cgi) if they really are just caves/warrens type stuff) and then peopling them appropriately can reduce your prep somewhat.

Step #3 is to realize that if you really want to do a prep light game, sandboxes full of dungeon crawls is not the way to do it. ;)

This person speaks truth, especially on #3. Sandbox full of dungeon crawls is not the only way to run a campaign, and it certainly isn't the way to do a prep-light one.

TheThan
2014-01-06, 10:22 PM
What I do when planning encounters is to break it down into a five step possess.

1: synopsis: I write out a brief description of what’s going on.
2: flavor text: I write out the flavor text I plan on reading to the players, detail out anything important, describe people and introduce them.
3: rules: this is where I jot down any notes for this encounter, things like visibility, flat DC skill checks, traps etc.
4: monsters: this is where I list out every monster I plan on running in the encounter. I either list book/page for reference, or I stat them out individually in the case of monsters with class levels, or NPCs.
5: rewards: this is where I define how much experience they earn, as well as what sort of treasure they can acquire for beating the scenario.

Naturally one has to be flexible and adapt to the pcs throwing curve balls. But I found this works out. It unfortunately requires a bit more time to plan and work out.

So here’ some advice for reducing prep time:
Not all adventures need to take place in a dungeon.

Keep a notebook with you and jot down ideas you may have during your day to day routine. You never known when inspiration strikes. You can incorporate the stuff you write down into your adventures.

Search online for map resources. There are random map generators, and plenty of fantasy maps of towns and whatnot.

Pilfer through dnd adventure modules for maps. They’re premade and if you just change up what it says on the maps, most of the time they’ll be perfectly serviceable maps for your own adventures.

veti
2014-01-06, 10:44 PM
In addition to the above excellent advice: when you're stuck for inspiration, it's probably not hard to see to it that the party spends their entire session in town. The simplest way to do that is have one of them get their pocket picked, and something precious stolen. They'll count it as time well spent, tracking down some low-level thief to get it back.

valadil
2014-01-06, 11:05 PM
As someone who is trying to create their whole campaign from scratch, I am having a serious problem with step 3. I have a limited amount of time to work on dungeon maps, dungeon encounters, and plot lines in a weekly campaign, limiting the number of roads for the party to follow.


Don't prep the roads. You can't possibly think of all the different ways players will try to do things. Even if you do and if you prep them all, how many paths will the players take? If there are 10 paths from point A to point B, the players are only taking 1, meaning 90% of your prep work has gone to waste.

Instead, prep a number of destinations and let the players figure out how they get from one to another. Make some of the features of these destinations generic enough that they can happen anywhere.

Okay, that's vague. Given your scenario, let's plan a combat. I'ma go with bandits. Make a group of them. The natural habitat of bandits is on the road, so they might show up on the road between town and dungeon. The group might stick around town, maybe doing research, looking into the guy hiring them, or just getting drunk at the bar. Okay, those bandits are members of the thieves guild and they try to rob the PCs. Maybe the players took another path to the dungeon. The bandits are another group raiding it. Or the bandits hideout is near the dungeon and the players stumble into it while exploring (or while seeking shelter?). As an even crazier idea, maybe the players are intimidated by the dungeon and decide to hire some mercenaries for backup. Give them the bandits - they're a bunch of level appropriate scoundrel types who are hungry for violence and/or money.

My point is, I've prepped one encounter. I can improvise where in my game session the encounter goes. The players may come up with some other idea entirely, but I've still got this level appropriate encounter in my back pocket to throw at them. If I have two more encounters, a handful of NPCs (which don't really require prep if I recycle a PC I played in another game), a trap or two (which is no more prep than a monster in an encounter), and maybe a puzzle, riddle, cipher, lost letter, etc, then I'm good to improvise around the players for hours.

tl;dr Write out the meaty bits that take time to prep. Improvise how the players get to them. Don't set the meaty bits in stone because they can usually move to another part of the game.

Jay R
2014-01-06, 11:26 PM
If the PCs are to attack the monsters, then you have to prep every monster in any direction.

But if the monsters are to attack the PCs, you only have to prep the ones who attack.

Wandering Saint
2014-01-06, 11:37 PM
This is all very good advice, thank you! Just to clarify, I have plenty of time to prep dungeons and such (even with custom maps!~) for my players. The idea of a pool is very good, and probably one that I shall use.

I suppose what I need to know now is, and perhaps what my original question should have been, is how should one structure a -dungeon-. Unfortunately, the rulebook confuses me on how, exactly I should structure dungeons...
For example, if I'm making a dungeon for level 2 adventurers, filled to the challenge with Kobolds and one big baddy controlling the kobolds, how many kobolds should I have in the dungeon, as well as the frequency of kobold packs, ect.
I know the rulebook has a system that tries to make this simple and mathematical, but it just doesn't click with me.

Airk
2014-01-07, 12:08 AM
Er, well, for the first question, the answer is "The 'dungeon' should have what you think kobolds need to live". Mushroom farm? Slave pits? You can probably be forgiven not having an outhouse. Sleeping areas. Common spaces. Probably a 'throne room'. Somewhere to keep their stuff. If you think about it from two angles, you get:

#1: What was this place before the kobolds? Did the excavate it? Is it natural caves? Are they taking over someone else's place?
#2: What are they doing with it now. Permanent residence? Military staging area? Hideaway when things go bad?

Those two 'questions' will inform what the place should be like.

In terms of how many kobolds and whatnot, er, well, you haven't told us what game you're playing.

TheThan
2014-01-07, 12:32 AM
#1: What was this place before the kobolds? Did the excavate it? Is it natural caves? Are they taking over someone else's place?
#2: What are they doing with it now. Permanent residence? Military staging area? Hideaway when things go bad?

To add to this list:
3: One major thing to do is determine how the kolbolds will react to the players, and plan around that. Are they going to run in fear, are they going to fight back. If they fight back, how do they do it? do they use hit and run tactics hoping to wear the PC intruders down, do they rely on traps to try to fight for them, do they make clever use of terrain (arrow slits in walls, murder holes in the ceiling that sort of stuff), do they use captured animals to beef up their defenses. If they run in fear, where do they run to, do they scatter in hopes enough get away to repopulate, do they gather in one place to protect their females and children?
You have to figure this sort of stuff out before you start writing the next bit.

4: The next bit is to plan out each “room” as a separate encounter, using the 5 step system I listed above. Once you start doing that, everything starts to fall into place and before you know it, you have a dungeon.

Jay R
2014-01-07, 12:57 AM
I suppose what I need to know now is, and perhaps what my original question should have been, is how should one structure a -dungeon-. Unfortunately, the rulebook confuses me on how, exactly I should structure dungeons...
For example, if I'm making a dungeon for level 2 adventurers, filled to the challenge with Kobolds and one big baddy controlling the kobolds, how many kobolds should I have in the dungeon, as well as the frequency of kobold packs, ect.
I know the rulebook has a system that tries to make this simple and mathematical, but it just doesn't click with me.

Trial and error, with continual adjustment.

You need too few kobolds in the first room. That serves two purposes: it whets their appetite, and it shows you how much damage the party takes facing that many kobolds. Then adjust the level until it seems challenging.

Eventually, provide an encounter that you think is too much, but which they have some information about. They will probably surprise you with their resourcefulness.

Also, outrageous ideas should be more likely to work when they are in danger of being overwhelmed.

What they want today is to overcome the encounter without risk. But what they will want tomorrow will be to have faced, and defeated, an encounter which they thought was going to kill them.

Rhynn
2014-01-07, 03:00 AM
Minimize your works.

I'm running ACKS, and I plan all my settings as sandboxes. That doesn't mean enormous work, though: it's my setting, so I have an intimate understanding of it just going with my gut. (Good rules help keep things sensible.)

I create one big dungeon. A fairly modest dungeon can occupy many, many sessions of play (my players have been managing maybe 20 rooms per 4-hour session or so, and most of those rooms aren't full of monsters to fight; and this in a game with very fast combat).

Dungeon keys can mostly be very sparse: you're not writing for publication, you're writing for yourself! Never make more notes than you need. Improvise the rest. Some encounters you should write out in detail, but for many rooms, something like "6 orcs, 2000cp" is plenty: other details are irrelevant and can be made up on the fly.

Then I pepper the map with one-paragraph encounters: "A black monolith of some highly magnetic stone sits upon the hilltop here. The top has a hole, and a black pudding lives inside. If anyone approaches and gets their gear stuck on the monolith, the black pudding will creep out and attack from above." That sort of thing. You can create those quickly and in enormous numbers.

Systems do matter, though. If you're e.g. having to create 3.5 NPCs from scratch (say, because your players make mincemeat of the sub-par official creations), you're going to spend a lot of time on that.

Instead of encounters, create tables that help you roll up encounters on the fly. Consider a game that explicitly supports all this stuff. (Check out many free D&D retroclones linked in my sig!)

Rhynn
2014-01-07, 03:03 AM
I suppose what I need to know now is, and perhaps what my original question should have been, is how should one structure a -dungeon-. Unfortunately, the rulebook confuses me on how, exactly I should structure dungeons...
For example, if I'm making a dungeon for level 2 adventurers, filled to the challenge with Kobolds and one big baddy controlling the kobolds, how many kobolds should I have in the dungeon, as well as the frequency of kobold packs, ect.

I now doubly urge you to check out ACKS and other retroclones. Many (most, even) have tables and firm guidelines for this sort of thing.

Also, you can structure dungeons in many ways. You don't always have to map them out precisely: you can do "nodes" - lines (hallways & passages) connecting nodes (rooms with things in them). If you don't use battle maps, this is even easier. If you don't make players draw their own maps, there's very little reason for you to have accurate maps of anything but the encounter rooms, and if you don't use battle maps, those are unnecessary too.

And, again, never write too much description when very little will do.

"Chairs, tables, chest w/ 2000gp. 6 fire beetles." is a perfectly useable room description for a basic encounter.