Quality Encounters: Part I

Let's start with some of the basics.  A staple of gaming is, of course, the encounter.  After all, its what is a game without them?

Okay, right off, I'm going to tell you to dump almost all the nonsense you can read online about crafting encounters to some mechanical specification.  Fitting some numerical value to your players and the encounter they will meet is a mistake.  Its an interesting but doomed idea.  Why?  It invites piss poor game mastering and/or complicated calculations.

Let me explain.

Let's say I've got a numerical value for every critter in my game.  Then, to figure out how much of that critter, or  any mix of critters, I just calculate a value and compare that to a value I've equally determined for my players.  Simple, huh?  Sure, if your encounters consist of just throwing monsters at players.  How about a challenge?  No, I mean a challenge.  Literally.  Say in the vein of a riddle mastery contest.  Or an eating contest.  Or a duel, but of wits, not weapons.  Oh!  Even better, how about a staple conflict of life?  You know, when you talk a good friend out of doing something stupid.  Except we're not talking about keeping him from driving home when he's polished off a six pack and a ton of vodka.  No, its keeping the hotheaded dwarf from trying to mount that noble knight's stallion in the stable.  And I wish I was talking about just riding it.  Ug.

Anyway, how do you build a numerical value for that?  Intangible or soft challenges suffer horribly under such a system.  Role playing is more than talking about the pretty arcs you make with your sword, uttering bold words, and describing the outrageous streams of blood that commence as you boldly and bravely hack your way through a coterie of # of # critters of value ##.  Its about being challenged, feeling in danger, seeing the hairs on your arms rise up and goose bumps rise on your skin from the imagined conflict unfolding around you.  Its leaning forward in your chair, a sense of tension floating in the air and the above all, a feeling of risk: that what you do will have unavoidable consequences.

Lot's of ways to do that, which I'll regale you with in my next posting.  Right now, I just want to introduce you to the idea that calculating numbers to match numbers of your party is a bad idea.  Where's the challenge?  Do the players really feel like they could lose if they don't employ some thinking on their part?  Use tactics?  Terrain to their advantage?  Role play to bring in elements of the game that otherwise might not play a factor?

A common reward for "role play" is mechanical.  The staple bonus experience.  Woohoo!  I'm down on it here, not because its a bad idea when used discretely, but because its used like a blanket.  Role play should be the focus of the game not its compliment.  It should drive the game not the other way around.

An easy way to do this is to switch from thinking of encounters to conflicts.  Plot your game in story conflicts instead of game encounters.  Its not 10 goblins in the woods but grug and his nine brothers.  10 goblins might be a raiding party on the local town but grug and his brothers are out for vengeance for their sister who was trampled by a passing cavalry unit belonging to the nearby town.  Our story conflict now has dimensions that can be role played and is not doomed to a mechanical rolling of dice to determine who has the larger numbers.  Skip beyond tossing your sausage on the table and saying its the biggest.  Players are typically winners in this type of contest because the game is biased in their favor (most games; generalizing, even though I know its wrong).

Our players, meeting grug and his kin, have a chance to role play.  Spying them from afar, their choices to meet the conflict change from just setting up an ambush, avoiding them, or plain old attacking.  It becomes a chance to entreat with them, to be generous and offer them a chance to explain; meet them honorable and talk, man-to-goblin or any number of other chances.

Think in conflicts.  Disregard numbers and throw out something that seems impossible to overcome.  Make your players choose to avoid it since it seems so daunting.  Or better, they engage and get overwhelmed and have a chance to retreat and lick their wounds.  Will they be daunted or motivated to overcome?  Feel threatened since they almost lost their character?  Get stronger to beat them or slink away to fight something, muttering that the GM is a meanie?

Try to evenly match your conflict with your players and they'll never have that chance to find out.  They'll stay the same and suffer the peril of all video games: boredom.  Endless leveling and numberless piles of treasure later they still be searching for what they can't find but realize on some level that is lacking: a challenge.

Throw them a mountain they overcome.  Make them run from a greater opponent.  Scare them with a permanent death.  Threaten them.  Lie.  Challenge them with conflicts to their weak points and make them grow.