Game Theory - Encounters

Another topic central to D&D, and something that I have been thinking about (and reading/watching others' opinions on) is that of the simple basic encounter. The initial question was a simple "how do I make better encounters?". Which of course turned into something larger, as these things often do.

If the campaign as a whole is your novel or your movie, then each encounter can be thought of as a scene in that movie. Wanting to create good exciting scenes seems reasonable. But what is a scene, and therefore what is an encounter?

By definition of the term "encounter" in Gygaxian old D&D, an encounter is basically an event in  which the characters run into a monster (which in the early days pretty much meant a direct threat - a potential/probable combat encounter). There are a host of other definitions now. To my way of thinking, an encounter is any snapshot in time where the characters interact with anything. In some movies at least, not all scenes are fights, chases and explosions. An encounter to me is virtually anything you play out around the table in a level of detail beyond "3 days later you arrive safely in the town of Littlebittyvillageville".

Encounters are the characters interacting with the world, whether that interaction be with NPCs, monsters, objects, or literally the physical world itself. Combat may be a necessity. Combat may be an option (of varying degrees of attractiveness). Combat will very often have nothing to do with anything.

In our campaign, we have had encounters with figures sneaking away from sabotaged wagons in the dark, information gathering conversations in taverns and inns (where else?!?), discovery of strange or suspicious things, combat encounters on the road, combat encounters in dungeons, and random mundane encounters with regular people all over the place (OK, many not so random).

Rightly or wrongly, there are a few things that I try to keep in mind when setting up potential scenes for upcoming sessions:

• What NPCs are involved and why?
• How does this advance a current or potential future plot line? I know I am dropping some adventure hooks that we will never deal with...
• How might I be able to use this at some point in the future if not now?
• How does this fit into the larger forces at work in the world, if at all?
• Does this deserve to be a scene at all? There is little enough actual session time to fritter too much of it away with non-impactful trivia.

The omniscient and ever present powers-that-be on the internet will tell you that a DM needs to worry about things like narrative flow, pacing/cadence, scene framing and all sorts of other academic sounding stuff. Much of which is good advice. But much of which seems to me like common sense to me if you keep a larger goal in mind; tell a good story. Or more accurately, facilitate and allow a good story to unfold around you.

Despite what I think are good instincts and the best of intentions, I know there are things I need to work harder at remembering. I have routinely fallen into perhaps the most common DM (and player) trap of all - assuming that certain encounters will end in combat, and therefore making it a pre-ordained event (essentially making certain encounters a combat railroad).

As an example, we had two encounters that ended in combat during our last session. In the first one, the characters were in the Silver Hills, on the road between Shimmermere and Shadyvale, in search of a specific person who had information they were seeking. An ogre leapt out onto the trail in front of them, and a second came crashing into them from the side. This was set up to be a combat encounter (and to drive home a point about ogres in the Hills), and wasn't going to end any other way. And that's OK. In this particular case, it made sense. There are lots of ogres in the western end of the Hills, and they sometimes prey eastward. Ogres are a hit-first-ask-questions-never kind of creature. And it set up a potential adventure hook that the characters may or may not choose to pursue at some point - that there is a large ogre threat out there.

The second encounter was more problematic. After leaving Shadyvale and heading north out of the Hills, the party was traveling through grasslands when they made a good Perception check. As best I can remember, I think I said something like (paraphrasing) "Wow, good roll. You see what appears to be a group of bandits lying in ambush in a gully off to your right. Roll initiative." This is wrong in so many ways it makes me cringe. First, it was unimaginative and lazy (we were getting near the end of the session). Second, calling them bandits labels them as bad guys and removes any real doubt as to what is coming next. Third, saying "roll initiative" removes all player agency from the encounter. The characters don't get to choose anything other than picking a weapon or a spell.

The bandit scene, even if it ended the exact same way, would have been much better executed if it began with me saying something like:

You are following the trail north through the grassy plains when Malachy the barbarian quietly says "I am sure I saw several heads poking above the lip of the gully up ahead to the right of the trail, but now they're gone." The rest of you look ahead of you but see nothing. What do you do? 

Following the latter as a starting point, there could have been rogue-sneaking, negotiating or talking, an attempt at a counter ambush, or anything else the players could have dreamed up. I didn't allow any of that by beginning with the dreaded "roll initiative." Bad DM.

Even if bandits on the road is cliche, it wouldn't bother me if I had run the scene properly. Describe what the characters see. Ask them what they do. Let them be in control. Use "roll initiative" as sparingly as possible (generally only when they have chosen to take us to that point).

Live and learn...

[PS - The kind of things I am touching on in these game theory posts happens to be where the new Dungeon Masters Guide is at its weakest, and as all of its predecessors have as well. The DMG contains sections, tables and information on all sorts of aspects of game play - things to use while running a game (mechanically). It gives almost no useful information on how to actually run a game. Some people will intuitively understand how to do some of this stuff, and will get better with experience. Some probably won't.]