I agree with nearly everything in this post, save one point: that every encounter in your adventure has to further the plot of the adventure.

I’ll clarify my position by saying that every encounter should have a specific purpose, but I don’t think that that purpose must be attached to the current plot. After all, if every encounter has something to do with what’s currently on the to-do list, you run the risk of making it seem like the entire world revolves around the PCs (which it does, but it shouldn’t seem like it). Sometimes it’s good to pepper your adventures with seemingly random encounters in order to add verisimilitude to your game world; sometimes, in a dangerous fantasy world, the owlbear is just hungry.

But, as I said, every encounter should have a purpose. The lion’s share should be tied to the current plot, and should be furthering it in some way. A few, though–probably no more that two or three in an adventure with 15 encounters–should not. They can be there to add color to the world, to introduce an enemy faction that you plan to use later, or they could be a form of the spaghetti method: throw a few different encounters at the PCs and see which one “sticks”; that is, which one do they latch on to the most? That’s a plot hook for future use.

I’ll clarify one further point: when I use the term ‘encounter’, I don’t mean ‘fight’. In D&D, there’s a tendency, I think, to treat every encounter as a fight, but it’s often more satisfying to vary things somewhat. Social encounters are encounters, too, as are periods of investigation or even research, and even long-distance travel through dangerous terrain, like a desert or mountain range, can be handled as an encounter in 4E. Also, if all 15 of those encounters are fights, it’s going to take you a long time to get through your adventure. Social encounters, travel encounters, and other non-combat encounters tend to be quicker to run, and can be used to build tension and world color just as effectively–if not, in some cases, more so–than combat encounters.

The latest session report is up. It’s the last one for that adventure, and I’m taking a break from being the DM so that my friend Dean can step into the role. I’m going to play a witch in his game (druid multiclassed into infernal pact warlock), and I’m super-excited.

Okay, two things that have been occupying some of my brain space lately. The first is the role of rehearsal in preparing for DMing a session of D&D. It strikes me that I do this all the time; whenever I have a free moment and I start thinking about the upcoming session, I run through scenes I have planned in my head, playing both sides to see how things might come out. This is useful for two reasons. The first is that it helps me to get into the heads of my NPCs to some extent, and to help me find a hook for each character to differentiate them from others. The second is that it helps me to prepare for things the PCs might do. They frequently surprise me regardless of this, but I find that, the more eventualities you mentally prepare yourself for, the more able you are to improvise and think on your feet during the actual game.

The second thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is a series of videos on D&D Insider in which the writers from Robot Chicken play D&D in a game DMed by Wizards staffer Chris Perkins. It’s pretty amusing, and each episode is a bite-sized ten minutes, which is nice. The thing that strikes me, though, is how these guys play D&D. Most of them have little to no experience playing D&D, which means that they have few preconceptions about how D&D should be played. This seems to have the effect of freeing them up mentally to try things that more experienced D&D players might not even try. In the first encounter, the party doesn’t even attack the only monster in the fight; instead, the ranger tries to monkey with the construct’s workings while the wizard tries to use arcane knowledge to command it. There’s also a lot of problem-solving while the party tries to disable a trap by breaking statues, and there’s a lot of to-do from the ranger in trying to open a door so that the encounter can simply be circumvented. It’s interesting, because I think that my group might have just attacked the arcane ballista (though I don’t know this for sure), and would have taken it down quickly as a result, but they wouldn’t have wound up with a new tool in their arsenal the way the Robot Chicken guys did. Food for thought; sometimes the creative approach can net you benefits that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

In the next D&D session–which is on Sunday–I’m going to try a couple of new things.

The first thing I’m going to try is a new system of tracking initiative and conditions. I’ve heard about this on other blogs (namely Sly Flourish, Critical Hits, and Newbie DM), and I figured I’d give it a try. What I’ve been using is a big whiteboard with small, dry-erase magnets representing combatants. The problem with this is that it’s big and unwieldy (without an easel, at least), and doesn’t really make condition tracking any easier. So, I went ahead and printed out a bunch of folding cards representing combatants, which I will hang over my DM screen in initiative order. On my side, there’s relevant information such as passive Insight and Perception scores (for the PCs) and defenses and resistances (for the monsters), while on the PCs’ side are portraits representing each combatant. To track conditions, I’ve got smaller folding strips with the condition names on them. When a combatant is saddled with a condition, I grab the strip for that condition and pop it on top of his initiative card. We’ll see how it works in practice, but I’m optimistic.

The second thing I’m doing is trying to make terrain matter more. I really like the idea for terrain powers presented in the DMG2, but I’ve been at a loss as to how to get the PCs to actually use them. Then it hit me: they have cards representing all of their own powers and items and such; why not make cards representing available terrain powers so that they know exactly what effect they’re going to produce. This way, they can make a more informed decision as to whether to use the terrain power or one of their own. I’ll let you know how that goes, too.

The latest session report is up, a few months late.

It was a good session, and ended with a dragon fight. It was my first dragon fight, and I learned a few things. First, dragons are complex to run, and it’s easy to forget some of their abilities. Second, dragons should be mobile; I made the mistake of having the dragon stay relatively stationary, and I think the encounter suffered as a result. Third, go easy on extremely debilitating conditions. The dragon was using a lot of darkness-themed powers, causing players to be blinded a lot. There were also some minions that I had created that immobilized the PCs with one attack, and with the other slid them and dazed them. The tactic I kept using was to slide a PC into the water, after which he would be dazed and have to spend his entire turn getting out of the water. This was effective at locking down certain PCs and keeping them from attacking the dragon. I don’t think it was that fun for those PCs.

In general, I think that conditions like blinded, stunned, dazed, and immobilized should be used sparingly; maybe one or two monsters in the group should be doing those things, and not every turn. The problem is, because those effects are fairly powerful, attacks that utilize them tend not to do that much damage. Because of this, you wind up with an encounter that is long and potentially frustrating to the players, but doesn’t make them feel like they’re ever in that much danger. I think it’s probably a better idea to use those kinds of abilities as window-dressing to harry one or two powerful PCs, and to focus more on monsters that have the potential to hit really hard. I’d rather have a quick encounter that makes the players afraid for their characters’ lives than a long one that doesn’t.

When I got my Nintendo DS two Christmases ago, I got The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass along with it. I loved every single minute of that game. Twice. It was, and is still, the yardstick by which I measure other DS games, and I doubt that I’ve enjoyed another DS game as much since. So, you can probably imagine that when The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was announced, I was excited. Oh, yes I was.

I bought it with a Best Buy gift card over the holidays and started playing it immediately. At first, i really liked it; it was more of the same, which was exactly what I wanted. However, the more I play the game, the less enamored of it I become. Things that I found fun in Phantom Hourglass have analogs in Spirit Tracks that simply seem tedious, and where the former game seemed to have a lot of personality and charm and soul, the latter seems somehow soulless. That’s not to say it’s a bad game; mechanically, much of it is very sound, just as much as these same mechanics were good in Phantom Hourglass. The dungeons and temples, too, are well-constructed and enjoyable. But something is missing.

I’ve been pretty bad about keeping this blog current lately. I’ll make an effort to try not to do that anymore.

At any rate, I just thought I’d post quickly to let everyone know that I’m still alive, and also to talk about what’s been on my mind and what you can expect to see posted on this blog in the next couple of weeks. In no particular order:

1. Steam. I love me some Steam. Steam, for those who are unfamiliar, is a digital video game distribution platform on the PC. Over the holidays they had some killer deals and, as a result, experienced serious growth. Because of this growth (I assume) they’re offering more great deals than ever before. They used to always have a weekend deal, which the still do; now, though, they have mid-week madness, too. Good stuff. Some games that I’ve purchased since the holidays on Steam, some of which you might hear about in more detail later on: Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Freedom Force, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Torchlight, Medieval II: Total War. All for cheap (as in, not one of them was more than $10).

2. D&D, as always. Haven’t played for a while (the last time was in November, I think). I’ve got a game day scheduled for later this month, toward the end, and I’m pretty excited. We’ll probably be wrapping up the current adventure in that session, which will give a friend of mine a chance to step into the DM chair for a little while. Also, if you’ve noticed that the most recent session report is not yet up, you’re very astute. Here’s a cookie. It will be going up soon, don’t worry.

3. Indie RPGs. I recently donated to Haiti through DriveThruRPG and, as a result, got a coupon for a bunch of free RPG PDFs. I got some indie RPGs that I’ve been wanting for a while, including Don’t Rest Your Head, Chronica Feudalis, Full Light Full Steam, Beast Hunters, and 316. I’ve read all of DRYH and played it once (more on that in a future post), and I’m in the process of reading through both Chronica Feudalis and Full Light Full Steam. I’d also like very much to get my hands on a copy of the Mouseguard RPG, but that may not happen for a little while.

4. Other games. I got various and sundry video games for Christmas, some of which you will be hearing about. Expect to hear about Dragon Age: Origins, Left 4 Dead 2, Metroid Prime Trillogy, and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and possibly some others.

I’ve been reading Spirit of the Century recently in preparation for a freelance project that I’m about to start working on, and it’s giving me ideas. Specifically, I’ve been coming up with ways to incorporate some of the ideas and mechanics in Spirit into my regular D&D game. I’ll try to explain this in such a way that people who aren’t familiar with Spirit can still understand what I’m talking about.

Aspects: This is the big one, the obvious one. In Spirit, each character starts with ten aspects; these are words or short phrases that collectively give an overall impression of who the character is. They may be physical characteristics, personality traits, notable quotes, goals, important NPCs, or other, similar things. In addition, players get fate points that they can use to invoke their aspects. Whenever a player makes a roll, he or she can spend a fate point and invoke a relevant aspect in order to get a bonus to the roll after the fact, or re-roll the roll altogether (though the second roll sticks, unless another aspect is invoked and another fate point is spent). You can also tag other peoples’ aspects, which is functionally the same as invoking an aspect except that you’re doing it to someone else’s aspect for your benefit. Finally, the GM can compel an aspect, offering the player a fate point in return for the player acting in accordance with the aspect in question; this typically restricts behavior in some way, and often complicates things for the players.
In D&D: I plan on starting each PC with one aspect from the outset, as well as two aspects that they can choose at a later time, whenever it seems dramatically appropriate. When a player invokes or tags an aspect, it can grant one of three effects. First, it can allow the player to reroll the d20 roll, taking the second result. Second, it can grant a +5 bonus to the roll, after the roll is made but before success or failure is determined. Third, and this is really a very D&D combat-specific use of an aspect, if an d20 roll comes up 18 or higher on the die, an aspect can be invoked to treat it as a natural 20. Compels work in much the same way as described above; there’s really no need to convert.

Declarations: Spirit has a number of skills that can be used for gaining information, such as Academics, Mysteries, Art, or even Burglary. Gaining information is one thing, but players can actually make skill rolls in order to declare facts about a situation. For example, let’s say the players walk into an ancient temple full of traps. A player could say, “According to my extensive knowledge of the history of this temple, I know for a fact that there are numerous secret passages that we can use to our advantage.” The GM then calls for a roll, maybe Academics, and if it’s high enough, the statement is true. In Spirit, this usually means placing an aspect on the scene, one that can be tagged later for the players’ benefit.
In D&D: The knowledge skills (Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, and Religion) can all be used to make declarations as above. I’d also allow skills like Insight, Perception, or Streetwise to be used to make declarations given sufficient justification or under the right circumstances. Declaration can cause a narrative effect, can place an aspect on the scene or on a person that can be tagged, just like in Spirit, or might create a terrain feature or power that can be used during an encounter. Now, to limit how often this happens, I’d probably cap declaration usage at once per scene per player, a scene being roughly equivalent to an encounter.

Check it out. Pretty good special effects for a YouTube video.

The most recent session report is up. The encounters in this session got me thinking about ways that you can use encounters.

The first encounter of the session was just a fairly straightforward fight against some gnolls. It was fun, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The second encounter was where things got interesting. I’ll set it up for you.

The players were tasked by some druids to go and investigate a clearing that was imbued with an otherworldly presence. They got to the clearing, which contained a circle of standing stones, and saw that there was a large glyph on the ground in the center of the stone circle. Shortly afterward, some floating balls of light descended and attacked.

Ok, so the glyph was a prophecy mark, an idea that I lifted from Eberron. The balls of light were custom creatures called ‘prophecy motes’, and they didn’t so much attack as try to make you understand the prophecy, forcibly. The motes, themselves, were minions, and they had a ranged attack that did some psychic damage and dazed the target. The trick was that, if you killed a prophecy mote, two more appeared on their next turn. I had set this combat up so that a straightforward fight would not win the day; there was simply no way to beat it through strength of arms alone. In a way, the encounter was kind of a puzzle, and the players figured this out very quickly.

As soon as they saw additional prophecy motes appear, they decided to investigate the prophecy mark. I hadn’t anticipated how closely they would investigate it (they tried to read it), but I had enough prepared that I was able to easily improvise. And this really highlights one of the most useful rules of DMing that I’ve learned: whenever possible, say ‘yes’.

‘Can I read the prophecy mark?’ Sure. Here’s what you manage to decipher. And that allowed me to drop clues as to the nature of the mark. The players soon figured out that they were supposed to enter the mark, which they did, thus succeeding the encounter. It was a lot of fun.

The third and final encounter was actually two planned encounters that wound up happening concurrently because of the way the players planned out their ambush. They were trying to catch an assassin in the act of killing the Lord Warden of Fallcrest, and they all hid around the manor and laid in wait. It was a tough encounter–three elites and a solo, all of them higher level than the PCs–but I never really intended for it to continue until one side was dead. In this encounter, both sides had very specific goals. The PCs wanted to catch the assassin and save the Lord Warden, while the bad guys wanted to assassinate their target and escape. It became a very tense affair, with the fighter holding off the three elites downstairs (fade assassins, custom creatures modeled after the myrdraal of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series) and everyone else focusing on the assassin and his target.

In the end, the assassin succeeded and escaped, and this highlights something else: recurring villains. I love recurring villains, mainly because I feel that players will get attached to their dislike of those villains. You don’t want every villain to be a recurring villain; that makes the players feel like they can’t seem to stop anyone for good. But if you do want a recurring villain, you can do a lot worse than use a solo and have him escape when he’s bloodied. If you’re going to do that, make sure he’s got an escape contingency. My assassin (Judgement, a warforged former avenger of the Raven Queen) had a long-range teleport ability that would take him 20 squares, provided he ended in an area of darkness or dim light. Because it was dark outside, he was able to teleport out the window and escape precisely when I needed him to. The reaction I got from my players was priceless; I can tell they really have a vested interest in stopping Judgement now, or at least confronting him again.