Monday, September 24, 2018

The Three 'E's of Encounters

Encounters

Ok, before you correct me, I know that you spell the word ‘Encounter’ with only two Es but that's not the point. When designing an encounter there are three angles you should consider to get the most out of the encounter, the Enemies, the Environment, and the Events. Thinking about these things is a great way to flesh out encounters beyond something as simple as ‘2d6 wolves’ which tends to end up a pretty stale encounter, especially the second time around.


Varying the types of enemies always creates a more interesting encounter

Enemy

When it comes to enemies the most interesting encounters often use multiple enemies together. It's important to consider what types enemies the players is in conflict with. That same wolf encounter becomes a lot more interesting if a Dire-wolf is thrown into the mix (or even better, Werewolf or Bargeist). A mix of tanking, supporting, ranged, and melee and whatever other roles are created for combat can really create interesting moments for players and show what is interesting about those enemies.

It's also important to consider the goal of these enemies. Are they mindless monsters that fight to the death? Are they worried about self preservation and are they gonna flee if they leader dies or the fight turns against them? Also how do these Enemies prioritize their actions? Do they try to kill all intruders or do they defensive and do they draw back when they are losing to try to hold out as long as they can? Enemies don’t stand around and wait, they guard, they sleep, they invade, they travel. A bunch of wolves and a Dire-wolf is probably hunting, and they will probably flee if their leader or enough wolves die. Injured wolves will probably try to stay out of the fight.

Where enemies are placed also is important to a good encounter. Are the enemies in a good position to show off their talents or are they in an area where their spears and bows are useless? The placement of enemies can also create opportunities for players to use their abilities to gain the upper hand or make it more difficult for them to sneak up and surprise. Our wolves probably don’t want to all be seen at once and probably will try to encircle whatever ‘prey’ they find so it can't get away. This of course leads us to consider the...

Not shown; the several hours hike to get here.

Environment

The environment where the encounter takes place is can turn a simple encounter to an entrancing one. Fighting a tough dude is just a tough fight but fighting a tough dude at the Preikestolen in Norway is a totally epic fight. Static environmental pieces help limit movement and create areas of advantage for players and enemies to try to control. Cover can limit the effectiveness of ranged weapons and create safer areas, difficult terrain can slow players and enemies leaving them vulnerable. The advantages and disadvantages of individual positions can keep players moving and tactics changing. Environments also can include interactable elements. They can be simple traps, to spillable liquids, to starting fires. Each of these represent choices the player or enemy can make to influence the environment. Other advantages in the environment can be weapons and items that players can, even doors that players can open, close, lock or barricade. Our 2d6 wolves and Dire-wolf encounter changes a lot when the wolves can travel and attack through a thorny hedgerow the players can't follow through, and a cart of rotten barrels the players can tip over for cover and concealment against the seemingly endless wolves come out of the woods.


Lightning strikes are maybe a little too cliche of a random event


Events

During an encounter, events can occur to to change the conditions of the fight. Maybe when the fight starts it begins to rain, the ground becoming muddier and harder to move through as players and enemies fight. Maybe lighting flashes and illuminates the darkness giving a brief indication of what hides in the darkness. Maybe the cave is collapsing, or it's not a cave at all. These events generally occur outside the fight and are outside of anyone’s control, events are things that just happen.

What events really can do is add another dynamic to a fight to break stalemates and add an unexpected element to strategies. Once a player thinks they have it figured out, the event can show them a twist. It can also help to change a fight that is slow battle of attrition, to one where the player has a chance or realizes they are in over their head. A lot of games have waves of enemies that help an encounter, especially with a boss, change from predictable slow win, to being ‘reset’ to something more interesting. Our dire wolf encounter might start as a storm brews and rain falls. Wolves might keep pouring out of the thorny hedgerow like like the endless rain until we manage to kill the Dire-wolf, the ground becoming a torn up, impassible mass of mud as we churn through it in combat.

Our Dire-wolf encounter is looking pretty snazzy, but is too snazzy?

Words of Warning

So we got a pretty awesome Dire-wolf encounter figured out. It's got a Dire-wolf leading some wolves and their coming at you from all along a hedge. There is a wagon to tip over to make a wall for you to put your back to. It starts to rain so the ground gets muddy as we fight making it hard to move as more and more wolves come out… it's pretty badass!

This is a great encounter, but did we go too far? Is this supposed to be the climax of an adventure or… are we just some bros traveling roads? The purpose of the Dire-wolf encounter was really to show how this model takes a simple, boring concept of 2d6 wolves and changes it into something spectacular. But if the purpose of this encounter is to makes a random encounter to spice up a trek, 2d6 wolves and a Dire-wolf would be enough. Maybe the hedgerow of endless wolves is a great way to show how dangerous the road is.  You can just take parts of the formula, you don't have to fully use and fully rely on it, as a matter of fact, it might be a little overwhelming for a player to constantly deal with all this epic-ness. You could go really overboard and have like 5 different enemies and tons of intractable and then a storm starts but then undead rise from the grave and there is an earthquake as you fight on the side of a volcano and also there are bees… My point is that there can be too much. Don't over do it (or maybe just overdo it once).

While this is a formula, you shouldn't over rely on it. Understand that choosing to just have one type of enemy is fine, but its still a choice. If the goal of your encounter is to introduce that enemy then by all means, just use one enemy. You can use a simple or boring environment if there are other things you want to show off. Not having an event can be just as tense as having one. Doing nothing with the Enemies, Environment, or Events in an encounter is still using them, it's just choosing them to be nothing. And that choice can be made to highlight or help reinforce the purpose of why the encounter was made in the first place.

Encounters can be conversations too!


Beyond Conflict as Combat


Often games show conflict as combat. But you can still use these same principals with other systems that model conflicts. Enemies might be individual npcs that must be debated or convinced, the Environment might be the setting and social situation the characters are in and Events might be things that happen during the conversation. There can be a lot more to this than just action movie fights. But action movies are cool so it's a great way to frame things right now.

*Wolves get a lot of bad publicity, and undeserving so. The origin of the 2d6 wolves encounter comes from a D&D module, the Curse of Strahd. It being a particularly boring random encounter, in an otherwise well regarded module. Wolves are actually an important part of our ecosystem and not a statistically significant threat to livestock. They also can not spontaneously generate from thorny hedgerows. In case, you know, you mistook this article as being scientifically accurate or something.