How to GM: Planning Encounters

Hey Game Masters, depending on your style and the style of your gaming group, encounters probably form a big part of your campaigns. Typically, encounters are defined as combat or non-combat, and can take up a significant amount of time in a gaming session. Planning fun, interesting, engaging, complicated, and meaningful encounters, as well as encounters that aren’t too obtuse or esoteric, is essential for a good gaming experience. Set these gems beside similarly luminous segments of exploration, roleplaying opportunities, and lots of descriptive flavour, and you’ll be well on your way to mastering the art of Mastering and making your players happy!.

    In this post, I will focus on combat encounters and provide some useful tips, tricks, and processes for planning combat encounters that satisfy and incite your players.

    Why is combat such a central focus, you might ask. I wish I had an answer for that, honestly. It’s something in our genetic code, I think… some evolutionary relic of when we we more Neandrathal or even animalian. Fighting is part of our human primate nature! More relevant to gaming culture, though, winning, proving one’s mettle, or overcoming an obvious threat is something we’re biologically hardwired to pursue and even enjoy - like mammals’ constant struggle to impose a dominant male or female over the group as competition for mating privileges.

Triumphing over adversity is more obvious in a combat scenario than a roleplay scenario. It’s hard to know if you’ve won or triumphed after successfully striking a trade deal, or convincing a group to help you without knowing the ultimate result of your project (or their true intentions), or “getting the girl”, or even completing a mission. But snuffing the life out of something is ultimate and final, and, as I said before, gets at our human primate nature. At least, for males of our species.

    But strange and probably-irrelevant gender issues aside, any way you slice it, your gaming group is going to want combat encounters. I can’t think of ever hearing about a campaign that was entirely non-combat but played out like some roleplay version of the Diplomacy board game. Besides, what’s the point of picking Barbarian if you don’t want the squishies to fall in a rage? When you get right down to it, your players probably aren’t that great at roleplaying. No criticism! I just mean they’re not professional actors. Their vocation isn’t improv or theatre performance. Gnome sayin? Furthermore, as a player, it’s so much harder to understand the larger issues at play in a campaign setting you did not create, like the political climate, racial tensions, and the knit of the social fabric, whereas ‘kill or be killed’ is always straight forward. In this way, combat is accessible. It’s simple. Your players are just regular people who like to play games with their friends. Combat is a more accessible version of a game nested within a larger game.The Fiction Life we lead.

    With that, you must accept that combat can make or break your campaign in terms of the continued interest and dedication of your players. Combat is important, as I’ve already made the case, but even when included in the right proportions, can still be boring, monotonous, and predictable, and then grows to be more of a frustration than an excitement. You must then accept the importance of planning interesting encounters.

    With that, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the purpose of different kinds of combat encounters. With monotony a real danger, it can also be campaign-death to put in too many “interesting” combat facets, like traps, riddles and puzzles, countdowns, or some kind of environmental interactions like pushing buttons or replacing stolen artifacts. Don’t prepare a whole whack of these and steep your campaign in them or you brew might be too strong. Understand that combat encounters, and encounters of other kinds, can serve purposes other than the daily grind.

Here are a few examples and things to keep in mind for each type. An encounter can:

1. Develop the campaign setting and plot. These are the most obvious encounters one expects to write into a session. If the party is supposed to depose some tyrannical leader from the throne of his archspire in order to free the people of Nambria, then there’s going to be an encounter where it all goes down. But don’t discount the literary device of rising action. Prepare a steadily increasing flavour journey, like the courses of a meal, wihch leads to the ultimate climax: Apple Pie! I mean.. The most epic of epic encounters. Events along the way can be used to sow doubt in the party, point them in different directions, introduce other problems, and generally provide omen for what is to come. You can also introduce the nemesis early on, like a dangling carrot, and plan some elaborate escape to continue the tension. These plot encounters are typically the ones that need extra planning and a multifaceted approach because they’re the main event. They’re also the most likely to be anticipated by the party, so you have to one-up them.
   1. These encounters can be pre-planned before the campaign even starts. But make sure you establish a flexible plan that can accommodate any direction the PCs go, which means elements of where and when should NOT be planned.
   2. Make sure you don’t just pummel the PCs. The pseudo-real-life we’re trying to create is never as simple as pugilists duking it out in the ring, or TV dinners until Thanksgiving and Christmas arrive. The enemies may be looking to accomplish specific objectives: like taking a particular item, blocking passage in one particular direction, infecting the PCs with a poison/disease, buying time, etc. Get creative.
2. Provide descriptive flavour for the surroundings. One of my favourites. This goes hand-in-hand with random encounter tables which may be provided for a pre-fab adventure, or a random encounter table that you create yourself. These really breathe life into a terrain type, a country, region, or city, or the world in general by providing that mite of verisimilitude. Not to mention, many bestiaries go to such lengths as to detail living environments and habits for each creature, so there must be some expectation that you’re not going to encounter a White Dragon in the middle of the desert, but rather a Blue one. This should be extended to all creatures - forest creatures in the forest, swamp creatures in the swamp, etc. - and in this way your encounters describe the setting. But a personal touch is needed when it comes to humanoids. As humanoids are typically above animal intelligence, they can be expected to behave differently as far as inhabiting certain terrains and territories. Including humanoids and NPCs in encounters should describe something about the political and social environment rather than the natural environment. Climates such as benevolent or malevolent governments, military presence or absence, racial harmony or disharmony, war or peace, stability or instability, or other social aspects such as local economies, population density and distribution, literacy rates, access and travel conditions, and the trickle down industry of heroism and magic, should inform the kinds of encounters that involve humanoids and NPCs. One should describe the other. One corroborates the other. This, in turn, informs the PCs and allows them to prepare properly and make decisions about how to proceed.
   1. Make random encounter tables! I find through this process I usually decide what encounter is best for the given circumstance, but the only way to know would have been to put the time and effort into gathering all the necessary information to create the table.
   2. If all that social stuff above is too dense for you to figure out for your campaign setting, just ask yourself these questions: how do people of different social classes survive? Are poor people forced to steal and murder because conditions are harsh? Or is banditry and burglarism saved for a select few who are just bad apples? Are middle class people apt to join organized gangs or crime rings because they fear for their lives? Are rich people rich because of their skills and smarts, or are they exploiting others?
3. Provide obstacles to the PCs during travel. For example, on the quest to get to the Pyramid of Shoddeth across the desert, the party encounters numerous desert denizens, desperate for food and looking to kill. These kinds of encounters put pressure on the PCs to survive, not just the encounters themselves, but the long journey as their resources and morale begin to dwindle. What’s interesting here is the necessary plan for survival and the tough decisions about what to prioritize. Be sure to account for the PCs current condition, such as fatigued or exhausted, when planning the encounters, and consider providing opportunities for rest, recuperation, and resupplying along the way. Furthermore, the threat of an encounter can provide the same impetus, like the obligatory perception rolls in the middle of the night. These nighttime encounters can be dangerous, as the PCs may be surprised and caught off guard without any armour on, so be sure to temper these encounters with different goals rather than just surviving a brutal bashing. For example, perhaps one PC fails their perception check and is scooped up by a constrictor snake. The encounter then becomes racing the snake up the tree rather than just fighting the snake to the death. Having items stolen by a rogue is always interesting.
   1. This requires careful balance. Watch out! Take it step by step. See how each encounter goes before springing the next one on them. Pay attention to what concerns the PCs the most and try to affect that.
   2. This a great time to prey on their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Steal things from them, but offer them the chance to get it back by tracking down the perp. Punishments for lack of planning and foresight are interesting, but always allow an opportunity to recoup otherwise it bogs down the progress of the campaign to, for example, travel all the way back to the way station and resupply. What’s the point?
4. Provide opportunities for grinding out XP and amassing treasure. Not only do PCs want treasure, but the GM should provide treasure to maintain game balance, varied interest, and even other plot hooks. These encounters should be fairly simplistic and should not cost the PCs more than they’re going to receive at the end, either with their lives or with prepatory equipment and information. It’s common to link these encounters with a reward paid by some third party which makes the treasure gain somewhat more realistic, and can tie in issues noted in #2. Loot is more likely given out in combat with various intelligent or humanoid enemies, so further care should be paid to the advice in #2 regarding this.
   1. A variety of enemy combat roles helps. This will give the PCs different targets and a feeling of accomplishment when certain targets are taken down mid-battle. Casters and ranged attackers mixed with melee, or D&D 4th Ed.’s “minions” role, for example.
   2. Traps are useful here.
5. Be a ‘plan B’. These are encounters that incur the least amount of prep time. They happen because the PCs suddenly go in a different direction than you had anticipated, or when a planned non-combat encounter suddenly turns combative.
   1. If it’s a non-combat encounter, at least have a general idea of the combat stats of the enemies involved so you can be prepared for battle when it happens.
   2. Have an idea of why the enemies might engage in battle if negotiations break down, and whether or not they’re just going to run or give in. Perhaps it’s a ruse. Perhaps they have a trick up their sleeve which they just missed initiating themselves and are now playing catch-up. Perhaps they’ve got people watching from afar.
   3. Incorporate some element of the negotiations into the combat encounter. People rarely go from talking to fighting without having some motivation. Perhaps they attempt a grab-and-go of some bargaining chip or are trying to prevent a grab-and-go by the PCs. Focus fire on a person that was a hostage. Have a third or fourth party suddenly appear to exert pressure on the negotiations.
   4. If it’s happening because the PCs are suddenly going in a direction you did not anticipate, have a few encounters in your backpocket for when this happens. It can buy you time in a session to postpone any further plot advancement until next week. Make sure these are related to the environment.

    Here is a more a few more things to keep in mind generally, and lists some places you can go for inspiration.

Where to get ideas? Reading. Reading through the wonderful material you’ve been presented with, by the wonderful publishers we’re ever grateful to for creating these wonderful games, are troves of inspiration. In particular, once you have an idea of where the plot is going, and the kinds of enemies the party may fight in either a random encounter or a pre-planned plot point, reading through the stat blocks and descriptive texts on the creatures can provide some interesting ideas for how to approach a combat. But you must think outside the box. Power and attack descriptions conjure up obvious images of how the creature fights, but not about how the creature prepares for battle, or how the creature leverages its power to accomplish other goals. If your PCs don’t mind spending a lot of time on combat every now and again, find ways to prolong the action by switching up the tactics of the enemies. Straight bashing often leads to a short and decisive outcome and may not meet an encounter’s full potential.

Combat’s not all about fighting. Sometimes it’s more exciting for the PCs to face off against another group where both are attempting to accomplish the same goal, or are facing off, like in a race or a tug-of-war.

Teach your players tips and tricks for speeding up combat. The “bogging down” of games as a result of cumbersome combat rules, or players that take too long to strategize what they’re going to do, is a common issue. It always helps to simply remind your players that speeding up combat is in everyone’s interest, so:

1. Plan ahead. When it’s not your turn, plan what you’re going to do next round. Continue to be engaged observing what other players are doing, as that would be the most realistic way to roleplay a combat. Keep in mind that plans can change depending on how the lay of the land changes from person to person around the table.
2. Roll all your dice at once. If you know you’re going to make multiple attacks next round because you’re totally surrounded by goons and you’ve got little other option, prepare to roll all attacks at the same time, and the damage for each attack, too. One roll, instead of 8 rolls, speeds things up. That means you have to know which die is which roll, so it pays to have lots of dice and a variety of sizes/styles/colours of dice, too.
3. KNOW YOUR CHARACTER SHEET. Don’t go looking for your attack values each turn. Enough said.

As always, a great place for inspiration is the huge body of literature, film, and video games upon which our intuitions are based. The battle scene in the Tomb of Balin from Lord of the Rings was interesting because they were suddenly trapped. I could see it going a lot differently in a gaming session than it did in the movie. Combat in three dimensions, everyone’s favourite, second only to combat underwater. Heh.

I think that’s all for now. Happy planning!