October is just a crazy month for me. Lots of birthday celebrations as 4/5 of the family celebrate their birthdays within 30 days. Luckily (or not) this is a down time for me and my hobbies. Still no regular role playing games. Blood bowl in between seasons. Which gives me time to focus on family. But, two things have come up that got me thinking more about how I want to write and run a game.
First, one of my inspirations wrote a very interesting article. The Angry GM wrote an article this week about the weakness of D&D 5e encounter building. It’s a terrific article and I’m really interested to read his solution to the problem.
Second, I caught up in listening to the Danger Club podcast. Which is a fantastic actual play podcast for Pathfinder. It is 5 British actors playing the game. While the game is ostensibly running through some official Pathfinder campaigns the reality is they do not spend an awful lot of time involved in the scenarios as written.
Third, I keep finding time to read my chosen fantasy books. This leads me to my topic. When writing a campaign, adventure, even encounters, keep the story in mind.
Sure, it can be fun to just run out a monsters of the week game. Just pick some tough monsters, throw them in the rooms of a ruined castle and tell the players to clear it. But that won’t keep most players attention. There’s not a lot of room for development in that scenario. You might as well be playing a video game.
It is far more interesting for players to have a reason to do what they are doing. To make the monsters in that ruined castle a threat to an important trade route. And also let the players find clues to a conspiracy against their land in the monsters lair. And maybe even books that hint of a great treasure in another location. Because now you have a reason to go there, a threat to defend against, and a reason to do more than just report the threat to the authorities. (I have learned that this kind of thinking is even a part of a number of current video games by the way, I’m not totally uninformed.)
A reason why Critical Role is so popular is the story. There are a lot of starting games out there now. But people now care as much about the characters and what will happen next as they do about watching game play.
To bring this back to encounter building, write your campaign, adventures and encounters with the story in mind first. Think about your favorite stories, movies, shows. Often times the heroes don’t ‘win’ every encounter. Luke and company don’t kill every storm trooper while escaping the death star. The Fellowship escapes the mines of Moria, not by killing every goblin in there.
Building ‘balanced’ encounters that the PC’s can win by killing every last bad guy is challenging, but makes for a boring story. Feel free to unbalance those encounters. Throw some easy stuff out to build confidence, throw out some horribly powerful bad guys with a chance to escape. Most importantly, have a reason for why these monsters are even there. Have a path (or paths) for the party that leads somewhere interesting.
That’s my goal for now. I have some new found inspiration and a direction to follow.
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