The Forest of Too Many Encounters

The following thread makes a point about not having "locationless" encounters:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...e-writing.html

Here's a different viewpoint.

Way back when I started gaming, My DM ran a session where the party had to travel to some other place. He decided we'd be crossing through a demon-infested forest.

We crossed straight through, left to right on the map, and hit five or six encounters.

Later, while talking to him about the art of DMing, he told me the lesson he learned from that game. Apparently, he had drawn up the forest, and rolled up every demon for the entire forest. We're talking hundreds of monsters. He did this, because he didn't know which way the party would go, maybe we'd run from an encounter and go off the trail. And mostly he thought he liked rolling up monsters.

When we plowed straight through, it dawned on him, that all he needed to do was roll up 5 or six encounters and plop them in front of us, no matter which way we went. It would have been much less work, and the players wouldn't know the difference.


Now the lesson from my story, and from the other guy's thread is this. Taken literally, and to extreme, the advice of either is bad.

To avoid using locationless encounters (ones that you force in, regardless of what the party does), one might deduce that you must plan out evey nook and cranny of the game world, in case the party goes there, as well as to cover what's there so the party can find out to avoid it.

To avoid writing up unused encounters, you'd make them locationless, and spring them on players regardless of where they are or what they do.

Both are taking advice to extremes, until they become bad advice.


The truth of the matter is that planning encounters requires planning. Almost all encounters should be avoidable, if the party takes steps to become aware of them and then avoid them.

If a dragon guards the south gate, and a giant guards the north gate, attacking the north gate means the party avoids the dragon encounter.

If a party walks a long a trail through the woods, they're not really avoiding anything, so whichever trail they take is good enough to use the same encounter set.

If they go through the same woods, but know goblins tend to guard the central trail, then going off the trail should avoid goblin encounters.


If the mysterious stranger with a map to the dungeon you planned for this session is staying at the Wounded Unicorn Inn, and the party decides to splurge and stay at the Voluptuous Manticore instead, putting the stranger in the Manticore lets you continue with your adventure hook. It makes sense to make the encounter locationless, because it allows you to get the party to the hook. If the party knew a stranger was looking for them (and waiting at the Unicorn), then moving the stranger would be wrong.

This comes down to Choice vs. choice, and it depends on knowledge. If players don't know about encounters you write up and don't use, you've wasted time, ink. Unless you make those missed encounters matter later, it is as if they didn't exist. Therefore, any choice a player makes that unknowingly skips an encounter, is not really a choice. It's coincidental, and unimportant.

A real Choice is one in which the player makes an informed decision about. To attack the North Gate guarded by a Giant or the South Gate guarded by a Dragon, that is the Choice.

If the player knows the forces arrayed, they are then choosing an important factor. If they are oblivious to what guards each gate, then it doesn't really matter, and you could have a dragon show up the gate they chose (and ironically enough, inform them later in game that a giant guared the other gate).

Here's what I think you should take away from all this when planning an encounter:
Can the PCs learn about this encounter before they get to it? How?
Can the PCs avoid this encounter? How?
Should this encounter be moved, if the situation calls for it? Is it flexible in location?
Is this encounter a chokepoint? What is an alternate Choice?

Consider those questions as you write your adventure's encounters. Plan for them, and your encounters will be better.