Compelling Encounters!

[mmadsen]

I've been going through the archives of roleplayingtips.com, and I came across an article entitled Top 5 Ways To More Compelling Encounters. Here are his Top 5 Ways:

1. Choose a compelling location. Encounters become boring if they all take place on wide city streets, in the middle of a plain or in 10 foot wide corridors. For example, place the scene on the edge of a cliff, in a beautiful garden, on a rickety bridge, beside a raging river...
2. Mix-up the weather a bit. Is it always bright and sunny? Change the weather every so often to: very cold, extremely hot, windy, foggy, hailing, or a fine scotch mist. How does the weather assist or impede the characters' actions? Also under the weather category can be placed such things as rainbows, northern lights and ball lightning!
3. Alter the lighting: dusk, dark, too bright, glowing red, strobing colors. While different lighting can affect game mechanics and character actions, it can also be used subtly to just make the encounter memorable for your players.
4. Change the footing. Just like lighting, you can change the ground so that it helps or hinders the party, and you can use it to help make the encounter stick in your players' minds for a long time to come: loose gravel, muddy, sandy, puddles, deep moss, pot holes, slime...
5. Put the reward on the end of a stick. It's fun hiding treasure to make it tough and exciting for the characters to find it. But try putting the reward or treasure in plain site on occasion to provide extra and immediate character motivation. For example, hang the treasure from the ceiling well out of arm's reach, put it at the bottom of a clear pool, have the foe wear it or use it, put writing on the wall for all to see "Here Be Treasure". Then put something in between the characters and their displayed reward and watch the fur fly.
6. Bonus Tip:
   Put more than one challenge, foe or conflict into the encounter and hit the party from all sides. Panic is a result of feeling overwhelmed. Allowing the players to focus on just one challenge at a time will not overwhelm them, so add additional simultaneous challenges to help create panic:
   • multiple foes (i.e. another foe drawn in by the sounds of battle)
   • impending doom (i.e. the ceiling's slowly dropping)
   • impending calamity (i.e. she's tied to a log that's headed straight for the screaming saw blade)
   • cut-off the party's escape
   • add a time limit (i.e. return before sundown or...)
   • add bad weather, bad footing and bad lighting!

 

[mmadsen]

Choose a compelling location

There's also a Roleplaying Encounters Tweak Idea List suggesting plenty of "compelling" locations. Here are a few:

• beautiful garden
• rickety bridge
• edge of a cliff
• beside a raging river
• volcano
• dune
• snow drift
• quicksand
• head-high grassland
• burnt forest

I've been meaning to bull-rush someone into a dwarven smelting furnace...

What are some of the most "compelling" locations you've use? Or want to use?

 

[Henry]

In a mirrored funhouse in an amusement park (works well for Feng Shui)

In a crystal - encrusted silver mine, where sudden bright lights from spell discharges can blind friend and foe alike

In a warehouse with 1000-pound packages all around (works well in a supers game)

Falling through the sky, clutching to your enemy and trading blows at 9.8 meters per second squared (never happened to me but I read about it in a Kim Mohan Dragon Article once)

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Piratecat once posted a link: http://members.home.net/noshadow/index2.html

however, it is surrently down - I hope not for good. It had lists of memorable fight locations - everything from cemetaries to brothels.

It was great!

 

[Psion]

Encounter Locations

(Anyone else here old enough to remember the Flash Gordan movie?)

Narrow and/or Tilting Platform

I always thought it would be cool to put the character(s) on a platform with a treacherous fate for those who fall (bottomless pit, spikes, pihanas, whatver.) Trip maneuvers would become important and perhaps every blow would force a balance check. Note that in this situation, the balance skill becomes VERY important. Fighters would be chumps. Rogues and monks would rock.

Spikey things

Could be a treacherous arena thing or could be a trap like in Krull. The characters are in an area where spikes or other dangerous objects are on the battlefield. Reflex saves may rule the day here.

Animals (or Monsters)

The characters are forced to fight the bad guys on a battlefield filled with hungry and/or testy dangerous creatures that don't enjoy the scuffle. Could be snakes, scorpions, carnivores like tigers, or even some sort of fantasy creatures.

 

[madriel]

Marketplaces are one of the best locations for a fight to take place. Innocent bystanders who get in the way or take sides. Town guards and merchant guards interfering in the fight. Animals breaking loose from cages and running wild. Things like squashed fruit, spilled wine and horse dung make the footing treacherous. The merchandise can be picked up and used against other people. You can change the lighting by adding a roof or canopy over each stall so people are running in and out of shaded areas.

One way to make an encounter compelling is placing one use only magic items on the bad guy. Parties will be very eager to take the bad guy down before he can use up all the neat stuff.

A similar idea is forcing PCs to fight in a room containg fragile magic items. Make the PCs as concerned with their future loot as they are about defeating their adversary. Put easily damaged magic items in plain sight. Especially ones that are most at risk from whatever spells etc that are most effective against the current owner. A wizard's spellbook or potion flasks should make PCs think twice about lobbing area effect spells.

Fighting fire elementals in a library or a druid's grove.

An encounter in a swamp where plants grow on the solid ground, but algae covers the water and PCs don't know how deep the water is...or what might live in the water. Try distracting them with biting insects.

 

[el-remmen]

I am all about setting in my encounters.

Recently, the party fought off a manticore while using a ruined house (with partially collapsed ceilings, roof and walls, sharp and dangerous rubble on the ground and goodies once belong to the former occupant hidden in the wreckage). It was a great fight with the party alternately running to and from the shelter of the remaining bits of roof and wall to get cover, and either avoid or risking the piles of rubble (full of rusty nails, shards of wood and glass, etc. . )

I love adding the third dimension to combat encounters. Fights in dungeons often lead to opponents and pcs moving onto or off ledges, up ramps, or fighting next to seemingly bottomless pits.

You can also use the bait and switch method, for example when the party went goblin hunting to cash in on the local bounty on goblin ears (left only) they found that the local goblins cut off their own ears in a rite of passage meant to be an act of defiance of their human oppressors.

One of my favorite fights of all time took place while hundreds of slaves were making a break for it from their pens. The pcs had to fight off the slavers and defend the slaves from not only the slavers but an insane battlerager they had released as a distraction who killed everything that got near him. The place was a sea of people, and both sides were frequently surprised as foes appeared from the crowd to attack. The surging crowd also forced the party apart so it was harder for them to support each other.

 

[Enkhidu]

...

Falling through the sky, clutching to your enemy and trading blows at 9.8 meters per second squared (never happened to me but I read about it in a Kim Mohan Dragon Article once)...

Are you talking about the memorable account of the Paladin and the Demon by Roger Moore (from back when Kim Mohan still edited the mag)? The "Got 'em" story?

If so, that one brought back some memories...

 

[I'm A Banana]

One of my most recent encounters took place on the back of a dying long-necked dinosaur, as predators jumped on it, raked into it, and then into the PC's.

 

[mmadsen]

When's the last time you made a point about the weather during a fight? I guess it doesn't come up too much in a dungeon, but here are some suggested weather variations:

• hail
• sleet
• snow
• fog/mist
• dust storm
• thunder storm
• avalanche
• mud slide
• "fog" of insects

Strong enough winds ruin missile attacks. Heck, they might toss shields around too. If your campaign world is fantastic/magical enough, have it rain blood!

 

[el-remmen]

Actually, that goblin encounter I mentioned occured during a misting rain that gave every one 10% concealment.

Also in my oresnet game it is winter and deep snow and snow banks are always changing the complexion of combats.