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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stoat" data-source="post: 4708365" data-attributes="member: 16786">Three orcs are on guard here.  They have been instructed by Saruman to rouse the keep if they spy intruders and to take no prisoners.  If they spot intruders, one orc strikes the gong while the other two take covered positions and being firing arrows across the bridge.I think your first example encounter is better than your second, primarily because of that orc with the half-orc brother,  but an encounter with alert guards who attack on sight seems just as sandboxy to me as an encounter with lazy guards who might be open to palaver.  The players could still try to sneak past.  They could hope to win initiative and neutralize the orcs before they can act.  They can disguise themselves as goblin merchants and try to bluff their way in.  I go back to this point: once you've determined the creature, what the creature is doing and the creature's motives, the creature's actions will frequently (perhaps very frequently) follow as a matter of course.  I think you need something more to really move into "scripted" territory.For example: I've seen a recent adventure in which the PC's happen upon a lonely shrine at the exact moment that terrible devils are attacking it.  The encounter begins in medias res regardless of anything the players do.  I see a difference between that sort of encounter and one where the DM has taken a moment to think out how the monsters might react if a fight breaks out.  It occurs to me that "scripted encounter" might be a more precise term than "serial encounter".This is closer to my native understanding of the concepts we're discussing.  Some encounters change and adapt depending on the circumstances: frex, guards are summoned, stand on alert a while and then go off duty.  Other encounters are more scripted: the baronness is always at her desk reading, day or night and regardless of how much racket the PC's made fighting their way in.</blockquote>

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