Has the "Delve" format worked for you?

[Raven Crowking]

If you're coming across encounters whose design you dislike, that's due to the encounter itself. The delve format had nothing to do with it, for good or ill.

It doesn't dictate, but I have yet to meet anyone doing any type of writing who wasn't influenced by the format used.

RC

 

[Mouseferatu]

It doesn't dictate, but I have yet to meet anyone doing any type of writing who wasn't influenced by the format used.

I didn't say there would be no influence. Heck, I've already said that I tend to include more terrain and environmental factors in my encounters with it than I would have without it. But it's not going to dramatically change the sort of encounters a given writer prefers to write.

The "set pieces" to which Settembrini was referring, for instance, would have happened regardless, with or without the delve format.

 

[GVDammerung]

I do not like the format. I call it - "monster in a box." Most of the encounters set up this way are in a single squarish room with not much more personality than a box. Because of stat block size, the monsters themselves are fairly few (or the same ones multiple times - yawn) and fairly simple. The idea has some merit but the execution is almost always lackluster.

 

[Crothian]

Really?
The parts that were in Delve format?
I aksed my DM, and after we told him which parts we liked, he said he did them himself or they weren´t planned encounters but extrapolated by him.

All those phony trick rooms (lava platform, blade room etc.) with one entrance and one exit, and pre-arranged outcome?

They are terrible!

Many rooms in dungeons have one entrance and one exit. I don't know what you mean by pre arranged outcome. No where in the module does it say what the results of the encounters have to be. The module was a bit old school with the trap rooms and tough encounter areas that did remind me of White Plume Mountain and other 1e modules. That's just the way the writer wrote it up and had nothing to do with the delve format.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But it's not going to dramatically change the sort of encounters a given writer prefers to write.

The "set pieces" to which Settembrini was referring, for instance, would have happened regardless, with or without the delve format.

I don't know that I agree. The delve formats I've seen include staging notes for encounters that sharply (to my mind) delimit what types of encounters can be so described.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I don't know that I agree. The delve formats I've seen include staging notes for encounters that sharply (to my mind) delimit what types of encounters can be so described.

Then it's a good thing you aren't being asked to write those encounters, isn't it?

Look, I'm not saying the format doesn't have some impact on the encounter. (For instance, the need to include complete stat blocks as, on occasion, prevented me from using as full a variety of opponents as I might otherwise have liked.)

But the overall structure of the encounter? No change, at least in my own experience. The feel of the encounter, its overall shape and methodology, are not greatly changed by the shift in format.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Is it possible to link to the delve format guidelines?

 

[boerngrim]

Castle Ravenloft

I ran My group through Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. I found it a bit confusing at first. It was the first product I picked up with the new format. I had to read the text, flip to the encounter, read the text, flip to the encounter, repeat ... when I was doing my read through before I ran it. I found the one page layout for the encounters useful during actual play though.
Thanks.