How to Make Interesting Wilderness Encounter Set-Ups?

[ptolemy18]

Hello everybody,

The player-characters in my campaign I'm DMing are on a long overland journey (through the desert), and I'm planning to make them encounter a bunch of horrible monsters along their route, of course. Some of these are location-specific monsters ("you see something interesting off the trail... do you go and check it out?"), but many of them are monsters which I was planning to just have attack/ambush the characters outright. Some of the monsters are unintelligent animals or vermin; others are humanoid raiders.

I was wondering: does anyone have any good ideas for how to start wilderness encounters in interesting ways? I'm worried that it's going to turn into a boring routine of "Okay, make Spot checks. Okay, you see Monster X approaching from 6d6x20 feet away. Make Initiative rolls."

How can I avoid boring encounters? I need some variety.... for a few bad examples...

* The characters stumble upon a nest of sleeping monsters
* The characters see another person or party being chased through the desert by monsters

Does anyone have any interesting setups for wilderness encounters which I could use? Any ideas would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Jason

 

[johnsemlak]

The examples you listed above are not bad at all, but perhaps not original (but what ideas are really original nowadays anyway?)

• Have hte PCs encounter a mix of friendly, neutral, and hostile creatures.
• Roll spot checks yourself.
• Don't just use monsters, have the environment itself be a problem, or magical storms or whatever. Consider the effects of heat on the PCs.
• Will the PCs be on a trail? Can the difficulty of not getting lost also be a challenge? Will the PCs have a map?
• Vary the terrain a bit if it's a long journey. Add some mountains, oases, hills, cliffs, etc.
• A few encounter sites. A ruined temple?
• PCs encounter a merchant caravan?

Also, remember one big issue with most wilderness encounters is the fact that you probably need to increase the ELs. PCs in the wilderness generally can throw all their resources (memorized spells, mainly) at a monster, they dont' need to save anythign for the next encounter.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

If any of your characters have the Track feat, you can use this to entice them into an encounter by dropping intriguing clues - "You see a hoofprint; it looks like a horse was running with reckless speed in this terrain, but there's no sign of anything pursuing it. A little while later, you see a strand of long, blonde hair caught on an overhanging branch, and then a drop of blood, still warm..."

Alternating encounters where the party is enticed to go check it out (a cry for help works well too) with ambushes or traps (like a network of ankheg burrows) can help keep things fresh.

 

[Tonguez]

"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies..."

Now thats the perfect desert encounter if ever I saw one!

HAve encounters that give clues to other things happening in the desert - "from beyond a dune to your left a camel appears and trots forward to cross your path, you notice that it wears a harness from which hang bright red and yellow ribbons"

Do something weird
"You come to where the vultures seem to be concentrated and the smell hits you like a hammer, causing your stomachs to heave {Fort check or be nauseated}... Topping the dune you look down to see scavengers of every kind moving amongst large piles of red and black flesh covering an area about 150 feet round"

 

[Shallown]

An improtant part as someone has mentioned is to have a mix of friendly, nuetral and hostile encounters. USe the friendly and nuetral ones as spring boards to others. The outcast, isolated in the woods who doesn't mind a few visitors but just doesn't want people around all the time. A lone trapper stalking the party to see if they are friendly when they move through is trapping area. A huge hobgoblin tribe that would be difficult to impossible to defeat so you have to negotiate for safe passage balancing the threat of how much you could hurt them with what you can do for them or pay them for safe passage. Just cause their evil doesn't mean they kill everything in sight. Most intelligent evil people can be reasoned with even if they can't be trusted.

Use these sources to give information on the nasty hill giant who claims the western marsh. Or the bullette that has forced the ankhegs out of their normal ranges and into the tribal loands. Etc...

Later

 

[JoeGKushner]

1. A party of pilgrims joins the character and offer to take them to their shrine. Turns out it's a party of dopplengangers or some other shape shifters.

2. Same party of pilgrims but they've been charmed by a rakasha or another monsters to bring it victims.

3. Party encounters a caravan of sick and injured people. The wayside inn that they usually stop in to reprovision and rest in has been taken over and trade will have to be rerouted.

etc...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Look to the real world for ideas; deserts are extremes and the animals there are built to survive there, you have lizards and snakes that burrow, either for ambush or movement, these can be applied to monsters. Also, the desert is a wasteland, when a resourse is made available there are animals that will reap the rewards, so what are resourses? Body waste, water (spilled), food, and such; a monster can easily track the party and rush them, grapple food and run away if strong enough.

You also have monsters that ambush, I like mimics as logs or a bucket at a watering holes. Birds/dragons/and other flyers, see from great distance and airborne attack.

 

[Hand of Evil]

As for other encounters:
The Jenn: Party comes across a wonderful tent, where they are welomed by a Shiek, food and wine is offered, song and dance provided. The players are asked to entertain the shiek with stories of their homelands and adventures. In the morning they wake up in the empty desert, nothing showing that there ever was a tent and shiek except...

Based on how good the players roll/role with their performance and stories, they find an item for each OR find something missing.

The Water hole: Water is wealth and the water hole in front of you has the totem of being owned by someone. No one is in sight...do the players offer payment or do the steal the water?

Quicksand: In a desert at night moisture builds on the sand, the wind blows sand on top of it, the wet sand hardens becoming a thin layer, the sand under the layer moves away with the dunes nad sand builds on top, soon you have a pocket of emptiness under that layer. One day someone steps on it, cracking the layer, the sand colapsing swallowing the person.

 

[Davelozzi]

An encounter set in a mazelike canyon would be a fun place for an interesting ambush that wasn't just spotting someone across the sands. Think about places in Utah and northern Arizona like Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley (akd Marlboro country). Fantasy stories with similar elements include some of the early Elfquest books and Robert Jordan's The Shadow Rising (book four of Wheel of Time series), and of course some of the Tatooine scenes in various Star Wars movies.

The three Desert of Desolation modules (I3 Pharoah, I4 Oasis of the White Palm, and I5 Lost Tomb of Martek) might be a good source of ideas, even if you're not planning on using them as full-fledged adventures. Particularly, there's a wind blown ruin before the main pyramid that might work well in I3, and I4 contains several smaller encounter areas as well as plenty of roleplaying possibilities in the the oasis itself.

 

[Andre]

Also, remember one big issue with most wilderness encounters is the fact that you probably need to increase the ELs. PCs in the wilderness generally can throw all their resources (memorized spells, mainly) at a monster, they dont' need to save anythign for the next encounter.

My experience has been the opposite. Most wilderness (combat) encounters seem to begin with the monsters having the initiative - often getting a surprise round. We're on the monsters' home turf, so it makes sense that they're more likely to notice us. But unless the GM is liberal with clues, this often means the party is just traipsing along when the combat suddenly begins. This can be a serious handicap.

One example: the GM threw a behir at our party as a wandering monster. Before most of the party was able to act, my barbarian was swallowed (he died before the party could get him out). If we had known we might be facing a behir, we would have fared much better. Instead, it got the drop on us.

I suspect this has a lot more to do with GM style than wilderness vs dungeon. It may also reflect playing styles, as most players don't seem to take the same precautions in the wilderness as they do in a dungeon. Whatever the reasons, I tend to be a lot more paranoid as a player when in the wilderness.