Is encounter books next?

[Frostmarrow]

The new encounter format of adventure modules begs the question; will we be seeing pure encounter books in the future. I.e. books chockful of encounters but with no plot to connect them.

I can imagine encounter books tied to a specific location such as Encounter Book: Sharn, or Encounter Book: Moonshae.

 

[Firedancer]

Interesting idea and sounds like an extension of the fantastic locations product. Could be very versatile and useful.

 

[Frostmarrow]

To follow up: Is this a product third party publishers could potentially create and sell?

 

[Firedancer]

if they did, they'd probably need to alter the encounter template so it wasn't an exact copy.

Other than that; yes. Just using OGL material any third party would be able to put together such a book (obviously it would have to be Encounters: Frozen Wastes or Encounters: EL1-4 rather than FR Encounters: Mulhorandi).

How much variety of material they could produce is questionable; many encounters would be temperate or dungeon based, with few in other regions (this is when based purely off MM and other SRD material, not other 3rd party products as mixing sources could put people off if they haven't got all the original sources). 30 encounters would be 60 pages plus 4 for intro, reiterating relevent rules.

30 certainly provides variety, but is there enough source material to provide this variety? You wouldn't want 10 varieties of sahuagin in encounters:aquatic would you?

 

[thedungeondelver]

TSR did this late in AD&D's life with two books : THE BOOK OF LAIRS and THE BOOK OF LAIRS II; you can pick them up relatively cheaply.

 

[Frostmarrow]

TSR did this late in AD&D's life with two books : THE BOOK OF LAIRS and THE BOOK OF LAIRS II; you can pick them up relatively cheaply.

Yeah I remember those. We plowed through one of them in one waking night. I was the DM and I had only two players and they levelled up like crazy. (That's what you get if you use Unearthed Arcana drow-elves in first ed.) It was great! Double specialization-style!

-But encounters in, for instance, Eyes of The Lich Queen is nothing like The Book of Lairs. Trust me.

Here is a link to encounters in the encounter format in case you are interested.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Here is a link to encounters in the encounter format in case you are interested.

Nice to see that the've removed the 'here is the entire plot' mega spoiler from the introductory page there

 

[ColonelHardisson]

There was the Book of Challenges for 3.0, so there is precedent for it even with this edition.

 

[Mark CMG]

I've been saying for some time that I believe we will be seeing encounter packs with battlemaps and the necessary miniatures included.

 

[PhantomNarrator]

To follow up: Is this a product third party publishers could potentially create and sell?

Actually, Mongoose already released something like this with the third of their ‘Classic Play’ series, "The Book of Encounters & Lairs." I still haven't been able to find a good review of it yet, but it might be worth checking out.