Celebrim said:
For D&D purposes, Mike's idea differs from mine mainly for non-normal speeds. I'm courious to see how it would play out differently. Suppose every player in the party had a speed of 4. Taking mike's idea literally, a slow party would rarely be challenged by being slow because the rooms would shrink to fit. Likewise, a fast monster would always be able to benefit from its speed, and a slow monster would never be punished by the players speed - unless the DM made a conscious decision to allow it. So is the optimal situation one where speed doesn't matter much?
On the other hand, is it really optimal to take a fast monster and put it in a space where it can't use that speed? Or to put a slow monster is a space so large that it dies before it reaches the PCs?
I usually design my site-based adventures in a certain order: 1) Concept, 2) Encounters, 3) Map, 4) Flavor text (what some of my more hack-and-slashish players derisively call "story time"). Thus, when I get to mapping, I've got an idea of how the PCs' opponents are going to run, what their capabilities are, and how to maximize them. Usually--not always, but usually--the PCs find their foes in areas in which the foes are comfortable and capable of defending themselves well. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I almost always shape the room to give the baddies a moderate advantage, which the PCs must overcome if they don't want to needlessly waste resources. For the really cinematic fights, the ones I decide ahead of time I want the players to remember, I make sure there are at least two big tactical decisions available in the encounter area, and based on their positioning and use of the environment, the PCs can negate their foes' advantages or even gain a fairly impressive advantage themselves.
And then, when I've spent half an hour designing a room, my players are crafty enough to find a way to utterly bypass my brilliant scheme.
Example: The PCs enter a two-tiered room, with a wooden platform wrapping around three-fourths of the room. Hiding behind sandbags, up on the wooden platform, are a bunch of drow armed with crossbows. The room is 60 feet square and pitch dark, to play up the range of the crossbows and the dark elves' darkvision. About half of them have applied poison to their bolts. BUT! The PCs might have found a secret door in a previous room, which was the way to drow got onto the platform in the first place, and that would negate much of their advantage. Or the barbarian could smash down the wooden supports that hold up the platform. Or both! Or more likely, they'll come up with something even more brilliant--as I recall, they entered that adventure area through a skylight using spiderclimb and invisibility to begin with.
I expect my method of designing encounter areas won't change all that much with 4th edition, because it's pretty well dependent on what the enemies are capable of. If monsters in 4th edition are best served by huge, cavernous rooms, then huge cavernous rooms there shall be. I'm betting, though that monster tactics will dictate a variety of room compositions and sizes, just as in 3.5. I just hope it will require less system mastery on my part to make these kinds of encounters, because it took my
months to get to that point in 3.5.
