What's the WORST type of encounter you hate to write up?

[RangerWickett]

I think I did a little bit of everything when writing and editing for the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga. Small combats, mass combats, skirmishes, capture the flag, defend the flag, assassinations, objective raids, combat of all sorts. We had boss fights choreographed like action movie set pieces, with the added challenge that we wanted never to shoehorn the PCs into having to do something a particular way.

And while statting out the 28th level immortal mystic theurge main villain (cleric 3/wizard 3/mystic theurge 10/hierophant 1/archmage 5/loremaster 2/thaumaturge 4) did take forever, and coming up with tactics so she could

a) survive the onslaught of a 20th level party,
b) dish as well as she could take, and
c) actually do something interesting after the players have already gone through an entire campaign,

I loved making those sorts of encounters. What I hated, though, was dungeons. My beef with dungeons is that it's really hard to keep the tension up, because the logical desire is to draw back, rest and regroup, instead of pressing forward. In 3e, at least, it was dang hard to fill an entire large area with danger, and yet both not have the danger overwhelm the party all at once, and still have every encounter be interesting.

I always worried that I'd get somebody's PC killed for a stupid reason. Like, sure, a cursed castle being pulled into the elemental plane of fire is pretty awesome, but I want your PC to die fighting the final boss, not to a random attack from one of the myriad lesser monsters that roamed the complex.

Still, I think it was cool enough to be worth the effort.

 

[kitsune9]

I think I did a little bit of everything when writing and editing for the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga. Small combats, mass combats, skirmishes, capture the flag, defend the flag, assassinations, objective raids, combat of all sorts. We had boss fights choreographed like action movie set pieces, with the added challenge that we wanted never to shoehorn the PCs into having to do something a particular way.

And while statting out the 28th level immortal mystic theurge main villain (cleric 3/wizard 3/mystic theurge 10/hierophant 1/archmage 5/loremaster 2/thaumaturge 4) did take forever, and coming up with tactics so she could

a) survive the onslaught of a 20th level party,
b) dish as well as she could take, and
c) actually do something interesting after the players have already gone through an entire campaign,

I loved making those sorts of encounters. What I hated, though, was dungeons. My beef with dungeons is that it's really hard to keep the tension up, because the logical desire is to draw back, rest and regroup, instead of pressing forward. In 3e, at least, it was dang hard to fill an entire large area with danger, and yet both not have the danger overwhelm the party all at once, and still have every encounter be interesting.

I always worried that I'd get somebody's PC killed for a stupid reason. Like, sure, a cursed castle being pulled into the elemental plane of fire is pretty awesome, but I want your PC to die fighting the final boss, not to a random attack from one of the myriad lesser monsters that roamed the complex.

Still, I think it was cool enough to be worth the effort.

Thanks for sharing Ranger. It's interesting you say dungeons. I think you highlight the challenges in dungeon design. My usual challenge whenever I do dungeon design is making the dungeon make sense. I kind of fall into trap of just putting encounters together, but don't have any compelling reasons as to why.

Thanks again, and happy gaming!

 

[dramamine]

I find it utterly hair pulling to write out common encounters.

I love role-playing in its literal sense. I love the chatter, banter, side conversations, romantic, rival speeches, practically anything that's semi-drama filled.

It's when I have to come up with battles is when I really start grumbling. I try and work them out before hand, but it always feels so lame when my players are fighting their attackers. No matter how many descriptive words I toss in, beheading your foe with your flail just isn't as cool as talking your way into the royal court via the exlied prince's former advisor to snoop on the tyrannical queen for her rivaling kingdom.

I think one of the reasons I dislike battles is because of my dice. No matter what set, I seem to roll terribly when it comes to attacking the PCs. Now, the PCs are totally familiar with my terrible rolling in fights. I don't know what it is, but damn... it's miserable when a lv8 orc fighter can't hit the lv5 human barbarian... even after 14 rounds. *grumbles* That's how I ended up with 27 sets of dice.

 

[kitsune9]

I find it utterly hair pulling to write out common encounters.

I love role-playing in its literal sense. I love the chatter, banter, side conversations, romantic, rival speeches, practically anything that's semi-drama filled.

It's when I have to come up with battles is when I really start grumbling. I try and work them out before hand, but it always feels so lame when my players are fighting their attackers. No matter how many descriptive words I toss in, beheading your foe with your flail just isn't as cool as talking your way into the royal court via the exlied prince's former advisor to snoop on the tyrannical queen for her rivaling kingdom.

I think one of the reasons I dislike battles is because of my dice. No matter what set, I seem to roll terribly when it comes to attacking the PCs. Now, the PCs are totally familiar with my terrible rolling in fights. I don't know what it is, but damn... it's miserable when a lv8 orc fighter can't hit the lv5 human barbarian... even after 14 rounds. *grumbles* That's how I ended up with 27 sets of dice.

Wow, sorry about you luck with the dice. You and one of my players have a lot in common. We constantly tease him about his dice never rolling good for him and none of the ohter players will let him touch their dice for fear that his unlucky-ish-ness will rub off on them.

Here's to you in finding the magical set of dice that rolls nothing but 20's!

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Here's to you in finding the magical set of dice that rolls nothing but 20's!

Even the d6s?

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Back in 2e, I had a female gamer and good friend that wanted more "romance fantasy". Here I am, just in my early 20's and I want to run chaotic carnage fighting encounters for the rest of the high-octane guys and she wants romance fantasy. Sigh...

I hated writing NPCs for this, but I did because my own personal philosophy is to give players something they want too so they can have fun.

Heh... Some ten years ago (ouch! has it really been that long?) we had the same situation, a couple of girls joined our AD&D session and requested more "romance" in their fantasy.

However, in our case, it turned out that our DM had a hitherto hidden talent for narrating the most embarrasingly good pink prose I have ever heard...

Everyone's character ended up in some sort of relationship in that campaign. There were a couple of love-triangles and plenty of Unresolved Sexual Tension between PCs and a few NPCs... but it never felt forced, corny or lame.

We still call that one, "the strawberry atole campaign" (local joke, as in "sickly sweet, kids stuff... but a guilty pleasure you don't admit indulging in front of your friends")

Too bad the group broke up over some unrelated stuff and I never saw that DM again, and every time I have tried to emulate that style I have fell flat

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Back into topic, I started loathing 3.X D20 when I realized that, once the party reached certain levels (even when you were running a published adventure), you had to rebuild most of the encounters and carefully tailor them to the groups abilities and disadvantages

To do otherwise was to risk either TPK or a one-round curb-stomp

 

[kitsune9]

Even the d6s?

Especially the d6's!

 

[Papa-DRB]

Chase encounters

I really hate them. My guys do not *ever* want to let bad guys escape, so I have had to 'wing' it most times. Now that I have purchased the Tome of Secrets with its Chase rules, I think I am all set now.

-- david
Papa.DRB

 

[kitsune9]

Heh... Some ten years ago (ouch! has it really been that long?) we had the same situation, a couple of girls joined our AD&D session and requested more "romance" in their fantasy.

However, in our case, it turned out that our DM had a hitherto hidden talent for narrating the most embarrasingly good pink prose I have ever heard...

Everyone's character ended up in some sort of relationship in that campaign. There were a couple of love-triangles and plenty of Unresolved Sexual Tension between PCs and a few NPCs... but it never felt forced, corny or lame.

We still call that one, "the strawberry atole campaign" (local joke, as in "sickly sweet, kids stuff... but a guilty pleasure you don't admit indulging in front of your friends")

Too bad the group broke up over some unrelated stuff and I never saw that DM again, and every time I have tried to emulate

That's a cool story. I think as DM, I would challenged to the hilt on my rp-fu should I find myself in a similar situation. On a related, but slightly off-topic, roleplaying out the encounter is another challenge for DMs. I have a particularly style that I would consider "board-gamey" and probably should look into ways of developing it more rp-like.