Keep It Simple, Stupid. And yes, in Combat Encounters too.

 KISS is a standard rule of design. Often though we forget about it when designing our encounters. It's a natural thing to happen. You want a fight to be cool. You want the big NPCs to be cool. And being cool means being able to do special stuff. I mean, all the 'cool' stuff your PCs can do comes from abilities they can do that trump or otherwise modify the normal rules of combat.

Where Is Your Villain Strong? Where Is Your Villain Weak?

Strengths and weaknesses are common things we talk about when making characters. All the best characters - heroes and villains alike - tend to have both in spades depending on the genre or medium of fiction. However, I've noticed when it comes to RPGs that I don't often spend a lot of time thinking about my villains strengths and weaknesses. At least, not directly.

Airships, High Places, and Instant Death

There are two things that I really like in my games be they RPGs or otherwise: Deep  sea, and high skies. I don't know what it is about them, but something in those settings fascinates me. I think it is part of why I love space opera a s well, since Space is basically the deep sea plus the  high skies.

All three have one thing in common: it is very dangerous to go outside. In f act, going outside without proper safety gear is probably fatal. Either you'll drown, be crushed, fall to your death, or otherwise be killed by the environment. Which also makes them dangerous places for battles and RPGs.

Any time you put a high cliff, or a void, or something from which there is no easy coming back from in an RPG you have to be careful. Remember, the rule is that if something is in the game it will be interacted with. PCs will throw monsters off the ledge. PCs will fall off the ledge. Both of those tend to have the same result - the character going over the ledge is dead - but that's a much higher cost when it is a PC as opposed to random monster #6.

So how do you deal with it?

In my experience your options are limited. You just need to be careful. Even being careful you have to accept that it is something that can, and likely will happen - especially if you are counting on it not happening. You can't go for the drama of people fighting near a sheer cliff drop off, and not expect the dice to go "yeah, that's great...but what if they actually fell?"

So be aware of it. Be careful of it. And if, like me, you're drawn to these scenarios like a moth to flame then be especially careful and try to use it sparingly. Also, if you know you're doing it, build in some ways so that it's not just an instant death if you go over the edge or outside. A series of saves or skill challenges  can make a difference. But if you put enough ledges, voids, or spheres of annihilation in a game...at some point, someone is going to end up thrown inside.

Targeting the PCs - Part 2

On Wednesday I laid out three steps for approaching when a villain is targeting the party. Today I'm going to apply that for one of the groups I've been in to give an example of how it can work.

The group in question has a light cleric, a celestial pact warlock, an arcane trickster, a paladin, and a fighter. They tend to fight with the cleric and warlock doing spell damage from range while the paladin and fighter tie up front lines with the rogue providing special 'striking' support and mobility. So let's begin.

Targeting the PCs

On Monday we talked about how your early encounters in a plotline or with a villain should be done without consideration for the PCs skills or abilities. This is done to focus on the villain's themes and resources, and to let the PCs jump in as they please and use their tactics. It also lets them showcase how strong they are against certain opponents or opponent types if that is relevant (i.e. clerics vs. undead.) Today I want to talk about later encounters, when the PCs are specifically being targeted.

Building 'Early' Encounters

When it comes to making any encounter I find a lot of GMs often try to keep in mind their PC's abilities. When I say that I mean that they custom build their encounters to be a challenge for the PCs. The NPCs have answers for key strategic abilities the PCs have. While this can work for some encounters, and can definitely be a good thing to introduce a smart or more tactically minded enemy, it's not something I feel most encounters should take into consideration for 'early' encounters with a big villain.

Building An Encounter

On Friday I mentioned focusing on one thing at a time as a means of improvement. Today I want to talk about the one thing I am currently focusing the most on in my own attempt to improve my GMing: Encounter building.

Encounter building is more than just combat. In effect, every aspect of your session that drives things forward is an encounter of one sort or another. A trap is an encounter. A conversation with a key NPC is an encounter. Knowing the skeleton of a good encounter is a core part of building the scenes and scenarios that fill up a session, and thus a campaign. So let's take a look shall we.

Encounters Should Be Fun Before They Are Winnable

I find myself with one of the campaigns I'm running coming to a close. As in close enough I can basically see the end if the PCs keep going along their current path, and we could probably hit it in one mega-long session or 2-3 regular sessions depending on productivity levels. This also means that I'm preparing encounters that will be the final encounters for the game as a whole. I've got my biggest, strongest, most capable bad guys to array against the PCs. I have all their assets, resources, and abilities. I have all their knowledge. I have their place in the lore, and how they would work. And the system we're using - D&D 5e - has a number of mechanics that could be used in their favor that would make some of the fights potential landslides.

There is only one problem: those mechanics aren't fun.

What Is At Stake?

What are the stakes of your story? What are the stakes of any given encounter? Do your players know? Do their characters? Do you?

Having a clear eye on the stakes is important. To quote Mastiff Press and their new game Lancer:

It’s important to start a mission with both a goal and

some stakes established. Not only does this give the

characters clear motivations for why they’re

embarking on a mission, but it also sets up the

possible consequences of failure and allows the GM

to push harder if that should come to pass – after all,

you knew what the stakes were!

Splitting the Party!

The common advise is to not split the party. In fact, it often goes NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY. And you know what? Normally it is pretty good advice. It could even be considered a rule. The fun thing about rules though is that if you understand them, know why they're there, and why they work, you can break them.

Today I want to talk about splitting up the party.

Mechanics Worth Stealing: Enemy Threat Level

Over the weekend I saw this tweet on twitter. In it, Corey Hickson talks about a mechanic he really likes from Blades in the Dark. The more I think about the mechanic, the more I find I like it as a way to do encounter design and give certain NPCs a more threatening feel not necessarily by jacking up the mechanical threat they hold, but in how they are presented and how much initiative they have.

Today let's talk about it, and how to use it in your game.

Helping a PC Feel Bad Ass

I'm going to start this off with a shameless plug. You want your players to feel Badass then you really want to be playing Philgamer's BADASS RPG. He's revising and revamping it for 2019/2020, but it is a game all about feeling Badass and has good insight into how to make badass moments happen as a player or GM.

That being said, let's talk about how you as the GM can help your players to feel like bad asses in your game.

Perspective On Threat Is A Hell Of A Thing

This past Friday the PCs in one of my D&D games had a boss encounter of sorts. They went into the nest of some abyssal, abberrations that are something of an homage from me to the Alien movies. The session went well. People had fun. And at the end of the session the PCs stood triumphant, the day saved and a terrible wrong righted...or at least, made as right as it could be considering the circumstances.

Don't Want Murder Hobos? Start Encounters With A Name!

One of the common things GMs want out of their games is a lack of murder hobos. For those not in the know 'murder hoboing' is the term used when the PCs in an RPG tend to just wander around and kill everyone who won't do whatever they want. The problem is some GMs want their PCs to not be murder-hobos, but almost all the problems they present in game are the kind that force - or seem to force - combat.

AMBUSH!

Ambushes are something that always make me more than a little nervous when it comes to GMing. I don't mind when the PCs set up a good ambush. If they do it right, they should reap the rewards. However, if NPCs are ambushing PCs, I get very nervous. An ambush is a huge force modifier. If that first round goes well, you might not have a PC left on the board. Or you could have just enough that it will be rounds of struggle and feeling powerless before the fight is over. Today I want to talk about it, some ways to mitigate it, and some things to check for.

Minions, Minion Groups, And You

Over the weekend I finally saw the season finale of Arrow season 5. I used to love the Arrowverse, but as it went on it became more of a chore to keep up without the full payment I expect from my entertainment options for that much effort, but I heard good things about Season 5 and wanted to watch it so I did. I'm not going to go into details about Season 5 of Arrow, but the finale features several sequences where one or two named characters rip through groups of masked, genericked people. It's done to show that the named characters are bad ass, and whether poorly or well executed it's not an uncommon thing to see in games. However, is it a good thing for your game?