Encounter-a-Day

So I’m making what I hope to be an uncharacteristic non-”encounter” post for a bit of explanation… Fear not, though, for this post will not take the place of an encounter, one should be posted at the same time.

I’m still finding myself with this blog and trying to figure out just what I can do with it. As a result, you’ll see a bit of experimenting in formats (as evidenced by the adventure posted yesterday, and further evidenced by the encounter being posted today).

One difficulty I did not foresee is the difficulty in coming up with generic encounters with no context. Granted, I’m not restricting myself to completely generic settings (see for example The Forgotten Soldiers, which is strongly tied to the background of Eberron). Rather, the difficulty is in the sense that every encounter I post, without context, must completely stand on its own. That’s really rather limiting, as it forces a hook, some action, and a conclusion (or the promise thereof) all into one tiny little bite-sized chunk.

So I’ve got two ideas that I’ll be experimenting with, the first of which you’ll be subjected to today.

1. Serialized encounters. These will be encounters which, ideally, should be easy enough to adapt to a similar situation, but are not totally generic. Hog Wild is an example of a serialized encounter– the beginning of a series of them, actually. When I leave the follow-up questions at the end, they are meant to get your brain thinking about possibilities, but they are also questions to which I already have answers. This doesn’t mean you have to use, or even wait for my answers; all it means is that tomorrow, I’ll post what I think happened, how, etc.

Basically, I’m going to post a follow-up encounter to that, and then a follow-up to the follow-up, and so on. This will serve two purposes: It will provide me a context with which to make more varied encounters, and if all goes according to plan when the serial’s over I’ve got myself the skeleton of an adventure.

2. Stock characters. I plan on introducing some very basic, prototypical villains. They’ll be like the Joker or Magneto, where they’re there to be beat up on but always seem to come back with another new plan. My aim in making them prototypical is that you can easily adapt the scenarios involving them to your own villains. I don’t expect you to want to use Bruno the Brute in your campaign, but that carnage he’s wreaking sure would be pretty fun with your pet NPC, Orguudriel the Half-Ogre/Half-Dragon Vampire Barbarian. I may end up introducing stock PCs, as well, but the main problem with that I’d almost assuredly have a D&D-centric view on what roles a party should have and that may not work for the system-neutral feel I’m trying to emphasize.

So, to those of you reading, I thank you for your patience and understanding.