Last time, on The Angry GM…

You’ll recall that, some time ago, I’d had an encounter with a very powerful alien entity, perhaps all-powerful, whose meddling forced an early confrontation with a cyborg race who had been conquering their way across their corner of the galaxy, absorbing races and their technologies into their own collective. And, as a result, they had become of Earth and humanity and had altered their plans to assimilate us. As such, I found myself on the bridge, ordering my Tactical Officer to send a warning to Earth that we had engaged the borg. The specialist that had been assigned to my ship attempted to thwart the borgs initial attack on my vessel by having my operations officer fluctuate our deflector shield frequencies randomly to prevent the borg from adapting their weapons to our shield’s specifications. In the time she bought us, we returned fire and disabled the borg cube’s weapon. After fleeing from the initial engagement with the borg, we received word from the Federation that reinforcements were on their way, but they were six days away. That wasn’t all. Unbeknownst to me, the ambitious specialist was after my Executive Officer’s position, which she felt he was settling in and was therefore in her way, and she made it clear she intended to shove him aside. Eventually, the borg caught up with us and managed to board our ship by beaming…

Oh, wait, that wasn’t me. While all of that was going on on the TV behind me, I was busy showing you how I designed the first adventure of my new campaign, Flight to Elturel – which I had incorrectly called “the Road to Elturel” several times – as a practical example of how messy and haphazard actual adventure building was. And also to illustrate all of the various adventure elements I’d previously described.

And then I spent an entire article explaining how to break an adventure down into broad macroencounters called scenes. Which then caused half the assholes in my comment section to pick apart my use of the word “scene” and the other half of the assholes to pick apart a minor joke about statistics and poor GMing skills. Which is why I now have to moderate every f$&%ing comment everyone posts. Because I can’t just have fun writing stuff anymore. But I digress…

Today, I’m going to continue that example of adventure building. I’m going to talk about the first of the two scenes in my adventure and the encounters contained therein.

Expect the Worst; Plan for the Best

Let’s keep building Flight to Elturel. Which is the proper name of the first adventure in my D&D Forgotten Realms Sword Coast campaign that I built and ran several weeks ago. Despite what other names I may or may not have given it. And I should point out, I ALWAYS name my adventures and my campaigns. And there’s a very good, very important reason why you should too. But that reason is not what I’m discussing today. So, just trust me for now.

Anyway, I got as far – in the last article, not in real life; the adventure is already written, run, and done – as vaguely thinking of – and jotting down notes about – the various elements of the adventure that comprised what I’d said was the minimum list of things an adventure needed to work. I had a goal: the party must escort a young runaway sorcerer from Baldur’s Gate to Elturel safely. I had a Motivation: the party would be moved to help the scared sorcerer because he was escaping from an abusive master and reach safety because they were priests, paladins, a swashbuckling heroic type, and one warlock who will do whatever the nightmare snake in his head says he should do. And I had a Backstory: the kid’s father hated the kid because his wife died in childbirth, so he’d sold the kid to a nasty wizard who had no real interest in training the kid but wanted his blood once his sorcerous powers manifested. And his powers had manifested. Violently. He killed a servant at the wizard’s tower by accident and he’d fled for fear of the oppressive law of Baldur’s Gate and the wrath of his nefarious master. He ultimately decided he wanted to get to Elturel because his mother’s brother lives there and he had once, many years before, offered to take the kid in. I also named the kid Stedd. So that he’d have a name. I also had a resolution: the kid needed to be safely in Elturel, a city that is currently under the protection of the gods of light and goodness and a bunch of paladins and under the care of his legal guardian, a caring man, so he was basically beyond the reach of the evil wizard once the party dropped him off.

And so, with that general framework, I was ready to start designing the meat of the adventure.

When I design an adventure, I like to have some sense of how I think it will go if everything goes the way I will foresee it. Yes, I know that’s circular. But shut up. I mention this only because I’ve had people send me messages asking me what I’d do if the party finds the hole in my plan and takes the adventure off in some other direction. For example, someone “helpfully” pointed out that the cleric of Mystra might be tempted to take the child directly to the nearest Temple of Mystra, despite his wishes to be moved to a totally safe city and be placed under the care of a good and just member of his own family who is also the closest thing the kid has to a legal guardian since his dad basically abandoned him. And, I mean, that is a possibility. The cleric might turn out to be a massive pragmatic dick who saw the child as an object rather than a living human being with desires of their own. But it was a pretty low-risk possibility and it was also something the rest of the party would vehemently oppose.

And, in the Angryverse, that would be an act of evil besides. Because it’s an evil thing to do.

Anyway…

The point is, the real answer is: I’d run the game as it played out. See, whenever I talk about my adventure plans, I always get some “helpful” person who sees that there’s a possibility that the players might do something completely different than what I have planned and who basically sees it as some sort of failure on my part because my story isn’t “unbreakable.” Well, people like that know NOTHING about RPGs. First, because that’s precisely why the GM exists. To figure out what happens when things go off-script. Because, second, there’s no such thing as an unbreakable story when it comes to a role-playing game. And if you try to make your story unbreakable, you’re ruining the role-playing game.

See, the thing is, because I’ve spent some time working out the backstory, motivations, resolutions, and all that other crap and because I will spend more time planning out the various game elements, I’m very familiar with what is happening the world and why. So, if the players do attempt something other than what I think they will or should, I can figure out how the world reacts to them and run the game accordingly. I’ll never be left with nothing. I’ll never be left running an “and then…” plot. I can figure out how the pieces on the board should move to react to whatever stupid things the PCs do.

And because of that, I don’t spend a whole lot of time trying to cut off all possible means of escape from my plot. I do sometimes contrive situations if I see a very easy way to resolve everything to prevent that solution from being available. But that’s called “writing an adventure.” That’s what an adventure is. An adventure is a goal and a bunch of reasons why the players can’t just take two steps and cross the f$&%ing finish line.

For example, one of the reasons I chose Baldur’s Gate and Elturel for this adventure is because those two cities helped me force the players away from civilization and into the wilderness. At least, based on the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide’s descriptions of them. See, Baldur’s Gate is an extremely lawful city. It is controlled by a powerful aristocracy and patrolled by a very active armed force. Inside the walls. But there is also an extensive sprawl outside the city of markets, inns, slums, and poor neighborhoods that are completely and utterly lawless. The guards don’t bother with them. And that served my purposes well.

First, because the kid thought he was wanted for murder – and maybe he was; the party wouldn’t know any better – there was no way in hell he’d allow himself to be dragged back inside the gates once he got to the Outer City. Which cut the party off from most of the institutions they might rely on for help. If they wanted to reach the Temple of Mystra inside Baldur’s Gate, they’d have to smuggle the terrified sorcerer with the uncontrolled magic through the city gates against his wishes. That’d be a rough move. It also prevented the party from just wandering down to the harbor and hiring a ship to take them up the River Chionthar to Elturel.

Second, because the Outer City was completely lawless, whatever force was trying to capture the kid could act with impunity. The wizard could send whatever sorts of mercenaries or bounty hunters he wanted to grab the kid and they could search the streets and chase the party and the law wouldn’t cause them any problems. Likewise, the party could fight back with impunity. They didn’t have to worry about hurting or killing any of the mercenaries. After all, legally speaking, the mercenaries might be in the right. The kid was legally sold into an apprenticeship, he escaped, and he had killed someone to escape. The party might fear the legal repercussions.

By the same token, Elturel is the most logical destination overland even without the kid’s uncle living there. As noted, it has become a shining beacon of light and goodness. Literally. The gods put a second sun there to keep the undead out and it’s is protecting by two different orders of noble knights and paladins. It’s the nearest major city to Baldur’s Gate. And it is easy to navigate to overland simply by following the River Chionthar.

So, the shortest path from Motivation to Resolution was to get Stedd out of the Outer City of Baldur’s Gate and to Elturel. Which makes it the most likely path the party will take. And if they decided to do anything else, well, I’d just, you know, use my GMing skills to run whatever f$&%ing game actually happened. Which is how you do it.

Adventure Building, Scene by Scene

As noted in the previous article, I like to break adventures down into big, broad chunks which I call “scenes.” And to all of those who felt the need to argue the terminology even though I explicitly said the terminology wasn’t worth arguing, I’d like to suggest that you either don’t know the correct definition of a scene or you don’t understand what I’m using scenes to accomplish. Probably because you’re missing key brain lobes that allow for proper reading comprehension. So, let me lay it out. A scene is a sequence of continuous action in a dramatic work. Events in a scene flow together from one to the other with no major skips in continuity. That’s what makes a scene a scene instead of, say, an act. And that’s precisely what my scenes do. They are a way of grouping linked encounters together which all affect each other and which flow seamlessly into one another.

But, again, and I can’t f$&%ing stress this enough, it’s just a bit of minor terminology that is not worth any amount of discussion. And now, thanks to having to moderate my comments – thank you oh so very f$&%ing much – I can make sure it doesn’t get any. So, if you don’t like that word, well, no one will ever know. Which is just fine. Because literally no one but you actually f$&%ing cares.

Anyway, I like to break my adventures into broad chunks of continuous actions called scenes and then nest my encounters inside of those. Particular because it allows me to layer some mechanics over several encounters to track progress, add complications, or whatever else I need to do to have things persist beyond the encounter level.

And what I really, really like to do is guess how many sessions my adventure will last and align the scenes with the session breaks. Yeah. I seriously do that. And, of course, I also like to make sure the scenes actually align with plot elements.

So, if I look at this adventure, there’s really two major segments of continuous action. First, there’s the escape from the Outer City of Baldur’s Gate and then there’s crossing the wilderness and reaching Elturel. And that works out well because I wanted this adventure to last between two and three sessions long. And so, scene one would last one session and it would start when the party met Stedd in some random inn in the Outer City and end once they got safely out of the city. Scene two would last one or two sessions and would encompass the overland journey from Baldur’s Gate to Elturel.

Easy, right?

The remainder of this article is about planning out Scene 1. The next article will be planning Scene 2.

Conflicts and Antagonists

At this point, most GMs would just start slapping together some encounters and be done with the thing. But because my approach involves an overarching scene that connects the encounters together, it’s important to figure out exactly what the scene is really about. Obviously, the goal of the scene is “safely escape from Baldur’s Gate with Stedd in tow.” So, most of the encounters in the scene have to be about getting to that goal.

When the party starts the scene – because it is both the first scene in the adventure and because it is the first scene in a new campaign – the party doesn’t know who Stedd is. They don’t even know who the other members of the party are. Now, the first encounter in the first scene of any adventure is a special type of encounter. It’s called a Hook. It’s the scene that gives the party the goal, provides them the motivation to pursue the goal, and slaps them in the a%& and sends them on their way. The first encounter can be a meeting with a quest giver for example. Or a sudden outbreak of adventure. Something that happens and demands the party’s attention.

Now, there are lots of ways to tie the encounters in a scene together. Too many to list. And I’ll discuss the theory behind this in more detail later. The way I want to do it – especially because I want an encounter in which the party is sneaking through crowded city streets evading patrolling soldiers and dogs and trying to reach the edge of the city – the way I want to do it is by establishing a central conflict. All of the scenes are about escaping from or defeating a particular antagonist.

So, who is the central antagonist in scene 1? Well, to have the encounter I want, it has to be some sort of military or mercenary organization. Someone who can field several teams of patrolling guards. But I don’t want to use the Baldur’s Gate city watch or whatever. Because the players might balk at the idea of opposing legitimate authorities attempting to arrest someone who may have committed murder. In fact, I really don’t want the murder to come out at all initially. I want Stedd to be unambiguously sympathetic to start because I need a party of disparate heroes who have no prior relationship to be moved immediately by his plight to help him.

So, I decided to use the Zhentarim. In the old days, they were a criminal network of spies and mercenaries who wanted to rule the Sword Coast They operated in secret and worshipped an evil god. But around the edition change to 5th Edition, they decided to undergo something of a rebranding as mercenaries, smugglers, and traders for hire. They were still mostly evil and mostly wanted to dominate the Sword Coast and other regions of Faerun. And their inner circle is still a nasty Black Network, but they are also more of a public operation these days. I think it was so that they could be one of the five factions that players in the organized play program could dedicate themselves to. I’m not sure. Point is, I’ve got some mercenaries for hire with a bad reputation that the wizard could send after Stedd. And because the Outer City of Baldur’s Gate is totally lawless, they can operate with impunity.

Now, I did a bunch of reading and discovered some particular names of mercenary chapters aligned with the Zhentarim and some military ranks and things like that. None of that matters. I just like fluff and flavor. But what I wanted to do was come up with a face for the organization. A specific individual who WAS the Zentarim in the game. I’ve talked before about turning a faction into an NPC so that the NPC becomes a stand-in for a conflict with the organization. And the reason for that is so that I can get a possible recurring villain out of this. I have no future plans for the campaign, but I’m always looking for story elements to add to future adventures. Because the NPC is a face of the organization, if the NPC is killed, the organization can send another face and the relationship continues.

So, I invented Sternhelm Kresk. Sternhelm is a title. Basically, it’s a lieutenant. Someone who leads between four and fifteen mercenary soldiers – Stalwarts – in the Zhentilar, the mercenary army of the Zhentarim network. He’s a hobgoblin. Militaristic, proud, and also monstrous. And that monstrous bit is there to make him more antagonistic. The party should take one look at him and say, yeah, he’s the enemy.

To serve the needs of the story, Kresk is a skilled hunter and tracker. A bounty hunter. He and his band are hired to track down, well, track down anyone. If the pay is good. And Kresk also trains dogs. Hunting dogs. So, his little mercenary band also includes a bunch of bloodhounds. Which he loves more than he loves the people under his command.

So, I have a good goal for the entire scene. I have a good antagonist. And that provides a good central conflict. But, the problem with the central conflict is that the party – if they do things well – will never have a good confrontation with Kresk. He’s just a faceless figure chasing after them. Which is fine. The party will feel him dogging their heels and the party will invariably end up in direct conflict with some of his soldiers and some of his dogs.

I want a second central conflict. Another problem the party has to resolve to get through the adventure. And, personally, I like human drama in my games. And most of my players do too. And human drama requires humans who are on camera. If the adventure is mostly about evading and running, the players really won’t have an opportunity for human drama. Except amongst themselves. And I want to minimize drama inside the party because it’s the start of the campaign and drama within the party can prevent the party from forming a good team. So, I need to plant a conflict in the party with something – or someone – external to the party. And the perfect candidate is Stedd.

Stedd is a panicked kid, abused and abandoned, who suddenly has magical powers he can’t control and who has accidentally killed someone. He’s terrified of his powers, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he’s also afraid of being punished for his accidental crime. Ideally, the party is going to agree to help him, but he doesn’t even know who they are. And he’s under a lot of stress. And when he snaps from the stress, he’s going to snap magically.

So, I stated up Stedd as a simple commoner with basic stats and with the abilities of a wild magic sorcerer. First level. Nothing fancy. But I also used one of my favorite tricks – the ten-point scale – to give him a “mood meter.” Basically, whenever he feels stressed – when a fight breaks out, when an enemy gets too close and attacks him, when someone says something that reminds him that he’s unloved and unwanted and a danger to everyone around him and a killer besides – whenever he feels stressed, his mood drops. And when his mood hits 1, he rolls a Wisdom saving throw each round until his mood improves or he panics. And when he panics he either flees or spits out a spell or both.

Obviously, the party can raise his mood by interacting with him or by keeping him safe from danger. If they don’t let enemies get too close, if they comfort him, if they build his confidence and trust, they can raise his mood.

It’s a REALLY SIMPLE SYSTEM. And I know this is going to drive some of my rules-obsessed, overly-systematic, terrified-of-their-own-judgement readers, but that’s the entire system. I wrote out all of the rules right there. When he’s stressed, his mood drops. When the party reassures him, his mood rises. When his mood is at one, he panics, casts a spell and/or flees. And he can’t, by the way, cast spells otherwise. Because he can’t control his magic yet.

And so, there’s two solid central conflicts for scene 1. Actually, Stedd’s mood is a central conflict for the entire adventure. Whereas the party might leave the Zhents in the dust when they flee Baldur’s Gate – maybe – they will be stuck with Stedd the whole time. And they will have to manage his mood.

Planning the Specific Encounters

Now we’re down to planning the specific encounters. And because this was an introductory adventure to start a new campaign, I knew the first session would be a bit short. That is, we’d spend a lot of time just getting up and running and with people describing their characters and all that other crap. So, I figured we’d have half the time we usually had. Normally – if I’m actually focused and keeping things running; which has become a problem lately – normally, I can push a D&D group through about six encounters in a session. That’s encounters by MY correct definition, not by the D&D definition of “a fight.” But even if they are all fights, I can usually push through six. So, I planned for three.

The first encounter would be the hook. Basically, the PCs end up in the same place as Stedd. Stedd is established as a runaway trying to reach Elturel. The party sympathizes and agrees to help him.

The last encounter – the third encounter – would be the climax of the session. And it was the one that inspired this adventure. It’d see the party sneaking through the streets of Baldur’s Gate’s Outer City under the cover of darkness while Zhentilar patrols and bloodhounds searched for them.

In the middle, I needed something to get the party moving. An initial encounter with an advance group of Zhents who catch up with Stedd, try to grab him, and put the party in the position of having to protect him without really knowing everything that is going on. Basically, I needed a fight with some Zhentilar Stalwarts.

Hook, Like, and Sorcerer

I have a rule. It’s a spiteful rule. It’s a response to all of those self-important Internet GMs who talk about how terrible clichés and tropes are. I start every campaign in, around, under, or near a tavern. There’s only been one in recent memory that I didn’t do that with. But I started the PCs on a ship that ran aground, so I’m counting that as tropey and cliched.

And every one of my campaigns is great. And no one cares that every single of them starts with “you all meet in a tavern.” Leave a comment about that.

Anyway…

So, I figured the first scene would be easy enough that I didn’t have to bother writing much for it. Basically, each PC arrives at the tavern from wherever they were coming from before their adventures started. They can tell everyone else what they look like as they come in. And then, eventually, Stedd would happen.

Well, it’s not that simple. I wanted the party to sympathize with Stedd before I had the Zhents try to arrest him. I already wanted them on Stedd’s side. And that meant I had to introduce Stedd and make him sympathetic BEFORE the Zhents arrived and kicked off the second encounter.

Now, I have this trick I love to use which is to hide an important thing in minor bits flavor text. So, I made sure that when I was ready to set the scene and describe the interior of the tavern, Stedd was already there. See, I’d described the Outer City of Baldur’s Gate as rough and impoverished. And one of the things I’d details that provided an example of that was the number of urchins and beggars running around the streets. So, when I set the scene inside the tavern, I mentioned there was even an urchin in there begging from table to table. That was actually Stedd. And he was asking people to help him get to Elturel.

Now, I’d give the players a chance to do some light role-playing. Decide where they sit. Interact with the tavern help. Show off their characters a little bit. Whatever. And once there was a lull in that action Stedd gets backhanded by some rough laborer who tells him to get lost and leave him and his friends alone. Then, I’d describe his as drawn and undernourished and abused, but also clean and not actually starving, to establish he’s suffering, but he’s not a beggar or urchin after all. He’d respond by apologizing and trying to explain he was just looking to hire an escort to get him to Elturel and he needed help. And the laborer would throw some insults.

Hopefully, that’d be enough for at least one player – like the paladin or the priest – to take sympathy, intervene, and hear his story. And it was.

You’re Coming with us Kid

The moment the party agrees to hear Stedd out – even if it’s just one PC – it was time to fling encounter two at the party. I designed it as a straight-up combat encounter. I statted up a balanced encounter with a group of Zhentilar Stalwarts. They arrived at the tavern at exactly that moment, told Stedd they were bringing him back to his master, one of their number was told to “run and get Kresk and the others and tell him we’ve found the kid,” and a confrontation would happen. Hopefully, the players would connect the clear signs of abuse on the kid with the mention of his master and decide to intervene.

The Zhents – being evil mercenaries in a lawless location – were willing to fight through any resistance to grab Stedd. So, invariably, a fight would break out. Whatever the result, the PCs would know there were more soldiers on the way because of the runner who left to get the boss. And I specifically made it a point to say “Kresk and the others” so the PCs would know there was another group coming. Maybe several.

I also started Stedd’s mood out at, like, 2. So that, whatever happened, it was likely Stedd would end up panicking. I wanted the players to see Stedd’s Stress in action. I also knew the revelation that he was a sorcerer would entice the cleric of Mystra and maybe the warlock to get involved if they were otherwise still on the fence.

Once the combat was over, I could rest assured that the party was now on Stedd’s side and ready to get him out of the city.

Dogs and Mouse

Now, I didn’t want the party to have any time to really collect themselves. I wanted the first session to move fast. So, as soon as the combat ended, I was already getting the next encounter into position. Here’s what was going on outside. Kresk had narrowed down the area where the kid had run to. He had several groups of soldiers and dogs moving through the streets. And I think, when I ran the game, I even mentioned at least one group of Zhent mercenaries and their bloodhound in the streets when describing the Outer City of Baldur’s Gate on the way to the tavern where the game would start.

Anyway, there were five groups of patrolling Zhents. Each consisted of two soldiers and a bloodhound. Each one was, itself, balanced – if slightly easy – for a first-level party. If they tried to fight one group, they’d be okay. But if they got surrounded by two or more groups, they’d quickly get overwhelmed. And any Zhent that found the kid would raise the alarm.

What I did was map out a two-block area around the tavern. Not quite to scale, but to enough of a scale to act as a play map. And the five groups of Zhents were spaced out equally on the map to start with. Two more groups were placed at fixed positions at major intersections. Basically, I was working with a force of about twenty Zhent soldiers in total and five bloodhounds.

If you support the site on Patreon, you can find the stats for Kresk, his soldiers, and his bloodhounds in my secret stash.

Once the party finished dealing with the Zhents at the inn, they’d hopefully be smart enough to try to escape. If not, Stedd would remind the party that one of the mercenaries had run off to get the others. If the party tried to escape out the front door, they’d see Kresk and two soldiers approaching up the street – but he wouldn’t see them – and also see two other groups of soldiers up and down the street. That’d entice them to seek a back way.

Essentially, their goal would be to get to the edge of the map I’d drawn safely. At least, that was the point at which narration would take over and I’d tell them they get the rest of the way safely out of the city. They were just trying to get out of the city without being discovered once they recognized they were outnumbered.

Now, as for how I played out the scene mechanically, I basically just let the party move from point to point on the map. It was mostly concealed from based on their line of sight. Meanwhile, I was moving the Zhent forces in a rotating search pattern around the map. They were just patrolling the streets in a roughly circular patrol.

And so, the encounter would play out as a series of turns. I didn’t explicitly break it up like that. To the party, it just seemed like continuous action. But I was moving the soldiers as the party moved. And then they’d move. And we’d see how it all panned out.

The party would catch sight of the Zhents as they reached particular intersections and such or when they climbed onto low rooves. At times, I’d have patrols stop and show interest in some random spot so the party couldn’t simply wait for each patrol to move on. And they’d have to decide how to get past the patrol. Sneak. Create a diversion to draw the patrol off. Whatever. It was very loose and open-ended.

But I also didn’t want them to feel like they could sit still. So, while the patrols were still just doing a general search of the area, Kresk and his bodyguards had reached the tavern thanks to that soldier who had run for him at the start of the second encounter. Kresk is an expert tracker. So, once the party got away from the back door of the tavern – close enough to still see it, far enough that Kresk wouldn’t see them escaping immediately – Kresk and his soldiers appeared out the back. And they were slowly, methodically following the party. If the party stopped moving, he’d catch up.

Beyond the map and resolving actions as they happened, I didn’t really need any special mechanics for the encounter. The one thing I did keep in mind, though, is something a lot of GMs forget about stealth gameplay.

If you play stealth video games, enemies have three states: patrolling, interested, and coming to kill you. The patrol state is when they are just moving around and using their passive Perception to keep an eye out. Interested means they have heard or spotted something that has drawn their attention, but they aren’t sure what it is. So, they need to investigate further. That’s when they move to the location that drew their attention and make active Perception checks. The third state, coming to kill you, is when they’ve spotted or heard the party and are drawing swords and rolling initiative.

Most GMs skip the “interested” phase and go right to “you failed a stealth roll; everyone comes to kill you.” And that is why stealth encounters are boring as hell when most GMs who aren’t me run them.

So, when the party screws up or takes a wrong turn and end up too close to a patrol or whatever, the encounter isn’t ruined. The guard says something like “hey, what was that over there” or “wait, the dogs smell something over this way,” and they start moving toward the party. And the party can decide what to do. Maybe they retreat to a more concealed location and hide. Or try to hide and stay still right then and there and hope the guards don’t find them during the active search. Or someone raises a distraction. Or they ambush the searching guard and try to kill him silently.

The point is, this gives the party a chance to react to being spotted and fix the problem before it becomes a full-blown emergency and ruins an entire encounter when you’re running a stealth encounter.

If you want to see some not-terrible advice about stealth encounters that is very similar to my own, I’m going to do something un-f$&%ing-precedented and recommend another online GM’s work. Check out Runehammer’s video Build AI for your Monsters. He has a bit about stealth encounters and guard patrols that pretty much amounts to the same thing. And some other decent advice too. He’s also the guy behind the Index Card RPG which – while it is something I would probably never run for any serious amount of time – actually has some useful advice and mechanics inside of it.

But I digress…

Anyway, that’s it really. That’s how I designed the first scene and the three encounters that comprised it for my adventure, Flight to Elturel. And in a few weeks, I’ll come back and talk about the second scene and the overland travel portion.

And, in case you’re curious, it all pretty much worked out as I planned at the table. A fun time was had by all. Except for the warlock. Because when Stedd panicked in the tavern, the warlock was in the blast radius and Stedd rolled damn good damage. But he did apologize to the warlock once the warlock regained consciousness and had been healed back to positive digit health. So, it was all good.

And now, I have to go. I’ve got comments to delete. F$&%ing comments.