This feature’s part of my ongoing True Game Mastery course. You don’t have to read the lessons in order, but you should. So, if you’re new here, use the series index to start at the start.
Click here for the True Game Master series index.
Time for another True Game Mastery lesson. And time to start a whole new unit, too. No, I’m not moving on from Running Games to Managing Campaigns. Not yet. I’ve got one last big-ass thing to teach you about Running Games. And it’s a doozy. It’ll probably start fights.
This one really tested the promise I made at the start of this series not to argue my point with hypothetical readers. Because, man, I am itching to fight this one out. But I won’t. I’m here to tell you how to run great games. You can either trust me to know what I’m talking about, follow my advice, and get amazing results or you can keep merely executing shit games. Either way, it’s not my problem.
Anyway…
This unit’s all about running various kinds of common tabletop roleplaying game encounters. Running combat encounters, for example, and social encounters, and evasion and stealth encounters, and so on. Except it’s not. That’s a big-ass lie. Because, before I can teach you how to handle stealth, combat, and social interaction, I’ve got to unteach you some bullshit that’s holding you back.
Which is why I’m…
Radically Undefining Encounters
You ain’t a Game Mastering newbie. And if you are, get lost. This series ain’t for Game Mastering greenhorns. This here’s the adult table.
Anyway…
As an experienced Game Master, you know a tabletop roleplaying game’s divided into chunks of gameplay called Encounters. And you know what an Encounter actually is. And because I talk to lots of you — hell, I’ve taught some of you — I know two things. First, I know that no two of you define Encounter the same way. And second, I know none of your definitions are correct or even remotely useful.
Not even the ones I gave you. Sorry about that.
An Encounter is Just an Encounter
Game Masters Don’t Write Adventures
People who run games wear a lot of hats. But they rarely recognize how differently each hat requires them to think. Each hat comes with its own goals, assumptions, priorities, considerations, and mindset.
When you’re running a game at the table, you’re a Game Master. You describe situations, resolve actions, and make judgment calls based solely on building Investment and Owning your game. When you’re between sessions scheduling and planning, you’re a Campaign Manager. And when you’re writing an adventure of your own to run, you’re an Adventure Builder.
While it’s useful to know what each of those jobs entails — and while there are things you can do as a Game Master to help you as a Campaign Manager later — it’s best to think of yourself as three different people. Because thinking like a Campaign Manager or Adventure Builder won’t help you run great games.
Encounters are a concept for Adventure Builders to worry about. When you’re running your game, just run your game.
True Game Masters know that Encounters are just what they sound like. They’re game events wherein the player-characters stumble on something to interact with. And that’s all they are. At least to Game Masters.
An Encounter is not a chunk of gameplay. It’s not defined by conflict or challenge or dramatic questions. And it’s not defined by any kind of mechanical minigame the players have to win. It’s literally just the moment in a tabletop roleplaying game wherein you — the Game Master — tell the players that their characters have become aware of the presence of an interactive thing.
Any other definition is useless at best. And at worst, other definitions lead Game Masters to run worse games than if they just stopped thinking in terms of Encounters at all. See, the moment you put conditions on an Encounter — the moment you demand a game event meet some criteria to count as an Encounter — you limit what you let yourself do in the game. And the moment you assign Encounters to specific mechanical types — segregating Combat Encounters from Social Encounters and shit like that — you limit the approaches your players can take.
And you do that shit unconsciously. Which is what makes it so damned bad.
There’s no special way to run Encounters that’s different from running whatever doesn’t count as Encounters. At least, there shouldn’t be. I’m not saying you don’t sometimes use special mechanics to resolve certain actions and approaches, mind you. I’m just saying you don’t run a Social Encounter any differently than you run a conversation that doesn’t count as a Social Encounter for some dumbass reason. And if you do, you’re doing it wrong.
Almost all Game Masters who break their games into chunks called Encounters — and differentiate them from non-Encounter chunks — for example, start their Encounters too damned late. And they give their players too few opportunities to make choices. And they give their players too few choices.
That ends today. From this point on, you — aspiring True Game Master that you are — give up any idea that an Encounter is anything more than the moment wherein you tell your players there’s something to interact with.
And, honestly, you’re better off not using the word Encounter at all and just running your game.
Reactive Game Mastery
Understand that, as a Game Master, you describe what the players see, hear, perceive, and know; you invite the principal character’s player to act; and you then determine and describe that action’s outcome.
Mere Game Executors try to do more. Way more. They think there’s more to Running Games. But True Game Masters limit themselves to narrating and adjudicating. They know that when they try to do more than that — like put actions in some kind of larger context — they usually just sabotage themselves.
The Game Master’s Toolbox
Is This an Encounter?
If you have a specific and limited definition of the word Encounter in your brain, you’ll spend way too much time obsessing over what does and doesn’t count as an Encounter. And you’ll justify that mindset in all sorts of dumbass ways. Maybe you’ll claim it’s about knowing when to give out Experience Points. Or about making sure the players earn their victories.
I posed this question to my Discord server members: supposed the party spies a group of humanoids two miles away across open landscape. The group is too far away to identify. Is that an Encounter?
The correct answer is, of course, “who gives a shit? I’m going to run it the way I run everything. I’m going to describe it, invite the players to act, and determine the outcome.”
But the answer’s also yes. The players’ characters have become aware of an interactable thing. They can choose to intercept the group, evade the group, draw the group into an ambush, or just ignore it and keep moving. And if the group doesn’t spot the party, the encounter ends there.
But even my correct definition still leaves questions. Suppose, for example, the party is shooting the shit in the local tavern. Talking amongst themselves. Is that an encounter? What if I, in my flavor text, draw attention to the nearby bard? Or a barmaid who interrupts to fill their drinks? Are those encounters?
And that’s the problem with obsessing over definitions. Me? I’m too busy running a great game to give a single, solitary crap whether what I’m running counts as Encounters. And that’s how you should do it too.
Encounter-based thinking — seeing a game as a series of Encounters and, in particular, specific kinds of Encounters — is a bad habit instilled by most games’ rules. See, game systems are loaded with specific tools for specific situations. Specific Encounters. For example, most games have a whole special set of rules for Combat Encounters.
I ain’t saying you don’t need those rules. Resolving combat requires a completely different toolset than resolving a social interaction or an infiltration. What I’m saying is you shouldn’t think of those as Rules for Managing Encounters. Instead, they’re Tools you — the Game Master — pull out when — and only when — your players take a particular approach to a situation.
You don’t use the combat rules until the players themselves have declared their intentions to fight. Until the players — and their characters — launch themselves into battle, the combat chapter stays closed.
Let me repeat that for emphasis because this is a shocking point: you are never, ever, to call for Initiative rolls until the players give you permission to do so.
This unit — this lesson and the handful that follow it — isn’t about running specific kinds of Encounters. Instead, it’s about the Tools in a True Game Master’s Toolbox for resolving specific strategic approaches the players might adopt in a tabletop roleplaying game. And one of the key parts of each lesson will be when it’s actually time to pull out the Tool.
The Background Sim
Game Masters Don’t Roleplay
Whether they’re running the Background Sim or resolving on-camera actions, many Game Masters think the world and its creatures are their characters. Such Game Masters think they portray the world and its forces and creatures the way players portray their characters. They think they’re roleplaying. They’re wrong.
Game Masters manage narrative and gameplay experiences. That’s got nothing to do with roleplaying. And all the things in the game world are just Game and Story Elements. Nothing more. It’s useful to personify that shit sometimes — even the nonliving shit — but that’s just a tool for selecting actions.
Every action everything in the world takes — be it friend or foe or town or faction or trap or anything else — is a compromise between game mechanics, narrative structure, and a smoke-and-mirrors illusion that the thing’s part of a living breathing world. That’s why NPCs don’t behave as they should, but also behave as the dice tell them to.
Why do you think the title is Game Master?
Above, I said that True Game Masters know their job starts and ends with narration and adjudication. But that’s not quite true. Because True Game Masters also have to run the Background Sim. And now’s as good a time as any to explain that idea because it’ll be important below.
Apart from managing what’s happening on camera — that is, telling the players what their characters perceive and adjudicating their actions — Game Masters also have to know what’s going on in the game’s world. That sense of what’s going on off-camera? I call that the Background Sim. Because — despite what many Mere Game Executors think — that shit is not part of the game.
Imagine there’s an assassin tracking the party across the wilderness. The party is unaware of the assassin. As a Game Master, it’s your job to keep track of the assassin. Why? Because, at some point, the party’s probably going to Encounter it. And you need to know when that happens.
The Background Sim is where you run all the things the characters aren’t aware of. It includes the creatures the characters can’t see or hear, the consequences of the character’s past actions that haven’t affected the game yet, and all the hidden mechanics that affect the characters but that the players don’t get to see. Shit like reputation and favor and alignment.
The Background Sim is important, but it’s not part of the game. So True Game Masters don’t obsess over it too much. And, really, it’s a bigger issue for Campaign Managers than Game Masters anyway. I know lots of Game Masters are obsessed with tables and tags and rules to handle all the Background Sim crap, but I can’t be assed to care too much. If you want Background Sim tools, run Worlds Without Number or steal Dungeon World’s fronts or some shit like that.
You Encounter a Thing
Enough high-minded conceptual crap. How do you run an Encounter? And, since Encounters are single moments of gameplay, how do you run the shit that follows an Encounter?
Running Encounters — and the gameplay that follows them — comes down to three things: Start Early, Pause Frequently, and Pull Out the Tools You Need.
When Do the Players Encounter Encounters?
When you’re preparing to run an Encounter — either at the table as you’re about to start or before the game when you’re reviewing the module or your homebrew adventure notes — when you’re preparing to run an Encounter, ask yourself three questions:
- When might the characters become aware of the Encounter?
- What, exactly, might the characters become aware of?
- What happens if the characters don’t become aware of the Encounter?
The Moment of Awareness
Show, Don’t Tell
By presenting Encounters from as far away as possible, you give your players options and lend your game depth, but you also get the chance to follow an important narrative adage: show; don’t tell.
By giving the players space to observe and act at the start of every Encounter, you get to show the players how the Encountered thing lives and acts when the characters aren’t around. If the players can hear other creatures talking amongst themselves, those creatures gain a semblance of life and the players might learn shit they can exploit in their interactions. If they interrupt a predator as its hunting prey, they get to see what the predator’s about, even if the predator immediately becomes aware of the party as its prey escapes.
When my players seek out NPCs in town, I always start the Encounter with the players approaching or outside the shop. The NPC is always doing their thing and the players can see them through a window or as they come in. Or they can hear the NPC finishing their business with someone else as they approach. Thus, the players get some clues about the NPC’s demeanor and disposition before the interaction starts.
Remember what Agent K told Agent J in Men in Black as they approached Beatrice’s farmhouse to interrogate her. “Slow down,” he said, “give her a chance to get the wrong impression.” That’s great Game Mastering advice.
Most Game Masters present Encounters too damned late. Usually, because their dumbass definition of Encounter demands it — or the players — meet some kind of useless standard.
Encounters occur the moment any player’s character becomes aware of anything that they might interact with. However small and indirect the perception. And you need to figure out the earliest moment in the game when that awareness might happen.
Imagine there’s a bunch of goblins sitting around a campfire in a cave, drinking and carousing. The characters might become aware that there’s something ahead when they’re still a hundred feet up the tunnel if there’s no background noise. And if the tunnel’s winding and the party’s being reasonably quiet — even if they’re armored — they’re very likely to hear the goblins before the goblins hear them or see their light source.
Over open terrain, it’s possible to see reasonably-sized creatures up to two miles distant in clear weather. You can’t make out anything but the grossest of details from that distance, but you know someone’s moving across the wilderness.
The party might become aware of a stealthy predator in a dense forest when it’s a few dozen feet away if it fails a sneaky-type check.
This is where the rigorous rules about Encounter Distance and Perception that used to exist were so frigging useful. Because they gave Game Masters some standards by which to determine when a party might become aware of the stuffin the world around them.
And if you want to know why this shit is important, just imagine how each of those situations might play out at the table. Each of those situations invites interactions and offers options. Players can sneak up on the goblins. And if they eavesdrop — and they speak Gobbledygook — they might find out the goblins are just treasure hunting and might be bribed. Players can wave down the distant party or else move out of sight and avoid crossing its path. You might say an Encounter that doesn’t lead to anything like that is a waste of game time. I say giving the players a chance to interact with a world that’s full of more than quest Macguffins and obstacles is never a waste of time.
The point is, before you even start running an Encounter, you need to figure out how that Encounter might start.
Signs of a Presence
Apart from determining when the characters might possibly realize they’ve encountered something, you also have to determine what the characters might actually perceive. And it’s this element of Encounter preparation that forced me to waste so much time talking about perception and other Problematic Actions.
Your goal is always to describe exactly what the characters perceive. And provide not one detail more. That’s partly so you leave conclusions for the characters to draw and partly so you force them to interact to find out more.
The characters might hear high-pitched, raucous voices echoing down the tunnel and maybe see a flicker of firelight around the bend. Given the distance and the echoing tunnel walls, they probably can’t make out the words or the language without moving closer though.
The characters might see a small party — no more than a dozen — humanoids moving across a distant rise. Perhaps sunlight glints off armor. Perhaps a banner flutters above them.
The characters might hear a rustling in the nearby underbrush somewhere off to the left.
The characters might see their torchlight catch a nearly invisible tripwire stretched across the hallway between the two statues.
When What Might Happen Doesn’t
When you’re preparing to run an Encounter — whether you do it in advance or at the table — you work out the best-case possibility. The first, smallest detail a character might perceive that invites action. But things don’t always play out that way. A character might notice a tripwire a few feet down the hallway, but the game mechanics might say different when the dice hit the table.
Thus, when you’re warming up to run an Encounter, you also decide what happens if the characters don’t notice the Encounter’s there. And what happens depends on the Encounter.
If the characters don’t hear the predator coming, they’re still going to Encounter it. They’ll just Encounter it as it pounces on the hapless wizard at the back of the formation. Whether they spot the tripwire or not, the characters will find the trap eventually. Often, the question isn’t whether the Encounter happens so much as how it happens and how much damage it deals before the party knows what’s happening.
Of course, there are times when unnoticed Encounters never happen. If the characters fail to spot the distant war party, the two groups might pass like ships in the night, never knowing the other was there. That happens.
You must also consider whether the Encountered thing is aware of the party. And how it acts if it is aware. This may be something you resolve at the table with some perception-type die rolls because the answer often depends on how the party’s going about their business. If the characters are staying quiet and maintaining cover, it’s much less likely they’ll be spotted by distant war parties.
This is where that Background Sim thing comes up. When the characters don’t know there’s an Encounter nearby, you have to know what’s going on outside their awareness. And you’ll need to be ready when that Encounter makes itself known. And know how it does so.
And this shit is where cat-and-mouse type Pursuit, Evasion, and Infiltration situations play out. At least, it’s how they start.
How the Encounter Plays Out
Preparing for an Encounter’s about determining the smallest detail the characters might become aware of at the earliest possible in-game moment and then deciding what happens if they don’t become aware of it.
Running an Encounter’s easy. It’s just describing what the characters perceive and inviting the players to act. Everything that follows is about adjudicating actions. You know how to do that shit. More or less.
When one action stops leading to another or when the characters stop interacting and move on or when there’s nothing left to interact with, the Encounter’s over. It’s that simple. Don’t overcomplicate it.
That said…
Give Them Space to React
The One-Check Encounter
People often ask me how I turn one-check Encounters into compelling game situations. See, some modern game systems — like the latest versions of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder — seem to encourage Game Masters to resolve complex situations with single rolls of the dice. Trap? Roll Disarm and done. Cliff? River? Roll Athletics. Stealth? Roll Stealth. Problem solved.
The answer — the start of it anyway — is lurking in the shadows in today’s lesson. All that shit about Telegraphing and starting encounters early and letting players react to tiny moments? That all helps turn simple Encounters into compelling gameplay.
Because, really, it ain’t the number of die rolls that make a game compelling. It ain’t the dice at all. It’s all the moments and choices that surround the rolls. Disarming a trap’s always going to be a single-roll thing. But if a trap starts with the players noticing a tiny detail, then investigating, then debating how to bypass it, and then disarming it, it’s satisfying gameplay.
Of course, some Encounters are quickie one-and-dones. There’s nothing wrong with that. It leaves plenty of time for more gameplay later and leaves the players feeling smugly overconfident. Which makes it all the funnier when the next Encounter rips them apart.
Most Game Masters don’t give their players room to react. Remember, your players’ characters can only act when you invite actions. And they can only react to things you describe. And Game Masters who forget that shit can’t figure out how to run complex Encounters. Nor do they know when the time’s right to pull out the proper mechanical resolution tools.
That question about the smallest noticeable detail that might engender a response? That’s a question you should be asking yourself all the time. What is the smallest thing to which a player might want to react?
Imagine the party intercepted that war party above. It’s orcs. The characters and the orcs are now standing fifteen yards apart — a reasonable distance for a loud conversation — with weapons drawn but not threatening. They’re sizing each other up. The orcs are trying to decide whether it’s worth a fight for the party’s equipment and whether they can win. The party’s trying to avoid wasting resources on a needless fight.
When the orcs decide to attack, what’s the smallest thing the characters might notice?
Mere Game Executors — at the moment they decided the orcs wanted a fight — would say, “the orcs snarl and charge; roll Initiative everyone!” But a True Game Master says, “the lead orc tightens his grip on his sword and shifts his weight. He’s ready to lead the charge. He starts to snarl an order… what do you do?”
Likewise, Mere Game Executors say things like, “you sprung a trap! Save! Ouch! Darts! For you! In your face!” True Game Masters say things like, “you feel a tile give a bit under your toes as you step; it sinks into the ground with a click. What do you do?”
This is called Telegraphing. You assume the characters are reasonably vigilant — assuming they’re aware of their surroundings — and let them react to what’s coming. Or at least, to declare their intention to react. If there’s a question of whether their nerves and muscles and bodies can react as fast as their brains, that’s what Dexterity checks, Reflex saves, and Initiative rules are for.
And that is what I mean by pulling out the tools in response to the players. When the players say, “we raise our weapons and meet the orcs’ charge,” that’s when you roll Initiative. What if the characters turned and fled instead? What if the paladin brandished his flaming sword and commanded the orcs to halt their charge?
I don’t know about you, but I’d feel really frigging stupid if I asked the players to roll Initiative if they weren’t actually going to fight.
And that — pulling out the right tools to resolve combats, social interactions, and other situations at the right moment — is what the next several lessons will be all about. Consider this a preview.
Meanwhile…
Dumping Your Encounter Mindset
Meanwhile, you’ve got your work cut out for you…
First, stop thinking of Encounters as chunks of specific kinds of gameplay. Encounters are just the moments when you invite the players to act.
Second, practice preparing to run Encounters. Grab a published module — or one of your homebrew adventures — and pick a few Encounters from it.
For each, figure out the earliest moment that a character — any random character ever, not a member of your current group — figure out the earliest moment that a character might become aware of the Encounter and figure out what details they might notice. For bonus points, decide how you’ll determine whether they’re actually aware or not. Assuming there’s any chance they might miss the Encounter.
Now decide what’ll happen if the characters don’t notice the Encounter. Will the Encounter happen? How? And, when you’re at the table, how will you determine what happens? What will you load into your Background Sim?
The point’s not to play hypothetical Encounters. It’s to figure out the smallest, earliest way an Encounter could happen and figure out what you’ll do at the table next if the Encounter doesn’t happen that way. How will you determine — taking into account everything that’s actually happening at the table — what happens next.
Practice that shit between games. And then practice running Encounters that start when the characters become aware there’s something to interact with.
In two weeks, I’ll teach you the correct time to actually roll initiative. Because I guarantee you’re doing it wrong. Especially if you’re doing it by the book.
Telling Game Mastering greenhorns to “get lost” is a missed opportunity to hyperlink them to _Game Angry_ my friend…
“Encounter-based thinking — seeing a game as a series of Encounters and, in particular, specific kinds of Encounters — is a bad habit instilled by most games’ rules.”
I have to stop reading here and comment. As I have noted before, as a novice gm, I was blessed (and also cursed) with a group of experienced players of the best (and also the most challenging) type. While they were eager and avid role-players, they were also clever and ruthless **game** players. They were equally apt to ignore the role play opportunities in favor of game play and vice versa. They were just as likely to go chasing after a wild rumor (randomly generated as ‘flavor text’) as pursue the obvious adventure hook. And every bit as likely to exploit an adventure design weakness as to play in the spirit of the adventure despite a flaw. I had to learn adaptability. All the proactive adventure design in the world means nothing if your players ignore it. The successful gm must also be reactive. This equally applies to encounters. The gm has near zero control over what encounters the pcs have. The players decide what is and isn’t an encounter for them.
“Now, I’m gonna let you finish, but first let me just stop you to disagree.”
There is literally an entire heading about REACTIVE GAME MASTERING.
But also, “the GM has near zero control” over what encounters the PCs have is utterly wrong. The GM actually has total, utter, and complete control over what happens at the game table. The players can choose whatever direction they want, but if the GM doesn’t run the encounter they’re after, it doesn’t happen. And a successful GM, as I have explained in previous articles, is assertive, neither wholly controlling and aggressive nor wholly a passive pushover. That is because a true master of the craft isn’t merely providing a toybox, he’s DESIGNING A GAME.
This is gonna be a detox to apply, but it’s a good one. There’s a few bits here, about perceiving ahead of time and not calling things like combat too early, that have rattled in my brain.
Then again, I’m coming back from a rough period where my GMing got slammed by bad times, so I need some of that good Angry Advice to kickstart my brain!
Tried this out last night in my game to some very interesting results. 1. I had to definitely restrain myself as I was used to providing too much. 2. The players took a while in figuring out what to do. They were clearly used to having too much detail/interpretation as they froze and were unsure what to do with just the interactive identification. They got better over the session but the first few times was definitely a “Bob, what does your character do? … Bob’s character is struck by indecision so Anne, what does your character do? … umm, what did I hear? … As Anne’s character tries to place the sound, Frank, what does your character do?” Definitely a learning curve for all but not a disaster.
I have the same experience all too often in my games. 5 players sitting around the table wondering which one of them is supposed to do something.
> and they speak Gobbledygook
My intrusive thought for the day is “Goblins all speak Goblindygook”
> I don’t know about you, but I’d feel really frigging stupid if I asked the players to roll Initiative if they weren’t actually going to fight.
It also makes things really awkward for the players, because the GM is implicitly telling the players that the only remaining solution is ultra-violence. Consciously or otherwise, this constrains the solutions that players think of.
I like the term scenes. Yes, it’s from the narrativist crowd insisting they’re jointly creating a story, but conceptually it eliminates the question of whether it is or is not an encounter.
I use scenes for something else. Something actually useful to distinguish.
The point here is you don’t run encounters differently from non-encounter encounter-like things. You shouldn’t. And if you run two things the same, distinguishing them is a distinction without a difference. It’s meaningless semantical gymnastics.
Thinking in “encounters” and “not encounters” leads to running less than your best game. Don’t do it.
I’m not thinking encounter/not encounter. I’m thinking… I’ll quote from one of your 2015 articles I found really useful.
“Scenes are where the game actually happens. That’s where the players are making choices. Remember, actions start with choices. Other actions can happen too, but actions and choices don’t happen outside of scenes. You can’t break away from that structure. Even a simple scene that involves only one choice is still a scene.”
It looks to me like your “Encounters are just the moments when you invite the players to act.” looks a lot like a scene.
I’m honestly not getting the difference.
Help?
I suspect that there is no real difference. An “Encounter” is basically a “Scene where there is something for the player characters to interact with”. That could be anything from some strange sound they hear, over a curious statue in the clearing they entered, to some form of “Smoke on the Horizon”. How that is resolved is then based on whatever the players choose to do.
Example, they might be interested in checking the statue for hidden/strange things, so it becomes a minor investigation encounter.
The result of that might be that the statue has a concealed cavity with a gem in it, or some form of rune or sigil in a not directly visible place (on the inside of a shield held in front of the statue, for example) or even that there is nothing more than what was immediately obvious to the party. Or anything else that the GM might want them to discover, like e.g. some magical residue that hints at petrification, warning the players that “something” with that ability is about. Or a combination of things.
The article is written from the Game Master hat perspective, and so encounters aren’t helpful in this context, because defining encounters only weigh the Game Master down. Scenes and encounters are the concern of the Adventure Design hat you, because they are useful in that context.
Remember, the definition of scene has been updated to “a scene is a continuous chunk of action in which the heroes are trying to accomplish a specific thing over the course of several encounters that occur in a certain place over a certain period of time.”
Interesting, because I would have defined it the other way around. (See my comment below)
Scenes are a term usually used in film and theatre. In film/TV it’s usually very easy to identify a scene as a moment where one specific event takes place. Such as a car chase, or two people talking to each other, maybe they begin fighting? Or it’s just a conversation. The fight might actually go over into a new scene. It might first happen inside in a bed room, but when one character is thrown out the window into the busy street the scene changes as the environment changes.
I would say the whole fight is an encounter, but it’s made up of several scenes.
In the article: The players might notice the moving ork army, that’s a scene. They are too far away to interact with the army, but they can take actions based on the army, that’s the encounter.
When they meet the army they are still in the same encounter, but it’s a new scene.
To all the ones trying to figure out what Angry uses the term Scene for, he wrote an article about it in 2019: https://theangrygm.com/between-adventure-and-encounter/
Unless his definition has changed since then, I believe this is what he refers to.
My understanding is that a Scene is a chunk of gameplay smaller than an adventure, (but larger than an encounter) which can be used for challenges on a bigger scale than the single encounter. So, if you have a dungeon adventure, you might have a Scene dedicated to travelling to the dungeon, then the Dungeon itself is a Scene, and when the Undead monster escapes from the dungeon and heads for the nearby village, saving the village might be another Scene
This is correct and it will be revisited much later on in the year. It’s an especially important concept when considering the design of macrochallenge in adventures.
Very useful concept. I’m going to make use of this starting today. Thank you. 🙂
I have been following the True Game Mastery series with a great deal of interest, and feel I have been getting a lot out of it so far. However, this article takes it to another level. The zen like simplicity of “an Encounter is when PCs run into something they can interact with” kind of blew my mind, but also clicks in such a satisfying way. I will definitely be working on resetting my preconceived notions and how I run my games. Thanks Angry!
It’s always a little disconcerting when Angry writes an introduction about how the article is going to be a fight-starting mind-whammy, and then you read the thing and everything in it is intuitive, obvious, and a close match for how you already do things.
Agreed.
Good teachers take complex topics and make them seem simple and intuitive.
Angry is good at this!
Nice to see you finally updating the main True Mastery series index page. It really helps me checking whether you’ve released a new article.
A tangent of a tangent but why is the “show, don’t tell” adage actually generally important? Importantly, I’m not arguing with the rest of the sidebar specifically – that’s solid advice for the situation – I’m asking why “show, don’t tell” is supposed to be a good advice *generally*.
Because telling is _boring_. It’s not active. _Showing_ invites the audience to come to their own conclusion, and an idea or realization welling up from inside is WAY stronger. It means you to believe the thing to be true.
May I say in Italian this time? Bellissimo articolo! It gave me a lot of ideas and solved a couple of issues I have as GM.
Anyway, I have a question about the following part: “If the characters don’t hear the predator coming, they’re still going to Encounter it. They’ll just Encounter it as it pounces on the hapless wizard at the back of the formation.”
In this case, do you call for initiative because the wizard is surprised and the combat should have already begun?
Nope, judging by what Angry said in the article I don’t think there would be any need to call for initiative here. You only need to call for initiative once the PCs have actually told you they’re going to participate in combat, so instead of calling for initiative it would be something more like: “the predator pounces on the wizard at the back of the formation. What do you do?”
This mindset requires you to get comfortable with doing things like movement and dealing damage even before initiative is rolled. It feels weird, but it really isn’t that different from a trap.
Players can walk over traps without counting squares, and the trap can hit them and deal damage without rolling initiative.
But… you might need to track a kind of pseudo-initiative in your head so that you don’t just have the predator *kill* the wizard before everyone has a chance to act. You’re basically running a theater-of-the-mind encounter with an ad-hoc initiative order based on a sort of “passive initiative score.”
Which, honestly, is probably how theater of the mind should work anyways. Trying to track movement and positioning exactly without a grid is a nightmare. Plus, you might end up just transitioning into a chase scene, and grids don’t work well for chases at all.
If you are playing 5e, this is covered by the rules.
You might choose to ignore the rules, but rules as written, as soon as the undetected monster decides to pounce:
1 – every participating creature rolls initiative
2 – every creature that is not aware of the monster gets a surprised condition (creatures with the surprised condition cannot take actions, bonus actions, reactions or move until the end of their turn)
3 – the combat proceeds in turn order.
Mechanically, this means that if the wizard rolls an initiative higher than the pouncing monster, their surprised condition ends before the monster attacks, and they can, e.g. cast shield as a reaction. If they roll lower, they are still surprised and cannot cast shield.
These rules are crap and wholly incompatible with what I’ve outlined. They are good enough for Mere Game Executors, but when I do the “Roll Initiative” lesson – coming soon – I’ll give you a better approach for True Game Masters.
I love this encounter approach, especially in OSR. I find difficult to have a freeform mindset when playing crunchy d20 systems like D&D and PF where 90% of options are about combat, and game balance is based on resource attrition on a daily basis.
> Mere Game Executors — at the moment they decided the orcs wanted a fight — would say, “the orcs snarl and charge; roll Initiative everyone!” But a True Game Master says, “the lead orc tightens his grip on his sword and shifts his weight. He’s ready to lead the charge. He starts to snarl an order… what do you do?”
It is hard for me to imagine doing this while inviting priciple character to act. Should I ask just one player what does his character do? And when the answer is “I engage in combat”, should I allow that player act first even if his initiative roll will be lower? Because it seems strange to ask a specific player for an action and then saying “Ok, but Bob will act first”
In answer to your questions, if it feels wrong in your gut, don’t do it.
A few things to consider instead:
“I engage in combat” isn’t a sufficient action declaration. Find out what the player wants to happen and how they intend to make it happen.
When everyone wants to act at the same time you can invite multiple players to act in turn before resolving the actions. Get to the point where you can repeat the action back to them before inviting the next player to act. Often players will imply through their intent and approach when they want their actions to resolve. Sometimes they will explicitly tell you. When everything is happening all at once, it never hurts to figure out everything that is happening first, before trying to make it all happen at once.
Initiative is a tool for putting nearly-simultaneous actions in a random order. It’s for when it matters in what order things resolve and you don’t know what order to put them in. Don’t roll dice if you know the outcome. If you feel that one thing should happen before another, make the first thing happen first. If it doesn’t matter what order actions resolve you don’t need to roll initiative.
Don’t treat initiative as a button you have to press to engage combat. Treat it as a tool, like any other tool, that you may use to determine what you need to describe when the players declare actions.
As I understood, you suggest to ask all players for actions before adjudicating them. Your comment sounds consistent with the Angry approach, but I’m afraid the delay between player declaring action and his character performing it will feel bad. Especially when the situation will have changed because of other actions that get higher initiative.
So, I don`t feel like inviting players to act before they can acutally act is a good idea. I totally agree with you that initiative should be seen as a tool. Still, I’m trying to wrap my head around how a DM can delay calling for initiative while inviting a Principal Character to act. I mean, initiative is used exactly to determine which character is principal at the moment, isn’t it?
I don’t change the situation between inviting a player to act and resolving the action. I find out what all the actions happening are, I resolve them, and then I describe the outcome.
For example, when the orcs prepare to charge I invite the archer who is standing arrow knocked and bow at the ready to act. Unsurprisingly, they want to shoot the lead orc as he charges across the open field. The soldier wants to protect the squishy wizard by stepping in front of him and setting his shield and spear against the charge, the barbarian wants to give into the rage and charge headlong towards the orcs to start butchering them with his axe as soon as possible, etc.
Once I know what’s happening I can determine outcomes. The archer shoots before the orc charge reaches him because that makes sense to me. The barbarian crashes into an orc in the middle of the field and they exchange blows. The charging orcs slam into the soldier’s shield wall.
I don’t call for initiative because I don’t need a random temporal order. It is clear to me from the player’s actions what happens when.
I determine the principle character the same way as I always do; I pick someone who is in a position to do something.
Thanks for an example! That is something for me to think about, the example sounds really neat
Also, your suggestion sounds similar to 5e Initiative variant where players must declair actions at the start of the round and roll initiative after. IIRC, Angry liked this variant because it creates uncertanty at the moment of decision making, thus, emulating the chaos of a battle.
On the other hand, after several sessions with this variant my players told it discourages creative actions because of how often they would be wasted. The players defaulted to the most reliable actions and repeated them round after round, which was not the case with the standard rules.
So, I guess, there are both pros and cons to asking for actions in advance. It is an interesting tool to create a feeling of chaotic scene, but it comes with a price.
I’m suggesting that initiative should not dictate what actions the players can imagine. If I tell a player an orc is charging out of the cover of the woods and across 60 ft of open grass, I think it’s reasonable for the player to try to act when the orc is in the open but not in their face. I would not roll initiative and tell the player that either the orc is still in the woods, or is sticking a sword in their belly, and there is not time in between where you could do anything.
I think you are overthinking it. The intent is to let the players have a moment to react, give them a chance to do something else than attacking.
” And when the answer is “I engage in combat”, should I allow that player act first even if his initiative roll will be lower?.
No, the moment he initiates combat, initiative order gets decided through whatever means. If he is further down the order he just took longer to draw his sword, ready his magic or whatever.
I started thinking more about this when I decided that my next campaign would be an OSR system, rather than 5E.
New School RPGs are very much about the “balanced combat encounters” which I have noticed makes players more likely to attack on sight, or not bother with other solutions.
If combat isn’t always fair, then it’s also not fair to the players if they aren’t given a chance to solve the encounter in a way that’s not going to kill them.
I would like to come back to the notion of Telegraphing. It seems to me that this involves choosing where the abstraction of an action’s resolution begins (ie when the player can press a skill’s button). For example, if a player spots a trap, should we be able to answer all his questions about how the trap works? So that the player can circumvent it without using the dedicated skill?
Or maybe it’s an issue with “button skills” like Disarming a Trap. After all, moving a rock, cutting a rope, erasing a rune, balancing a pressure plate are actions as diverse as they are unrelated. And/or covered by other skills.
But perhaps abstract “catch-all” button skills are necessary to keep the game flowing and avoid going into too much detail. Moreover, if they harm the gameplay, they reinforce the impression of interpreting a character more competent than us. It seems to me that there is an interesting grain size question here, i.e. where to provide players with choices.
Well, obviously you need to play within your system. Cutting out “button-press” skills would be hard in an existing system that already uses them.
It would be really interesting to run traps the same way we run monsters – i.e. the players have to know (or guess) how to disable a trap. It certainly seems more fun than “roll to win.” Just like monsters, you should probably give your more knowledgeable characters’ players some hints based on investing in a skill.
So if you succeed at a roll, you know how to disarm it, but if you fail then you have to use trial and error. At that point, it’s basically a puzzle, but with a side of death.
When they originally ported old 2e adventures into 3e, there was a good bit of discussion about the difference between the two approaches, with 2e being an old school ‘describe the trap mechanics and zero skills could help’ and the 3e push button approach. YMMV, but I always found a mixed approach worked best, with some traps being of the push button variety, (Ok, you’re trying to futz with it and disarm it, but there’s a risk there’s a booby trap or you’ll accidentally trigger it) and some being of a more interactive variety.
My experience was that while the push button approach was less fun overall, it didn’t create a situation where the _players_ all refused to act because they were just sitting there wracking their brains trying to think how it worked. i.e. using a roll as a gate forced the situation to resolve one way or another. (Having since read Angry’s discussion of fail by 5 mechanics, I think I’d add that in as well)
This and changing how I narrate during battle made for a very compelling game last night. My players made some really out of the box choices that I’ve never seen them do before. It was a lot of fun!
This does put encounter design into a light that I think I used to grasp intuitively when I started, but I just kept building complexity onto it because I thought it was necessary. Tiny simple interactable actions, and the earliest the PC’s could notice them, and a bit of background SIM to determine what happens if they don’t.
Honestly, I’m still caught up on “Your goal is always to describe exactly what the characters perceive. And provide not one detail more. That’s partly so you leave conclusions for the characters to draw and partly so you force them to interact to find out more.”
I think, as a world builder, I tend to paint in broad strokes, and epic campaigns, and the world-spanning motivation of the villains, this is where I struggle the most, and of course it seems to be where all of the fun at the table actually resides. I want the players to sense the “gravitas” of the situation, and the NPC’s actions, rather than just let them play the game, and let the nature of things unfold.
I have a lot of deprogramming to do, and practicing narrating the “moment of awareness” of encounters seems like a great place to start
“you are never, ever, to call for Initiative rolls until the players give you permission to do so.”
this gave me a chuckle. On my last session, after a series of bad decisions from my players, they burst through a door and I immediately called for initiative as if it were a gotcha moment.
I only realized halfway through while they were getting their shit kicked in I lost a good opportunity to let the players decide how to handle a bad situation (and learn more about what was happening in the plot), instead I threw them in a fight they probably felt they were forced to fight.
Oh well I’ll stop being shit one day
I’ve been putting this into practice! I’ve read another article where you make mention of freezing time just after a trap has been triggered. In my last session, a character stepped on a tile and they heard a click. I asked everyone what they were doing, and it led to a more dynamic outcome than “okay, you fail your Dex saving throw.” The players were in control of their actions, and we used the dice to resolve those. It’s a nice inversion of asking for saving throws and then describing what kind of action would have led to a failed or successful roll.
Dear Angry,
I cannot tell why, but this is not a pleasant read. And not in a way “I disagree with what you say and therefore blahblahblah”.
It just reads like it doesn’t amount to much. I got used to your writing being, for a lack of a better word, _dense_ – that as I read on, new stuff unlocked.
Here you seem to spend a lot of time fighting the idea of what encounters are (only to rightly summarize it as “who cares” – I agree with this) and then only drop a sliver of advice “ok but what if the plan doesn’t survive it’s first contact with the reality?”… like… duh.
Background sim is nice, that could use a separate article.
I am trying to be constructive here mr Angry, and I am failing. Pls figure out what I am writing about, because sure as hell there is something wrong here.
Regards,
A person that appreciates your work