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

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

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

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

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

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.