How To Plan For Encounters

hello and welcome to adventuring academy office hours my name is Brendan Lee mulligan on your humble dungeon master this is our show where we take a little bit of time to answer some questions that you all have in the chat and on our disk cortical other places about how to run tabletop role-playing games so happy to have y'all back a couple little pieces of housekeeping at first this is your on the dimension 20 channel make sure to LIKE and subscribe make sure to hit that Bell so you get notifications about when we put up cool new content we got cool new stuff we got you know episodes of dimension 20 and adventuring our stuff coming up and we got a new videos in the pipeline for you guys they should be really exciting and fun also make sure to head over to drop back TV we have a great thing going called the dollar deal which you can get for $1.00 the first month of drop out that's crazy all you could binge all of our you know dozens and dozens of hours which mentioned 20 content for a buck my good grief how cool is that without further ado we're gonna jump in here real quick to answer some stuff we'll start well this is a little a fun one at first if you could exist in the world of D&D 5e what subclass of wizard would you be got a go diviner a Diane a burn aunt of fantasy high fame a diviner wizard that portent ability is just so cool imagine rolling on that 20 and knowing that you could succeed on one thing that day as good as you could succeed on anything that's a ooh that's a good ability do you think that CR is the best way to balance encounters or is there some other method you prefer to use so in this case CR is a previewed meaning challenge rating so for those who don't know in the last couple editions of Dungeons & Dragons monsters have had a challenge rating which is a number associated with them to give you an idea about what party level that is most appropriate for right this is sort of balanced on the idea of a four person adventuring party I'm going to tell you right now challenge rating is helpful as a ball park and in practice is not going to help you make an actually challenging encounter I've got on the record before and said this for an encounter for a combat encounter in D&D 5e to be gripping for viewers meaning you're designing an actual play encounter but the idea that people outside of the game will be watching the encounter an encounter needs to be deadly to even be worth writing home about the way the game is balanced in my opinion is that an easy encounter will be fun for players because they are gonna mop the floor with these monsters as opposed to something deadly where there's even in a lot of deadly encounters you know you're gonna see people come back very easily there's been some people have said that my encounters are very difficult or challenging because of that I've scaled them to deadly and higher but even the ones that people have written as being like well that's a tough dang encounter like you know the-the-the Wall Street encounters spoilers by the way or light spoilers the wall street encounter in a sleeping city or the final fight and fantasy high these were so far past deadly encounters these were all the way out there in terms of their deadliness in the final fight again I can't tell you who it has been the final fight of season 1 the players went in with half spell slots and half hit points and almost took the fight that was way outside of there of deadly for them right and in wall street you know if the villains hadn't been doing what they were trying to do the PCs if they were just fighting to the death pcs would have completely killed them no problem that's where the fight was headed they would have mopped the floor with them so I think challenge rating in fight he's a little underpowered personally I think that for the most part especially when you get into action economies of having six pcs at your table your PCs are going to murder they're gonna in the clock with your bad guys which can be okay so you need to start thinking also about challenge rating in terms of like how many resources do your pcs have will they have taken a shorter long rest are they at full capacity is the terrain on their side is the environment on their side that being said I think that sometimes CR can go the other way where if you're not taking into account the composition of your party or the makeup and also certain abilities that have the potential to like in one series of that okay let's say there's there's an ability that has characters be affected with the paralysis status or stunned for example one set of bad roles if they're not allowed to like make saves in successive rounds you can suddenly see a low challenge rating encounter completely wipe out your entire party I think that unfortunately there is no way for a DM to not do some sussing out in their head of the actual abilities on the table the actual damage outputs when you're making an encounter balance it not just by the rubric the feat game design has given you balance it you will know your PC's ahead of time you'll know what they're good saves are you'll know the abilities that your NPCs and your monsters are most likely to use it's not bad to do one thing you can think about with most combats is most combats are three or four rounds run yourself through the likely strategy of your monsters and NPCs through those first couple rounds and look at your player characters abilities and say are these guys absolutely going to be toast is there a weakness in my PCs that I'm not seeing here that I'll be really surprised by the last thing you want to do is get into a TPK scenario and realize like this was completely under my ability to anticipate and I kind of set my pcs up for failure here the flip side of that is fruits ooh if I said my PC's up for success and this is not an engaging combat because they were just going to nail this no matter what right as in everything you the idea that your encounters have the same level of risk that makes any storytelling exciting and therefore you know you there will be actual risk involved but your pcs if they play at smart can come out on top with another one here how much feedback do you get from your players between sessions I try to make it a habit to ask for comments and criticisms over what went well and what could have gone better either this for my ongoing campaigns and my one-shots slash convention appearances this is a great question I think PC feedback and player feedback between sessions is awesome uh also something that kind of happens informally just if you're like pals with your players like me like you know I think everyone has been a situation where like you know you're with one of your players out in public and they'll be like dude I talked about the last session and all of people's you know other friends that don't play D&D you're like oh they're gonna talk about D&D now and you have to go squirrel away in a corner and get some hors d'oeuvres because you're at a wedding there's might be very specific to me but point being you go talk about your campaign and you're like oh my god I can't believe what happened I think that decompression is a very natural part of the process after you you know have a great session or a session that people who maybe had some issues or problems with so I think that's very natural it doesn't even have something to be need to be that formal as a DM it's great for you to talk about your PC talk to your PC's about how the last session was for them parts that were fun or engaging or otherwise not just for Machiavellian reasons of like please fill out this form you know on a scale of one to five did yous would you agree strongly agree or something like that but the the information I'm mostly glean when I decompress with my players after a session is what they were focused on what grab their attention how their character was feeling if they didn't get to stay at the table and especially like what their plans are for the future that is really the main thing I think a DM can glean from their players is like what's your character planning on doing next some players will get really cagey my one of my players Genevieve Casa Grande is extremely cagey because she's like the DM is the enemy it doesn't wanna tell me her plans but the truth is that I'm never usually never doing that to like warts what they're gonna do mostly it's so that I can prepare for their plans to work right because if I have some information about what they're going to attempt to do I can map out those dungeons I can craft those NPCs ahead of time so I think also if you're a PC at a table contact your DM with what your plans are gonna be because a lot of times if you're like we're gonna reach out to make new allies in this town that we've journeyed to before cool if I have prep time I'll be able to make some really cool allies for you to reach out to so I think that the best thing to reach out to for your PC's in your game is how did you feel about the last session what did it inspire in your character to try to do next John rammers asks what is your take on alignments thanks John I appreciate it alignments were much more important in three point five and second edition which is where I started they're less important now I detect evil and good literally doesn't detect evil and good anymore it detects celestial fey and Undead I understand why they're moving away from it look these alignment systems certainly don't map to sort of what morality really is in our real world right in the real world morality is sort of like a culturally based idea of pro-social and antisocial behaviors and the law and chaos think it's even more fuzzy when you try to approximate it to real-world ideologies and morality where law and chaos I in my in my estimation and this is not I'm not saying this as an authority I'm saying this is someone that studied philosophy and plays a lot of tabletop games I think that sort of like good versus evil can be understood on a psychological level as pro-social antisocial be and then law and chaos I think is maybe more alike communal other based might be law like the idea looks pro systems and that chaos tends to be like pro individual Pro exception like what are the exceptions to systems what are the cases that aren't covered by systems that might be a little bit too abstract but I think that tends to kind of cover those right so a chaotic good person becomes somebody who is very pro-social but tends to be individualistic minded and focuses on the margin cases that are not caught by larger systems whereas a lawful good character is also pro-social but tends to think about community's organizational structures systems how do we you know focus less on individuals and single units and more on broader systems and large scope things I think alignments I was talking to Matt Mercer about this and he basically said that like the nice thing about alignments is that they help people that are not used to thinking about things in that way play a heroic character right what would my character do I think sometimes we forget how nice it is for people that don't necessarily take like a duck to water immediately towards the role-playing side of things kind of how these older systems that might feel a little bit simplistic but are helpful if you have never thought about like oh man what is the morality of my character like if this world is real I should take these actions very very seriously right I also think that you there's a part of me that's an old curmudgeon that thinks you can never get away from alignment because for example even in five units done its best to get away from alignment you still have the outer Plains you still have the Great Wheel right so if you have Mount Celestia running clockwise all the way back to our KD on the other side that means that there is a cosmological truth to the table of alignment so if you're a plans Walker and someone's like hey man I believe in relative morality you're like no dude I've been to the city of doors I've been to the mountain are boria a thin debate or alignment is a tange aspect of a certain segment of reality being these dimensions that exist an ideological space you can't really get away from them that's always kind of a funny thing I had a character one time that was lawful good they got in a fight because someone was like someone tried to pull that like that likes it move like from my point of view the Jedi are evil and my character was like I'm detecting evil on you right now you're working for a prince of the abyss this is tangible we don't have to be theoretical about this which is something that you have to consider whether you're in those D&D worlds Zi Wang asks what is your stance on random encounters especially if they are deadly do you do they make mistakes greater do they have simply annoyed players and waste time see well this is an awesome question thank you so much for this random encounters I am if we take the term random encounters to actually mean random encounters I am very much against them right every the fact that there can be a potentially character killing encounter that is completely unrelated to the thrust of the story you are telling bums people out but random encounters doesn't necessarily mean with a wilderness encounter doesn't necessarily mean an encounter on the road going to a place right what I would say is this yeah I'm even I hadn't even okay with some encounters being drawn off by an encounter table meaning they are like rolled by dice and in that case kind of random it's your job as a storyteller to make sure that your random encounters don't feel random does that make sense it's your job what a strange rhetorical question for me to ask there's no way for you to talk through the camera bag to me I guess if it makes sense höllerer the chat give me a give me an s4 sense in the chat so what we want to see there is if you have a place that you want to feel dangerous traveling through it is ill-advised and you want bring up a monster or encounter table to reflect you guys have come to a part of the world that is way more dangerous than normal rather than having it be the kind of thing but we're gonna roll a dice and then a mobs going to attack if you don't I would say roll dice to start making the landscape more dangerous start having people see signs of monsters can they start to be stealthy cool you're being stealthy err and now you're traveling rate is slowed you're hunting for food ok well the best places to get food are gonna be the places that the monsters know to get food as well in other words don't have it necessarily feel as much like a final fantasy world map where it's like you're walking you're gonna hit monsters . that's it what you're trying to do in a lot of these situations is what tell a story you're trying to build tension you're trying to create a feeling of dread so in that case make sure that your table doesn't feel like a sort of random punishment that the players never could have avoided have them make hard decisions when they go to more dangerous places they're going to a dangerous wilderness cool what steps are you taking for me to not hit something you don't want on this encounter table and then if they get really unlucky then that reflects real life right so I think your job is to have those random encounters feel like story points and to also figure the timetable you're rolling on if they're traveling for weeks in the wilderness and you're rolling for random encounters every hour your player is going to be dead before they get to the location they're going to write so it's your job to kind of think of managing the story beats of these right if you know if you have messed up the statistics of the likelihood of the roles you're making and your characters are having way deadlier encounters more often on the road to the dungeon than they are when they get to the dungeon itself you've kind of screwed up your own story right it's like oh my god to the dungeon and the dragon was easy the wolves and stuff we were fighting on the way we leveled up four times on the road to get here that's just gonna feel nonsensical it won't feel earned right so I think use encounters with a lot of purpose and intention so them into the story have it tell a part of your story have it feel right for your setting Omni arcane asks hi Brenna do you have a favorite clan / sect in vampire the masquerade what about a favorite world of darkness game line if not vampire this is a great question Gangrel baby I love them dirty boys I love the The Beastie of the beastie vampires I've played a lot of very fun Gangrel characters that I really enjoy cool Bob bond let me see here this next one is gonna be M blast Roy's asks how do I create a large campaign like fantasy hi thanks em blasters I don't know that I necessarily with all the loving attention agree with the premise of the question I wouldn't say that fantasy I is a particularly large campaign number one had it only had 17 episodes in the first season it has eight combats and after that the world took place in that lease in that first season in one town so I'd say the fantasy house actually kind of a small campaign um but if you're asking about how you create large campaigns in general um I would say don't worry about the size of your campaign there's a funny there's a fight thing go that mean I get finger waggy for a second so funny thing going on around these parts which is people going like how do I create a large campaign or being like like people come up to me all the time and be like I'm gonna run a one shot and like and sometimes people will even say it like I'm gonna run a one shot so that it's easy and I go one shots are way harder than just doing the first session of a campaign there's a very there's an attitude towards some of these things which is like like people I think when people say I'm going to do a long campaign or I'm going to do a one shot there's always a part of me that goes like oh child you claim to know which you cannot know you know in terms of a large campaign just start it might not be a large campaign you guys might you know someone might get a job or move or have a kid or so you know like just start playing you know what the story kind of develop I've the the ten year campaign I'm started running I didn't know there's gonna be a ten year campaign we just kept it going we kept buying back in and similarly when you run as sometimes people do you want to run in one shot just take it from me run it running a one shot is way more stressful than just starting a campaign because with the idea of the idea of a one shot is you're going to bring this story to a satisfying conclusion in X amount of hours that is not a humble proposition that is hard to do so for everyone out there that's sort of like one shots sound easier one shots are not easier they are much harder the the the much easy thing to do is like I'm gonna run a session I have an adventure we'll see how far we get we'll wrap it up you know when we feel sleepy like that's that's a much more humble proposition for most people so I would I would caution you do not fall into the preconception that one shots are somehow easier to run they're actually challenging ooh let me see here Emily price does that shirts a berkland or am i tripping ah this should say Brooklyn no I'm kidding as an awesome artist Peter Schmidt who created this shirt it's one of my favorite possessions in the world shout-out to Peter Schmidt see here Lilly admirer is feasible to attempt damming for a larger party of six plus first-time players in a more casual setting if so any and all tips would be so very appreciated uh cool yeah you can you can DM for a larger party of six plus first-time players in a more casual setting um that's totally fine so like let me see here what's going to happen if you have more six players that are all playing for the first time and it's a little bit more casual right um combat takes longer the more pcs you have the more pcs you have the more their abilities will all benefit each other and the stronger they'll get right it's not it's it's more it's almost like exponential the more you add the more powerful the PCs get right [Music] there's grad if she gets more fun there's more tricks than you can have up their sleeve I would also say that focus at the table gets hard side conversations are more likely to happen the more people are in the room getting together for further further sessions cuz you have more schedules right so sort of statistics right the more people there are the more likely it is that someone will drop out or have to cancel the last minute I would also say that the harder time you're gonna have giving people individual spotlight the more player dynamics there will be sort of at work I wasn't they passed a certain amount of people it just gets hard for people you know people's like can their focus can kind of scatter so I'm just say take a lot of care and time energy making sure people on the same page also try to read the room right if people want a more jocular a casual game that's not the end of the world it's not a bad thing to have a more casual game it might be harder to keep people's focus it also passed a certain amount of people like if you have ten people playing in combat people might be waiting 45 minutes to an hour between turns just realistically right especially if it's casual and people are doing bits and not paying attention and needing to catch up you know casual means longer right people are around more so like you know it can kind of become a feedback loop if you're not careful there's some other fun stuff here Gus Grisham I recently began preparing to run my first big campaign but I'm worried that the stories I come up with might not be interesting enough do you have any tips for nervous first time's yams Gus I'm sure you're gonna do great nervousness just means you here's perfectly okay to be nervous I'm sure you're gonna kill it what I would say here is this you're not coming up with stories you're players and you are coming up with stories together your job you will be a better storyteller by just listening to what your players are trying to do and enforcing consequences from the real world on to the crazy shenanigans they come up with it's not your job to be a novelist it's your job to be a good listener and it's your job to play the characters in your worlds truthfully right I think that you could be surprised just keep a good eye open for what your players are following where their areas of interest lie you don't have to lift the whole world up on your shoulders you just need to be in the moment with your players that's a great question thank you for that let's see here DM noise here this one's from another person is that your username it's a great username what should I keep in mind if I run a pirate slash seafaring campaign uh this is great um and this is a wonderful thing as with everything else reward player focus your players are pirates do they just want to get rich come up with a lot of cool treasure mechanics come up with how do you move stolen goods in this world do you have a fence like look up how real-life criminals and pirates did that back in the day where are the big port cities how does the economy work my brother ran a great Griffin Johnston ran this great pirate seafaring campaign and he mmm researched maritime stuff and how ships were built and how naval combat worked and he also looked up like the economies of the different ports and stuff so our pirates had a lot of tangible toys to play with however if you're not interested in doing like a high maritime campaign but really like a more goofier pirate thing cool come up with shenanigans is there a big mountain of gunpowder barrels somewhere is there a crazy place where like you know colony of monkeys have come with all the stolen watches somewhere and have made a little sort of monkey colony for themselves right you can like world building only needs to be logistical and well researched if the tone that you're going for is a realistic one right world building does not mean realistic realism is a vibe and if you're going for that vibe but then go realistic but world building is really about hitting a tone and making people feel satisfied with a world that they can exist in and that feels not necessarily realistic but truthful which is why you can go to the world of harry potter and see incredible world building even though the logistics of that world are mind-boggling people you can adults can teleport in this I've said this on this podcast before adults in that world can teleport they get their mail delivered by nature's slowest flying bird and I know what you're saying you can't operate in the ground of Hogwarts fine there's still Alice everywhere else why would I ever write a letter if I have something to say to you I'm gonna teleport to you and say it why do we have letters that's my that's my rant on that this this last one this would be our last question were to do today this was from Maxwell Dillard thanks max well how was it DMing for the McIlroy's in the upcoming season of dimension 20 the McIlroy's are the sweetest nicest family in the world it was look you know dimension 20 premiered a year a little over a year ago September of last year and since then I've gotten to play with the Mercer and McIlroy's it's a it's a it's stupid it's a dream come true and it's very silly I'm gonna be with you you know I was listening I was watching critical role and listening to Taz for ages and I've never dreamed in a million years that I would have gotten to go on an adventure with them it was really fun myself and Jess Ross and Willie do as such a fun time welcoming those dudes to our CollegeHumor offices here and the adventure is really insane there's so many just crazy shenanigans and we're like so excited to get to show you guys that it is unlike any other dimension 20 adventure we've done in terms of like the world we're in it's this crazy like the borrower's meets Ocean's eleven six Episode adventure and I love heist movies so much and this heist is crazy and also very itty-bitty I love you guys thanks much for joining make sure to go check it out we got a ton of dimension xx stuff on drop out here on the channel we have all of our old adventuring academy podcasts and everything else thanks so much for tuning in we will catch you guys next time farewell intrepid heroes [Music] you

Channel: Dimension 20

Views: 61,395

Rating: 4.9862804 out of 5

Keywords: office hours, dimension 20, brennan lee mulligan, dungeon and dragons

Id: 7NyGLheozCE

Length: 30min 3sec (1803 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019