Improv 06: Running the Encounter

We’ve talked about the four steps I follow when building an encounter on the fly.

Step One: Consider the Context

Step Two: Plan how the Encounter will Feel

Step Three: Choose Enemies and Hazards

Step Four: Add Depth and Personality

With those four steps, you can build unique, memorable and fun encounters in a few seconds.

So we’re done, right?

Not so – there’s a difference between building an encounter and running it.

Sometimes, you need to improvise an encounter because the party have just leapt into one, feet first. That’s not usually how it works. Usually, one of the players wonders if they should explore the caves off to the side of the path and you realise you don’t have anything for them.

You have some warning, even if it’s just a few seconds.

That means you have the opportunity to make it seem like this improvised encounter was part of your plan all along.

Here’s how NOT to do it:

“As you enter the cave, bandits leap out of the shadows, blades drawn! ‘Get them, you scum!’ a skinny, one-eyed bandit with an oversized sword says. ‘Bring me anything valuable they have!’”

It’s not terrible, I guess, but it feels rushed.

No, it feels improvised. That’s not what we’re aiming for here. A properly planned encounter wouldn’t – or perhaps that’s shouldn’t – go from nothing to a full fight like that. It’s bad drama.

Artfully improvising an encounter often means foreshadowing it.

Once you’ve built your encounter, the next step is to set the mood and drop some hints.

“As you enter the cave, you notice how eerily quiet it is. This cave is empty of the usual critters you’d expect to find. It seems abandoned, yet the vines growing thick in these parts aren’t covering the entrance. It’s clear they’ve been torn.”

I’m laying it on a bit thick there, but I’m sure you get the idea. In a few sentences, you’re telling the party a few important things. Firstly, something is probably in the cave. What, they don’t know. It could be friend or foe, wild animal or supernatural force, threat or opportunity.

Secondly, it sets the tone, adding some tension.

Thirdly, it tells the party that you had planned this encounter all along. There’s no way you’d have come up with all this detail on the fly, wink wink.

Fourthly, it gives them a choice. They can enter the cave or they can decide not to risk it. Is that realistic? No – in real life, sometimes stuff just happens to you. But this isn’t real life, it’s a story and the PCs are the protagonists. It’s bad storytelling for stuff to happen to the main characters without them driving things. Obviously that’s not a firm rule and sometimes you do want to surprise them, but giving the players agency is usually a good idea.

Fifthly, it will probably make them pause, at least for a few seconds. That’s precious time you can use to look over your monsters’ stats and abilities, refine their personalities and flesh out their backstories.

So that’s why you should foreshadow your encounters, even the improvised ones.

The key ingredient?

Uncertainty.

Most encounters will have a degree of uncertainty before they begin. If the party have scouted out an enemy camp and are planning an ambush, then I’d reward that by dialling back the uncertainty. Most of the time, though, they’ll be acting on very incomplete information. Before the encounter begins, have them ask themselves some questions. What’s in this cave? Why isn’t that goblin scared of us? What killed all the plants around here? Where are the rest of the kobolds we saw earlier?

Having built the encounter, you can reveal some things about it while holding back key details.

The calm before the storm is terrifying. In an encounter, the questions tend to collapse to how can we win this? Before the encounter, the questions sprawl across probability space, centred around what will happen?

Give the party hints and clues. Let them have incomplete information about the risks, rewards or both. Reveal whispers about the different ways they could approach – or avoid – this encounter.

We’re still not done with my encounter improv process. For now, you’ll just have to be uncertain of what comes next.