4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

I thought it would be good to have a thread for discussing the entries in general. 

On the whole I’m impressed with the variety of ideas presented, likely covering a wide range of game styles from simple hack/slash to over-the-top adventure, and even a few more ‘realistic’ takes.  It looks to be a very interesting contest indeed, with some hard choices to be made depending on how the voting will be set up.

I was more than a little suprised to see entries using classes, races, and monsters that are confirmed to not be covered by the first wave of core supplements.  Certainly it will all be in the game eventually, but for now it’s a gutsy choice to use them.  I’ll be interested to see hear how others respond.

I’m a little annoyed to see that several entries clearly contain more than one encounter, at least from my POV, however I understand that the idea of ‘encounter’ is changing significantly so there is bound to be some disagreement about just where one stops and another begins.  I’m not going to be pointing any fingers here… after all, someone might consider my entry to fall into that camp as well!

So… what are your thoughts on the contest?

I’m glad to see the diverse entries. The depth shows the creativity and different gaming styles out there.

Some of the “encounters” do seem a little more like extended plots and setups to larger works, but that’s just my take. I’m more of a 1st edition style of player, so an encounter to me has always been a single “room”—although said room might contain more than one monster or challenge—that all leads to a single fight.

In my “Flowstone Palace” entry, for example, there are multiple red herrings (the footprint, the village of stone ogres although both relate directly to the main monster), a path that leads directly to the “encounter” (the stone slab bridge, although it has its own difficulties with the falling slab and eyes of the deep, although these are secondary to the main encounter but still a vital part of getting TO that encounter), and then the final throw-down with Hidizaar at the end. I think the getting to the monster should be as much fun as the monster it self.

Some could say there are too many elements in that “Flowstone” encounter, but to me it’s all one “room” with every element included that PCs might face getting to the single encounter in the chamber.

My second entry, “Ill Tidings,” follows the same basic setup (a route to the monster, traps around the room, the monster) although I tried to include all the elements that might make a difference.

Anyway, just one writer’s take on encounter design. It’ll be fun to see what the voting public enjoys.

Kubla Khan

Because I’m super-lazy, is there any chance we can get all twenty-something PDFs in a single ZIP file?

"Encounter” in and of itself, is a poorly defined concept. To me, an encounter is something AND its consequences (which must be laid out). It could be a place, a person, a battle, an item…

A simple affair that is over in about a few minutes with no other bearing on anything else is not an encounter (I strongly dislike the classical name “random encounter"). It’s an event. A bunch of events tied together by something common can be called an encounter IMO. Which is the reason my entry “Piper” is among the longest ones.

That said, there’s some quite good stuff in. I’m also wondering what the voting criteria will be (uniqueness, coolness, ease on players/DM, adaptability into settings, etc).

Good points with the encounter/events, although it’s hard for me to find a difference between the two. I’ve called them random encounters since I picked up “Keep on the Borderlands” some 25+ years ago. String a bunch of them together whatever you call them, and I see it as an adventure. In my mind, the encounter/event is the individual piece/room/monster, not the lot of them no matter how linked they are. An encounter is the demi-lich at the end of the “Tomb of Horrors,” not the traps leading up to meeting him (although each of them is an encounter in its own right).

But you’re right, encounter has evolved with the game (and with the influence of video games) so that it now encompasses more than the classic “random encounter.” It will be interesting to see how 4e further builds on the classic ideas.

Kubla Khan

So far, I’ve read about half the entries.  Im liking a good number of them, and the extra time on the format obviously shows.  So far, good job to everyone who submitted an entry.

Denmark - 04 March 2008 09:14 PM

Because I’m super-lazy, is there any chance we can get all twenty-something PDFs in a single ZIP file?

Absolutely.  Coming right up.

You can download all 22 entries as a single zip file here:
http://www.dragonavenue.com/downloads/DragonAvenueContestEntries.zip

This is in fact extremely impressive. I really like the observation from earlier Encounter that most people use in players style and campaigns show their own personal use, but I try to define the word for each case and see if I could fit it into a plausible state.
So far I have yet to be disappointed.
Thanks Jim for supporting my laziness as well… ;p

I like the variety presented by everybody but I’m sorta miffed about how large some of the entries are.

Spore Assault is more of my take on classic encounters, that being that you have one area (albeit a pretty large area) and a few opponents (but they possibly could become a very large amount of opponents :evil: ) that use the terrain to their advantage against the players. A hack and slash it may be but it could be very deadly considering all the mitigating factors involved (lots of ‘traps’, enemies that multiply and of course, secret door running mooks). Plus, who wouldn’t want to kill their players with athlete’s foot ?

Benicus the PooAvenger - 06 March 2008 11:08 AM

I like the variety presented by everybody but I’m sorta miffed about how large some of the entries are.

You can reflect that sentiment with your vote next week. I only thought a couple were overly long.  One of the long ones could have been less verbose and shortened without much change to the overall plot.

That was probably me.  I have a tendency to get verbose and I didn’t have enough time to do the editing that would normally get rid of that.

Plus the fact that I used LaTeX’s book document class didn’t help much there.  It made things so easy to organize that it was probably easier to get carried away with length than normal.

I’ve given a couple of them a glance. I’ll have to give them a lot of thought before making any decisions.

I actually decided not to enter exactly because of concerns about length: my idea was so lengthy and complicated that I decided that it would be a disservice not to extend it into a full-blown adventure. Now I’ve got a great way to kick off a 4e game.

I at least feel an encounter last till you can stop and rest (or in some cases sleep a feel night for some styles of encounters). in my encounter (Within the Goblin’s Dark) there is more then one fight but it is hard to rest in the middle of the encounter. The flow of it keeps it going in one string of action so I felt that it was a single encounter.

I in fact aimed for a single encounter quest style (kind of a mini/side quest feel). I felt the one run style was fitting to the contest.

I hope that does not put people off from voting for me ^_^

I stuck to a more traditional definition of an encounter...the sort that generally involves one creature or group of creatures to be faced all at the same time, a fairly defined location, and something that ends with even just a few minutes of ‘downtime’ or searching.

I think that’s fairly close to how 4E defines it as well...since so many of the game’s mechanics are per-encounter based.

I’d say that in terms of the action, mine is a single encounter.  What makes it so long, however, are the potential long term concequences of that encounter.