The Recycle Bin – Tell me your fears, little PC.

(Note, this post will have a slight spoiler for Batman:Arkham Asylum. You have been warned.)

It’s Not Being Lazy, It’s Being Efficient

Creating a set of encounters for a group week after week can be a bit exhausting for a DM. Make a map, find or make some monsters for that map, place them so the fight’s interesting. Or, write up a skill challenge, list a few skills you think will be useful, and try to figure out the eleventy-billion different ways the PCs will try to go off the rails in the midst of the challenge.  We’ve gotten to the point where people like Quinn from 4e At-Will come up systems for the players to create the world they want to play in, removing a lot of the load from a DM’s back at the beginning of the campaign, but we can’t have the players make the encounters they are going to be fighting in. Or so I thought.

What if, when players open a door, not only do they not know what’s behind it, but the DM has no clue as well? Could a player and a DM work together to create a room that’s engaging for the players but not mind burstingly frustrating for the DM to run? How would the mechanics work for this, and what would be the in universe / in character reasoning for this?

I was chewing on this problem while playing through Batman:Arkham Asylum for the first time. Great game, not enough platitudes in the world to lay upon it. It takes bits and pieces of the various iterations of Batman, some from the comics, some from the animated series, a bit from the Nolan movies, and blends it all together into a linear-ish sandbox game that’s equal parts of stealth, puzzle, and combat. Lots of great moments in this game, but when I finished my first encounter with the Scarecrow, I knew I’d found the solution to the above problem.

Fumes and Fuming Mad

Scarecrow’s big thing is fear, using gas and toxins to reduce his foes and subjects to quivering masses of fright as they confront their worst fear. In Arkham Asylum, once exposed to his gas, Batman tries to leave the room. Opening the door, the medical hallway is gone, replaced with a nightmarish landscape that’s an unholy mix of the area of Arkham you’re in and bits from Batman’s past. There’s plenty more I could go on about this (The interface controls, the camera angle, the audio cues) but the key thing I took away from this was, open a door, and Batman is now in a room that’s created with his own secret fragments of his own memory, not the room he should be in.

D&D worlds are filled with a host of creatures whose playground is the mind and memories. Mind Flayers, psions, gods of knowledge and secrets, these are all parts of fantasy that have their own story feel and lore. If your campaign involves any of these or anything related to the mind, thoughts, or knowledge, here’s a way to skin a few encounters to better fit these themes.

When the PCs are about to trigger an encounter, give one of the players a one question prompt. What is your character’s secret fear, what is your character’s thought process as you’re descending down the stairs, which is the character’s opinion of the Duke’s ball the other night? If this is something the player has not thought about much for their character, allow them some time to think, to process the question from their character’s POV and come at the correct answer.

How ever the player responds to the inquiry, you take that prompt and build an encounter, right then and there. Think out loud, posing more questions to the players as you set the scene. Once they have the initial question answer, unbiased by your intention, use that as the base of what ever it is you’re creating, and go with what ever the first idea that pops into your head. The idea here isn’t to be unique and special, rather, it’s to get something that fits the theme of your original question. Start drawing a map, repeatedly asking more and more questions to the player. “Is this how it would look? Would the bar be over here or there? How many orcs were laughing at you in your underwear.”

I’ll admit, it may sound terrifying to expose your creative weaknesses to your players in such a manner. Once they understand, either implicitly or explicitly, the amount of control you’re ceding to them, it will be a much quicker and collabrative process, and in 5 minutes time you can have a rough map, a problem that needs solving, and complications to that problem.

Example

The PCs have to traverse a portal, but an aspect of Vecna requires a toll to pass through it. The cost is one secret memory they’ve never told another one. The players had the option of giving up an encounter power until their next extended rest, or just giving up ‘a memory’. They didn’t, and couldn’t, say what it was at that point, just that they had given something up and that I, as the DM, could use that ‘memory’ as a story hook later.

Through the portal, they come across a series of doors. When the paladin opens up the first one, I ask him, “What’s the paladin’s secret fear she’s never told anyone?” I explain that I’m ‘cashing in’ his character’s memory from earlier. He thinks about it and responds, “Fear of heights.” The room is a giant pit, with a rickity rope bridge spanning it, and the one piece of the McGuffin of the day across the other end. A wind spirit arises from the pit, saying only the paladin can pass safely, and mocks her for lack of faith. Mechanically, there’s a level 1 skill challenge that the paladin goes through, with the other PCs doing their best to help (Hold the bridge steady, recall earlier acts of bravery). Once across, item in hand, the room returns to normal.

Next room, rogue opens the door. I pose the question, “What is his secret love, want, or desire that he’s never told anyone about?” The response, a crossbow of legend, the Excalibur of crossbows as he put it. Boom, a room with a dais and the crossbow is on it. “What’s it look like?” Dragon’s head, jeweled, blinged out the whole nine yards. I decide to borrow from Last Crusade, it cannot be removed from the room, and spirits will spawn continuously until it’s returned.  Once it’s returned, the McGuffin appears, and everything in the room disappears. There’s not even a skill challenge, just the PCs role playing, reacting to the ghosts and each other.

The smithy artificer got “What is your secret shame?”. Response, “I forgot the combo to my safe one time, couldn’t open the door.” Hmm, someone needed to buy a weapon from him that day, I decide, and couldn’t, and was killed in a back alley. The PCs got fight off the bandits, ‘saving’ the happless fool gets them the item.

The eladrin bard got “What is your secret hate or dislike?” Response, “Limericks. In the Summer’s Queen’s court, that’s all she allows, and I left rather then recite another one.” Encounter, an 8 Mile-esque Limerick off skill challenge between an illusion of the court and said bard.

The minotaur fighter, “What’s your secret skill or ability.” Response, origami. Rule of cool says that’s an auto pass for the skill challenge.

Why Do This?

If you’re not used to thinking fast on your feat, or you feel your improv skills are lacking, this idea is a terrifying one. Having nothing to go on but a one line sentence from a PC, which could be anything, and using that to build something on the spot? But it does two things:

1) Gives players a spotlight. Assuming you spread this around, each player will get their own encounter that’s based on them. Players are vain creatures, who want to show off their characters when ever they can. As a DM, you’re saying, “Alright, now is your time to show off. How and why do you want to do that?” Since each encounter is built around and with the player, in one way or another their answers are going to guide you into something they want to do.

2) Gives you, as DM, more info to work on. In the above campaign, I’ve learned a few world-spanning things about my campaign worldfrom my players:

• The PCs, who are on a quest to stop the cycle of ending and rebuilding the world, will need to find Trannyth’s Dragon Head Crossbow at some point to do so.  It’s a legend for some reason.
• The Summer Queen’s Court has some part to play in all of this.

When PCs tell you something like this, they’re saying, “This is what I think cool, can we do more of that please?” It may not occur for 5 levels or so, but I know what the players want to sink their teeth into, who am I to deny them?

Wow, that went a bit longer then I thought, I’ll end it here for now. Though my examples would really only work for mind control / memory reading types of enemies, I’m curious if there’s been other types of encounter building by collaboration done by any of you. Let me know in the comments below.