Add depth to your encounters with this useful technique!
Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

A relatively short and focused article today, designed to give me the maximum running room to get the final part of the ongoing Long Road series out the door.

Adding Layers To Encounters

    Imagine that the PCs are in the middle of a fight, battling a non-sentient creature. It’s been a knock-down drag-out affair that has knocked both sides around for several rounds now.

    And then one of the PCs gets knocked down, pushing aside some underbrush, and revealing a fresh footprint in the earth – scaly, reptilian, and humanoid…

Right away, the current conflict assumes new dimensions. There is an implied potential connection between this indication of a future encounter and the one that is currently playing out, deriving from the potential connection between the two creatures concerned.

Is the creature now being combated the equivalent of an attack dog? Is it a pet? Is it a rival for domination or survival in this location? Might there be a sudden attack from the scaly humanoid from some other direction? Or is the creature buying time for Scaly to set traps or make a clean getaway?

What was a simple-but-difficult encounter, mindless entertainment of a sort, suddenly grows all sorts of social and tactical dimensions, potentially far more important and significant than it initially appeared.

Every party has its combat-monsters and its deep thinkers (rarely do the two coincide); an encounter playing to the former generally leaves the latter disengaged to at least some extent. Suddenly, they have a whole lot to consider and act upon, and the combat-monsters are bereft of their backup – hopefully just at the point where they start to feel like the group have bitten off more than they can chew.

This is a simple example of adding a second layer to an otherwise straightforward encounter.

Almost every encounter in an RPG can have added layers incorporated in this way. Parts of this practice should be no-brainers to any reasonable GM:

    For some days now, the PCs have been having meetings with [someone, it doesn’t matter who] in order to gain their support for [something, it doesn’t matter what – it might be their innocence in a court hearing or a business deal or political]; at the next such meeting, just as all the side-issues have been dealt with and the negotiations are getting to the heart of the matter, the NPC party comments “You know, I was having dinner the other night with [PCs arch-enemy] the other day, and [s]he made a most interesting observation. He thinks there could be clear benefits to the Kingdom…”

It doesn’t matter how valid the point is that’s about to be made, the whole discussion has suddenly been overshadowed by the sudden connection between this NPC and the PCs arch-enemy. So potent is this association that even a decision in their favor is suddenly suspect, to be taken apart. Are the PCs playing into their enemy’s hands, or is he simply playing with their heads by proxy? Or is there a whole lot more to the story? Is their enemy really in favor of them doing what they had already decided they wanted to do? Or is he using reverse-psychology on them to get them to wave off on something that he really doesn’t want them to get involved in?

Sometimes – perhaps even most of the time – this will be just the DM playing with the players’ heads for the entertainment of all concerned. But there is the nagging risk that this time, there’s more to it.

Too Many Layers Grow Opaque

Once you get into the habit of “enriching” your encounters, it becomes easy to go too far.

To use the second example to demonstrate:

    “On the other hand, [Another Arch-enemy] made a powerful presentation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day, pointing out how risky the proposal is, in terms of the Kingdom’s [economics or trade or self-defense or whatever]. The Chancellor is a very powerful man within the court…”

    The PCs now have one enemy who is supporting their proposal, presumably for his own purposes, and another who is opposing it, presumably because it runs counter to their own purposes. The PCs are caught in the crossfire, and the players will feel like they have lost all control over the situation and are being toyed with by one side or the other. It all becomes too much work to unravel at this point, and some of the hardiest of players will simply throw their hands in the air.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s entirely possible to stack three, four, five, even six different layers on top of each other. But you need to give the players time to integrate each into their world-view and planning before the centipede drops its next shoe.

Employ different vectors for each complication, at different times, and be sensitive to your player’s needs at the game table. You aren’t just there to complicate their lives; you are the impartial hand of fate pushing them on to greatness (well, to great adventures, at least). You can drop bombshells all around the players, but need to give them time to scramble from one side of the crater to the other before detonating the next.

It Shouldn’t Just Be Enemies

Having an ally unexpectedly oppose some action by the PCs – either out of genuine concerns or because he/she has been misled – is just as valid a curve ball to play, forcing players to make a choice: spend (waste?) time allaying the concerns of the NPC or risk losing an ally.

Added Dimensions Should Be Qualitatively Different

If an encounter’s core is combat-oriented, the most effective grenade to lob (sans pin) is going to be cultural or social or magical or theological or tactical or intellectual. That’s why the first example works, as was pointed out in the ensuing discussion.

It’s also why the proposed third layer in the ‘too many layers’ discussion doesn’t work – the proposed third layer is too like the second. Instead of adding to the situation, it takes away from it. Adding a third layer to the encounter that is of a different type – social or theological or arcane in nature, for example – begins hinting at potential motivations for the arch-enemy that the players may not have considered, or adding Oomph to them if the possibility is on their radar.

Clarity Is Valuable, Too

My final point on the subject is this: Once you get the players used to complex, layered, encounters, they will start looking for the curve balls, and jumping at shadows. Every now and then, you can cue up an encounter that is as straightforward as it looks to be on the surface, sit back, and watch the fireworks.

This maintains a sense of uncertainty that should be present. But it doesn’t work unless you’ve prepared the ground first – by layering your encounters.


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