This subject matter is a great excuse for some cute animal pictures! This image of a Lemur is by (Joenomias) Menno de Jong from Pixabay

You may not know it, but it’s possible to be too creative. Last week, as usual, I spent some time thinking about what I would be writing about in this post, and almost immediately, three different ideas came to mind in what felt like a single flash of inspiration.

Well, by the time I had the first one (today’s subject) down on paper, the second and third were starting to get a little vague. I managed to recapture my thoughts on the second (which will appear next week, if all proceeds as planned) but by then the third was completely gone.

When that happens, you have two choices: you can focus obsessively on the ‘lost idea’ in a bid to recapture it, potentially to the detriment of everything else that you do, or you can (metaphorically) shrug your shoulders and give it up for lost; if you’re lucky, the right stimulus will eventually bring it back, but in the meantime, don’t sweat it; another idea will come along, they always do!

In this case, I embarked (briefly) down the first road (just in case the strayed thought was only in the next paddock), but when that failed to bring a quick resolution, I firmly turned down path #2. That’s how I usually handle this when it occurs; after all, two good ideas (or one really big good idea) are better than none!

The narrative in combat

Translating die rolls and attendant game mechanics into narrative can be a wonderful thing. It pushes immersion within the game, helps players visualize the action (and see the situation from the same perspective as the GM, getting everyone onto the same page), and can add immensely to the verisimilitude of the game.

All this goodness comes with an attached price-tag – it slows what is already an extremely time-consuming element of play, potentially to a crawl. The GM needs to maintain awareness of this downside and moderate his use of narrative interpretation of combat accordingly.

That doesn’t necessarily mean eschewing it altogether; there are all sorts of compromise points along the way, and the GM is not constrained to apply narrative consistently across the whole encounter or even the whole day’s play; it’s possible to be selective, giving less narrative translation most of the time but more when it enhances the game-play or is needed to provide clarity.

As a general rule of thumb: the more complex the encounter, the higher the price for any level of narrative interpretation but the more of it will be useful at different points; it therefore becomes more important to be selective and sparing in such encounters.

But there’s an unexpected side-benefit that a lot of people never think of.

The Sensory Surprise

Picture this: the GM is clearly being careful to employ the bare minimum of verbiage in a small and simple encounter, clearly trying to keep the pace up and the game exciting, when suddenly he describes an action and a surprising sensory impression – a sound, a smell, a thermal impression, a moment of vertigo, whatever.

It’s clearly important, or the GM would not have taken the time. What could it mean? What does it mean? Is it a critical clue, the key to victory? Or is it simply an attention-getting unusual fact? Is it something that’s meant to distract you? What aren’t you paying attention to?

A relatively small and simple combat has suddenly been elevated in significance by several orders of magnitude. Unless the significance becomes almost immediately apparent, the players will probably still be discussing the importance of this small hint long after this relatively trivial combat concludes.

This cute dog image is by Pretty Sleepy Art from Pixabay

Frequency of Pay-off

Of course, if every time this happens it proves to be significant or critical, the players will quickly learn that this is a GMs shorthand for “pay attention to this”.

Real life (and simulated life within a game) should have some uncertainty to it – so sometimes, a strange noise is just a strange noise, or may even be misleading.

How frequently such hints should pan out is something that each GM will have to decide for themselves, and may well change from one encounter to the next. On the one hand, downplaying the relevance seems to play toward greater realism, but it also devalues what should be something noteworthy and significant.

Personally, I think the right balance is somewhere around the two-in-three or three-in-four significant meaning ratio, but there’s room for almost anything.

Selling it – Credibility

More importantly, the GM should not depart too far from their usual style. They both need to be comfortable and natural in their delivery of these little bombshells and sound credible to the players – if it sounds too outre or tacked-on, it will appear phony and without believability.

The best way to buy credibility is for the GM to have conviction about the experience, because he knows what the significance is and why it is occurring. But that means careful pre-planning of the whole event – or making sure that your ad-hoc creativity encompasses not just the effect but the reason behind it.

Conceptual Origins

The history of this technique may be of value to readers in its own right.

My players once entered a dungeon created by a powerful illusionist. He left illusions embedded in the walls all over the place, illusions that were sonically triggered and designed to confuse and mislead the party.

Whenever two weapons clashed, for example – a sound that should be familiar to just about anyone – it triggered the sound of the baying of Hellhounds growing closer from some distant point as though they were being attracted to the sounds of the fight.

Whenever a key or a lock-pick was put into a lock, it would trigger the sound of a scream of pain from somewhere in the distance.

The sounds of panting after heavy exertion – after a combat, for example – would produce the sound of timbers groaning and about to splinter from overhead, as though the ceiling were rigged to collapse.

There were three or four more, but the key was that each of these was predictable. One was an illusion placed on every pit trap (this was very old-school) that made the trap appear to be 20 feet or so from where it really was.

Several of the ceilings were masked by cobwebs – most of them illusions, but in some areas, real. The first few times, the PCs wasted flaming arrows attempting to ignite the illusions, and immediately discovered their ‘false’ nature – so they ignored the real ones, giving the spidery residents of those real patches of webbing the advantage of surprise as they dropped from the ceiling.

Of course, the various (intelligent) dungeon residents had learned these illusions and worked out ways to use them to their own advantage. Those hell-hounds, for example, implied that a new threat was emerging from somewhere behind the party, forcing them to divide their attention – and divide-and-conquer was as true a tactic then as ever. The PCs couldn’t afford to ignore one of them because that might be the one time that the sounds were real!

Another encounter from the same dungeon was a fairly fragile-looking glass cabinet containing vials of potions on racks, held fast in place by a wooden collar locked over the top of their necks. Since these were valuable commodities, it caused considerable distress when the cabinet became animated, a glass Golem – while inherently fragile, the PCs were afraid to exert their full strength against it lest they destroy the valuables they gad come there to loot (including, from memory, a rare healing salve that they needed to overcome a balefully-cursed wound that an NPC had received from an enchanted weapon – think Balrog-blade and Frodo.

These various sensory deceptions added a layer of richness and complexity to what was otherwise a relatively straightforward dungeon with fairly basic encounters, ideal for a low-level party.

And finally – I’m not sure what species of primate this is, but it’s undeniably both cute and surprised! – Image by LukasBasel from Pixabay

Broader application

The dungeon in question – and I forget its name – made full use of such deceptions and mind-games to distract, delay, divide, and weaken the party. There was even a visual illusion replaying a captured image of the rogue picking a lock to create the impression that he was trying to obtain some extra goodies from a treasure room before the rest of the PCs could divide it – a complex spell that was triggered by another trap that made the rogue temporarily invisible! (In fact, one of the early encounters was designed to do nothing but capture this ‘footage’ for later use).

After the fact, however, I began to recognize the power of the technique when applied more sparingly. Most of the applications in the dungeon were of the ‘won’t pay off’ variety; most of the time, they were deceptions, with just enough truth mixed in to create uncertainty.

And that raised the question of using such ‘truthful’ examples outside of this dungeon.

The giant snake wraps itself around your waist and attempts to squeeze the life out of you. It’s flesh is burning hot to the touch, almost enough to raise blisters.

Suddenly, there’s more to this snake encounter than meets the eye.

The Dire wolf pack-leader leaps in an attempt to take out your throat with a single bite. (GM rolls) It misses, fortunately for you, as you dodge to one side. As the rest of the pack surge forward to begin tearing at your flesh with their fangs, you have the distinct impression of the odor of freshly-baked bread…

Just enough narrative to put the unexpected sensation into context. But what does it mean? Is it real, or a trick of the mind?

Sometimes, the answer doesn’t matter.

As the steel-clad warrior draws his sword, it makes the sound of fingernails scraping across a blackboard. Save to avoid cringing or shuddering. A critical fail means you drop your weapon and cover your ears. Every time he swings that mighty blade, it again ‘scrapes’, requiring a fresh save. This hampers your defenses, giving him +4 to attacks against you…

Or,

The mace strikes a glancing blow, resulting in only a couple of points of damage. But your mouth is suddenly full of the taste of blood, as though you had suffered more internal damage than you were aware of.

The key is to have an iron-clad explanation firmly in mind (even if that explanation is ‘an illusion’ or a ‘special effect of the weapon’). This gives you the conviction to really ‘sell’ the idea to the players, which is what triggers them to believe it. And if the players believe it, so will their PCs.

It’s even possible to use such things as unexpected binding agents, connecting a string of seemingly-unrelated encounters. When several hostile encounters all smell of the same strange combination of rosemary and lavender, it’s a sure bet that there’s some connection between them.

Moderation is critical

Sensory surprise is a powerful trick to have in your toolkit. But its use is weakened by excessive verbiage when narrative interpretation of combat is dominant; and only reducing that verbiage when you intend to employ sensory surprise telegraphs your intent.

It is therefore critical to moderate your narrative interpretation of combat just enough that the surprise doesn’t get lost in the mix. Save the full-on narrative interpretation for when it’s especially useful.

There is still a minimum level of such narrative that is essential; you have to state what the NPCs are doing so that the PCs can respond and the players can still visualize the action.

It may take a little trial and error to find the ‘sweet spot’ that best suits your GMing style. The benefits of doing so make it more than worth the effort.

A second article on the subject of encounters equals, at the moment, a second submission to the blog carnival for the month, currently hosted at Of Dice And Dragons (You can read my first contribution here: Vectors Of Engagement).

There will be at least one more, because in the course of this article, that lost ‘third idea’ has come back to me, and will actually leapfrog the second one – and I’ve thought of a fourth idea in the process.

I guess it’s a good thing that even after so many years of writing for Campaign Mastery, such bursts of inspiration are still possible!