TEXT: Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck  
  by The Angry DM 
   
  Welcome to the third part in my increasingly inaccurately named series: Getting the Most 
  of Your Skill System. In the first two parts (Five Simple Rules for Dating My Teenaged Skill 
  System and Adjudicating Actions like a Motherf$&%ing Boss), I told you everything I could think 
  of about handling every action your players might throw at you. And you might be thinking you 
  have everything you need to run a role-playing game. An RPG is basically just a string of 
  actions in a mostly logical sequence. Well, you aren’t crazy to think that, but DMs wear two hats. 
  The stylish fedora of running the game and the practical accountant’s visor of planning the 
  game (Fun Fact of the Day: it is called a green eyeshade or dealer’s visor).  
  But Twitter buddy @clampclontoller wants to try on his accounting visor. “Angry,” he said 
  to me, “your brilliant articles about skills and actions changed my life. I’m running better games, 
  my players love me, and I even won the lottery. I gave a copy of your articles to my friend, but 
  he didn’t read them. The next day, his cat left him and his children developed hairy foreheads 
  due to a glandular condition.” He went on like that for a while. It was embarrassing, really. But 
  ultimately, he got around to asking a question: “I want to write a chase scene based on your 
  Five Simple Rules. How would you do that?” 
  Well, @Clampclontoller, the answer is that I would not build a chase scene using my 
  Five Simple Rules. Thanks for asking. I hope you all enjoyed this article. Goodbye. 
  Okay. I guess you deserve more of an answer than that. As I hinted, Five Simple 
  Rules... and Adjudicating Actions... are all about the rakish fedora of game runnery. But building 
  an encounter is not something you do while wearing a fedora. You need to put your visor on. 
  We would need a completely different article for that. Maybe two. But who could write them? 
  All right, I’ll do it. 
  The Beginning of a Whole New Article! Or Two! 
  Once you understand how to resolve actions, you can keep the game rolling along 
  without swerving out of control and smashing into a tree. And for some DMs, that is enough. 
  They are content to improvise an entire game out of reacting to what the players do and say. 
  But, to butcher a sports metaphor, action resolution is the bunny slope of DMing. Sure, 
  you are technically skiing, but you can’t do any of the really cool tricks unless you can catch 
  some air. You need ramps and moguls and cliffs to ski off of (I assume skiers ski off cliffs). And 
  bunny slopes don’t have ramps and cliffs. Just bunnies. And hitting a bunny doesn’t get you 
  enough hang time to do anything good with. 
  And even if you do want to rely heavily on improvisation, you can think more than one 
  move ahead of the players if you understand how to plan and structure games. Improvisation is 
  not about operating without a plan, it is about planning and executing at the same time.  
  So, whether you are an improviser or a planner or (like most people) a little of both, now 
  that you can get yourself down the bunny slope of DMing without breaking any bones, it is time 
  to take the next step. It is time to ski off the cliff that is encounter building. Yes, you read that 
  correctly. Encounter building is like skiing off a cliff. I’m just not quite sure how. 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
  I’m going to break this into two parts. In this first part, I’m going to explain four key 
  concepts that lie at the heart of every encounter (even combat encounters) and explain how 
  understanding those concepts will help you run better encounters. In the second part, I’m going 
  to use those concepts (and a few other bits and pieces) to build a chase scene for 
  @Clampclontoller. 
  But, before I can even start talking about any of that, I need to tell you what the hell the 
  word ‘encounter’ even means! 
  Just What the Hell is an Encounter? 
  I could tell you that an ‘encounter’ is similar to a ‘scene’ in a movie or book. In fact, I’m 
  going to. An ‘encounter’ is similar to a ‘scene’ in a movie or book. In fact, a lot of DMs use the 
  words ‘encounter’ and ‘scene’ interchangeably. And you probably have some sense of what a 
  scene is because I assume you’ve watched a movie or read a book at some point. But if I asked 
  you to define a scene, you’d probably struggle a bit. It is one of those things you have a vague 
  sense of, but can’t really define. 
  Let’s tackle this from a different direction. An RPG is just a big ole pile of actions, right? 
  And when I say action, I mean an entire action that starts with a player’s decision to act and 
  ends with a resolution (sing along: intention, approach, outcome, consequences). But you can 
  string certain sequences of actions together those sequences are called encounters. You can 
  also string a bunch of encounters together into an adventure. And you can string bunches of 
  adventures together into a campaign. You could also talk about acts and arcs if you really want 
  to get fancy.  
  So, there is this structural hierarchy (look at that fancy phrase!) in most RPGs:  
   
  Action - Encounter - (Act) - Adventure - (Arc) - Campaign  
   
  Some RPGs fiddle with the names of the elements or shift some elements around, but, few 
  RPGs actually change the actual structure. And that’s good. Because the structure is useful.  
  When you are wearing your Fedora of Game Runnery, you may be working with 
  individual actions, but you are always fitting those actions together into the overall structure of 
  the game. The actions happen within an encounter and the encounters link together into an 
  adventure. See? 
  And when you are wearing your Green Eyeshade of Game Plannery, you can’t work with 
  individual actions. Actions always start with a player’s decision. So, you have to work with the 
  higher level structures: Encounters, Adventures, and Campaigns. 
  But none of this DMing theory wankery tells us what an encounter is. It just tells us that it 
  is bigger than an action, smaller than a adventure, and it is the primary structure DMs work with 
  when planning games. 
  So, Just What The Hell is an Encounter? For Real, This Time 
  An encounter is a sequence of actions that answer a dramatic question by resolving one 
  or more conflicts.  
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
  I know that sounds like a bunch of liberal arts, literary bull#&$ that should be discussed 
  by people who are serving you a latte, but don’t worry. I’m not going soft. That is a useful, 
  powerful definition that will help you run better games.  
  So, let’s start digging into that definition like a squirrel digging up a precious bone. 
   
   
   
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
   
  1: Dramatic Questions are Not Just Questions with Exclamation Points 
   
  The dramatic question is the alpha and the omega of every encounter, the beginning 
  and the end. I mean that figuratively and literally (and literarily too, ha ha ha). Every encounter 
  begins by posing a dramatic question and it ends when the players have an answer to that 
  question. 
  A dramatic question is just statement of the heroes’ current objective in the scene 
  rephrased into a yes-or-no question: 
   
  “Does Indiana Jones escape from the collapsing Hovito temple?” 
  “Can Indiana Jones escape from the horde of Hovito warriors?” 
  “Will Indiana Jones get the headpiece of the Staff of Kings from Marion 
  Ravenwood?” 
  “Does Indiana Jones recover the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazi convoy?” 
   
  The dramatic question tells us (the audience) what is at stake in the scene. Why is the scene 
  important? Why is it worth playing? What is it we need to find out in this scene? And when we 
  have the answer to that question, the scene is over. When Indy drives away with the Ark, we 
  know the answer is yes and the scene is finished. There is nothing left to find out. 
  An encounter in a role-playing works exactly like a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, 
  except for two important details. First, the heroes usually aren’t nearly as cool as Indiana Jones. 
  Second, the audience and the heroes are actually the same people. So, when I say that an 
  encounter ends when the audience knows the answer to the dramatic question, I mean that it 
  ends when the players know the answer to the dramatic question.  
  Thinking about dramatic questions is a very powerful thing. In order to demonstrate how 
  powerful it is, allow me to explain why your combat encounters suck.  
  Why Your Combat Encounter Suck (Part 1)  
   
  “The heroes are traveling through a cave, trying to reach some Underdark city 
  with an unpronounceable name to deliver medicine. Suddenly, a giant spider 
  drops from the ceiling and attacks the party.”  
   
  You, being a hypothetically bad DM, didn’t stop to think about the dramatic question. 
  You just wanted to see a fight with a giant spider, so you dropped one in the path of the heroes. 
  And now, the heroes and the spider will fight until one side is dead and the adventure can 
  continue. You’ll make sure of that.  
  I, being the brilliant DM who understand dramatic questions, realize that the dramatic 
  question in this scene is “can the party safely pass through the cave and continue their 
  journey?” That is what is at stake. There is no reason, in this scene, for the party to care 
  whether the spider lives or dies. So, when the cleric in my party immobilizes the spider and the 
  party flees past the spider and into the tunnels beyond it, I realize that my encounter is over.  
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
  So, you ignored the dramatic question, so a default question took over. “Can the party 
  kill the spider?” I did not. I figured out the action question and thought about what was really at 
  stake. That opened me to more solutions. My party could have killed the spider. But they didn’t 
  have to. I focused on what was really at stake. So I never ran the risk of a combat running on 
  too long and getting borning.  
  More importantly, suppose I was building that encounter before the game. And suppose 
  I really did want a life or death struggle with a giant spider. I would have realized that my 
  dramatic question was not necessarily going to give me that. I would have recognized that I 
  needed to build the encounter differently to make sure the party cared about killing the spider.  
  Dramatic questions give your encounters meaning and tell you why the encounter is 
  important. As long as the dramatic question remains unanswered (in the minds of the players), 
  the scene is tense and exciting. Once the question has been answered, the scene has no more 
  tension and excitement. It becomes boring. That is why fights become boring once it becomes 
  obvious the heroes have won (or lost). 
  Dramatic questions also help you, the DM, determine the intention that goes along with 
  every action. Knowing what is at stake and why the players care, you know what they are trying 
  to do. So, knowing the dramatic question helps you adjudicate actions.  
  Dramatic questions also tell you when an encounter isn’t exciting or interesting enough to bother 
  with. If the question is not interesting, the encounter won’t be either. Think about the number of 
  times this dramatic question has been played with dice rolls at people’s tables: “do the players 
  manage to locate an inn in town?” Has it ever been exciting? The answer is no. No, it has not. 
  And, as already mentioned, dramatic questions tell you when the encounter is over and 
  what that ending has to look like. The ending of the encounter must answer tell the players the 
  answer to the question with certainty. 
  Posing the Dramatic Question 
  I said that an encounter begins by posing a dramatic question. That doesn’t mean you 
  should start every encounter by stating it out loud. But it does mean you should state the 
  question in your head at the start of every encounter. In fact, you damn well better do just that. 
  From now on, you are not allowed to run an encounter without first stating the dramatic question 
  in your head. 
  When you design an encounter, or even when you read one before running the game, 
  though, you should also state the dramatic question to yourself. Just make sure you do it again 
  once the encounter actually starts. Remember the dramatic question is a statement of the 
  players’ actual objectives and goals in that scene. The players may approach an encounter with 
  different goals than you originally planned on. 
  Even if you are improvising a scene, start by stating the dramatic question to yourself. 
  You are not allowed to ever run an encounter without stating the dramatic question to yourself in 
  your head. If you can’t state the dramatic question, you can’t explain why the players should 
  care about the scene and you don’t know how the scene should end. How the f$&% can you 
  actually run a scene like that? You can’t.  
  If a scene comes out of nowhere and you aren’t sure what the players hope to 
  accomplish, ask them! 
   
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
  Player: “We go back and confront Herbert the Cultist.” 
  DM (realizing he has no idea why the party wants to talk to Herbert): “Okay. 
  What is it you want to know from Herbert?” 
  Player: “We think he knows where the Secret Tower of Secrecy is and we’re 
  going to make him tell us.”  
  DM: “Oh! Well, you return to the Cult of the Mucous-Covered Fish and find 
  Herbert hard at work...” 
   
  Remember that the players must always be uncertain about the answer to the dramatic 
  question, but that doesn’t mean you have to be. If Herbert the Cultist has no idea where the 
  Secret Tower of Secrecy is, there is no way the players can learn it. The answer to the question: 
  “can the heroes learn the location of the Secret Tower of Secrecy” is no, in this case. But until 
  the players know that, the scene is a good one.  
  If you are struggling to pose a dramatic question, imagine a reality television show 
  announcer setting up your encounter. 
   
  “Deep in the Underdark, a group of heroes struggles to bring medicine to a 
  plague-ridden city. But their path takes them through the lair of a deadly giant 
  spider. Can the heroes safely pass through the cave? Find out, in tonight’s 
  thrilling encounter!” 
   
  But never, never, never try to run or build an encounter unless you can pose the 
  dramatic question. 
   
   
   
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
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  2: Conflicts - Because Nothing is Ever Easy 
   
  Every encounter begins by posing a dramatic question and ends when the players know 
  the answer to that question. But a dramatic question alone does not make for a good encounter. 
  If the players can just answer the question any way they want, the encounter isn’t exciting. That 
  is why we need one or more conflicts.  
  In dramatic, literary, and role-playing-gamery terms, a conflict occurs when the heroes 
  are prevented from achieving their objectives. Obviously, monsters and NPCs can be sources of 
  conflict, but so can traps, hazards, and obstacles. Capricious gods and intangible forces of the 
  universe can also be sources of conflict, like fate and nature. A state of mind or a disagreement 
  within the party can be a source conflict. 
  But notice that I called those things sources of conflict. That’s because conflict occurs 
  between two forces, usually the heroes and something else. A spider in a room is not a conflict. 
  It is not even a potential conflict by itself. And mistaking a spider in a room for a conflict is 
  another reason why your combat encounters suck.  
  Why Your Combat Encounters Suck (Part 2) 
   
  “The heroes are traveling through a cave, trying to reach some Underdark city 
  with an unpronounceable name to deliver medicine. Suddenly, a giant spider 
  drops from the ceiling.”  
   
  What is the source of conflict in this scene? I don’t know why I’m even asking you. You 
  didn’t even give any thought to the dramatic question. As the scene is presented, there is NO 
  source of conflict. The spider is in the way of the party. What keeps the party from walking 
  around the spider and continuing their trip? You might decide that the answer to that question is 
  that the spider intercepts the party and tries to kill them and I would expect that kind of c$&% at 
  this point. But you still don’t have a source of conflict. All you have is a mess. 
  “The spider jealously guards its lair, attacking anyone who sets foot in its cave.” That? 
  That is a source of conflict. “The spider is protecting its egg sac and will attempt to kill anyone 
  who gets too close to it.” That is also a source of conflict. So is “the spider is desperately hungry 
  and will attempt to devour any living thing it becomes aware of.” 
  Why does a conflict occur? Because the party wants to walk through the cave and the 
  spider wants to attack anyone in its home. The party and the spider both can’t have what they 
  want. The party can’t walk through the cave as long as the spider wants to protect it. The spider 
  is not protecting its lair if it lets the party wander around in it. Like Voldemort and Harry Potter, 
  neither goal can live while the other survives.  
  Now, you might say it doesn’t matter for practical purposes. Right? What is the 
  difference why the conflict occurs? Well, if the spider is the “protecting the lair” spider, once the 
  party leaves the cave (accomplishing its goal), the spider no longer cares about them. The 
  conflict is resolved. The “protecting her eggs” spider might let the party skirt the edges of the 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
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  room as long as they don’t get too close, resolving the conflict. And the starving spider will 
  chase the party into the tunnel, delaying the answer to the dramatic question. 
  That is why you have to understand the difference between a thing (a spider), a source 
  of conflict (the spider’s desire to protect her lair), and the conflict itself (the spider’s desire to 
  protect her lair vs. the party’s desire to walk through her lair).  
  You also have to understand that DMs do not create conflicts, they create sources of 
  conflict. A good encounter is a trainwreck. But DMs don’t wreck the trains. They just put the 
  trains on the same tracks so that, once the party starts driving the trains around, they are going 
  to crash. But, not in a railroading way. I don’t mean railroading. Damn it, this metaphor is a 
  trainwreck.  
  Once you learn how to set up conflict properly, you can run, build, and improvise better 
  encounters. You won’t just drop a monster in front of the party and make them fight. Unless you 
  want to. “The monster wants to kill the party and is willing to die trying” is a perfectly valid 
  source of conflict, just as “can the heroes survive the battle” or “can the heroes kill the 
  monsters” are valid dramatic questions. As long as you purposely chose them. 
  The Motives of Brainless Things (And I Don’t Mean Players) 
  Conflicts occur when desires and objectives clash. But I claimed that all sorts of things 
  could be potential sources of conflict. How can a door have a desire? Or a trap? Or a river? Or 
  nature itself? Well, we have to be willing to personify a little bit. 
  A locked door, for example, is a physical manifestation of someone’s desire to keep 
  everyone without the key out of room. If the heroes want to get inside the room, they are going 
  to come into conflict with the door. A trap is likewise a manifestation of a desire to hinder, injure, 
  kill, entrap, or provide a warning. Now, you might say that all of that amounts to the same thing 
  as just dropping doors and traps in the way of the party, but it doesn’t. When it comes to traps, 
  especially, forcing yourself to think about why the trap exists and who built it for what purpose 
  will lead you to create better traps that make good sense. Again, you will run a better game.  
  A river is a source of conflict because it will not bend its course for anyone. If the river is 
  in your way, you cannot appeal to its mercy, its kindness, or its desires. And if you plunge 
  yourself into it, the river does not care who you are. It will sweep you away. Or drown you. A 
  river is actually a manifestation of the force of nature, which cannot be controlled or dominated, 
  lacks sympathy or care, and kills those who do not respect it without guilt or shame. 
  You can write more powerful, more interesting games once you understand conflict in 
  terms of motives and desires and begin ascribing them to abstract concepts and inanimate 
  objects. Consider Athas, the setting for the Dark Sun campaign. In that setting, depending on 
  the DM who is running it, nature is impersonal and indomitable, killing indiscriminately or it is 
  outright vengeful, attempting to kill anyone anyone ventures beyond the cities in revenge for 
  how the civilized races ravaged it. Some of the most compelling aspects of Sigil, the city at the 
  heart of Planescape, was the city’s desire to maintain its status as neutral ground and to keep 
  itself free of the influence of the gods.  
  Death and Other Ways to End Conflict 
  As long as the heroes attempt to fulfill their goals clashes with some other force trying to 
  fulfill its desires, and both the hero and the force are free to act, a conflict continues. Once the 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
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  desires, motives, and goals of the heroes and other forces are no longer in opposition, the 
  conflict is resolved. Alternatively, once one side loses the ability to oppose the other, the conflict 
  is resolved. 
  So, if the heroes kill the spider or if the heroes get safely out of the room, the conflict is 
  resolved. Likewise, if the heroes stop trying to get across the room or get killed by the spider, 
  the conflict is resolved. If the heroes break the lock on the door, the conflict is resolved because 
  the door can no longer oppose them. If the heroes dam the river, the river is no longer in their 
  way. Likewise, once the heroes build a boat and row to the other side, the conflict is over. If 
  Fate accepts the hero as the Chosen One and allows him to take the Sword of Omens, the 
  conflict is over. If the goblin loses the will to fight, the conflict is over. And so on and so on and 
  so on. 
  It doesn’t matter how a conflict is resolved. Once the clash of desires has ended 
  somehow, the conflict ends. And if there are no further conflicts, the dramatic question is 
  answered and the encounter is over. 
  Multiple Conflicts: Opening More than One Front 
  In a simple encounter, a single source of conflict is all that is needed. But you can get 
  creative and throw multiple sources of conflict into a scene. You can also create sources of 
  conflict for your sources of conflict.  
  Imagine the party is traveling to a distant city through the woods and you decide it is time 
  to have some fun with an encounter. So, you start by posing a dramatic question: “can the 
  heroes continue their journey safely.” For a source of conflict, you put in “a warband of hungry 
  orcs that want to kill and eat the party.” But then, you also add “a rainstorm that makes it difficult 
  to see and used ranged weapons.” And then, just to add some hilarity, you add “a forest fire that 
  sweeps across the fire consuming everything it touches.”  
  The orcs want to kill the party. The party wants to survive the encounter. The rain wants 
  to blind everyone and prevent missile combat. The fire wants to burn everything it can reach. 
  The orcs and the party are in direct opposition. The party wants to live; the orcs want them to 
  die. Now, presumably the orcs also want to live, which brings both the orcs and the heroes into 
  opposition with the fire that wants to burn everything that touches it. The rain is not in opposition 
  to anyone just yet. But the moment someone needs to see clearly or tries to use bow, 
  regardless of who they are. the rain is going to oppose them. So orcs vs. heroes, orcs vs. fire, 
  heroes vs. fire, archers vs. rain.  
  That is an exciting scene! Maybe too exciting. But no matter. It’ll be fun to watch how it 
  plays out. When you design an encounter, you can add as many sources of conflict as you wish, 
  and more complex encounters need multiple sources of conflict. But you need to think about 
  how your sources of conflict might come into conflict with each other. And you need to think 
  about something else. Because there is actually another conflict in that scene that hasn’t been 
  mentioned. Two, in fact. 
  Internal Conflicts: It Had to Come Up Eventually 
  In the Thunderstorm Forest Orc Encounter above, the heroes want to continue their trip 
  but they also want to not die, right? And presumably, the orcs want to be fed, but they also want 
  to not die. So, what happens if the fire threatens to overwhelm the orcs if they keep fighting? We 
  
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  have a new conflict: the orc’s desire to kill and eat the party vs. the orc’s desire to survive. 
  Likewise, if the heroes are in danger of being overrun, will they give up their desire to continue 
  their journey in favor of survival?  
  These conflicts are called internal conflicts because they happen entirely inside of some 
  force in the game, either the heroes or some external force. Internal conflicts occur because any 
  given thing might have more than one desire, purpose, motive, or goal and, sometimes, those 
  goals clash. Like the paladin who has to choose between doing the just, lawful thing and kind, 
  merciful, good thing.  
  When an internal conflict arises, the thing experiencing the conflict has to make a 
  choice. Technically, every time anyone at the table, player or DM, has to make a choice, they 
  are resolving an internal conflict. “Do I attack the orc or heal my friend?” Internal conflict. 
  You (the DM) should never dabble in the heads of the player-characters. That is to say, 
  players are always free to resolve their own internal conflicts. That is what freedom of choice is 
  about, right? Which isn’t to say you should never create sources of internal conflict. When you 
  get skilled, you will learn how powerful it is to plan the seeds of internal conflicts.  
  I only mention it here to (a) acknowledge that internal conflicts are a thing and (b) to 
  warn you not to become so entrenched in setting up encounters based on sources of conflict 
  that you forget that living, sentient things often want more than one thing at a time. In fact, when 
  I get around to talking about building social interaction encounters, I am going to tell you how 
  vitally important it is to plant internal conflicts in the heads of your NPCs.  
  For now, just avoid falling into the trap if turning your things into mindless robots that 
  single-mindedly pursue a single motive to the exclusion of all else. Think about the sources of 
  conflict for your sources of conflict.  
   
   
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
   
  3: Decision Points - How Even a Good Encounter Can Suck If It Isn’t Good 
   
  An encounter begins by posing a dramatic question and it ends when the players know 
  the answer to the dramatic question. But the players are prevented from answering the dramatic 
  question until one or more conflicts have been resolved. Got all that? Good. But I lied. We can’t 
  talk about decision points yet. We need to talk about the end of encounters first. Because 
  encounters are like fish. If you keep them around for too long past their expiration date, they 
  really  
  start to stink. 
  Keeping Encounters from Overstaying their Welcome 
  The dramatic question describes what’s at stake in an encounter and why the players 
  care about the encounter. As long as the answer is uncertain, the encounter is tense, exciting, 
  and engaging. So what do you think happens when the answer becomes certain? Did you say 
  “the opposite of tension, excitement, and engagement?” Congratulations, Captain F$&%ing 
  Obvious. 
  As a DM, it is your job to recognize when the dramatic question has been answered or 
  when all sources of conflict have been resolved or invalidated so that nothing is preventing the 
  question from being answered. When that happens, the encounter is over. And when the 
  encounter is over, you must end it. No matter what. 
  Ending the encounter is as easy as removing any remaining sources of conflict and 
  telling the players the answer to the dramatic question. You can use whatever tricks you like. 
  Assume the next hit on any monster kills the monster, allow the monsters to run away, narrate a 
  wrap up (you easily defeat the remaining orc warriors and then you can continue on your way), 
  tell the players they “realize the king is no longer listening and there is probably nothing further 
  they can say to him right now that will change his mind,” play the Final Fantasy victory fanfare or 
  that “you lose” tuba music from the Price is Right. It doesn’t matter how you do it. 
  “But what if you end an encounter too early and let the players win (or lose) unfairly, 
  Angry? Shouldn’t I run every scene right down to the last, bloody action?” I hear what you are 
  saying. And it sounds like this: “waggghhhh whiney whiney herp derp waaaaahhhhhh.” I just 
  spent how many pages telling you that dramatic questions are what make people care about 
  encounters and you’re saying you want to run encounters without them? If you want to run 
  boring encounters no one cares about, run the encounters as long as want. Don’t let me stop 
  you from running s$&% games. Idiot. Eventually, the players will realize the encounter is long 
  over and they’ll wonder why the hell their time and resources are being wasted on proving it.  
  It is always better to end an encounter too early and firmly answer the dramatic question 
  than let the encounter drag on past the point of fun. And eventually, you’re going to do just that. 
  You’re going to end an encounter too early. Usually, you’ll do that because your dramatic 
  question does not match the party’s dramatic question, which happens sometimes. It happened 
  to me last Saturday. 
  My heroes got ambushed by some wolves and goblins in a forest and they pretty 
  soundly beat up most of the baddies such that they could continue on their way. So, I sent the 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
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  remaining goblin crashing away into the woods, fleeing for its life. And the heroes decided the 
  encounter was not over and gave chase. 
  Let me tell you what I did not do. I did not say “oh gosh, I must have ended the 
  encounter early. I will continue to run this pointless combat until the players decide they are 
  done.” You never, ever let the players drag the encounter on after you decide it is done, even 
  though you might be wrong. The reason why is this: you ended it at the wrong time. That means 
  you did not know what the dramatic question really was. And you never run an encounter 
  without knowing the dramatic question. So, if you keep running an encounter after you admit 
  you had the wrong dramatic question, you will never know when to end it. Never let the players 
  keep an encounter open after you decide it is over.  
  Instead, when the party’s chatter indicated they wanted to chase down the goblin, 
  capture it alive, and interrogate it, I started a new encounter with the question “can the party 
  capture the goblin?” And I assumed the source of conflict was “the goblin is afraid the heroes 
  are going to kill it and wants to escape them.” And notice that, if the party could somehow have 
  convinced the goblin that they weren’t going to kill it, that would have resolved the conflict. The 
  goblin would have stopped running and they could have captured it.  
  See? That is the power I have with my understanding of Dramatic Questions and 
  Sources of Conflict and Ending Encounters when they End. It is like having a superpower that 
  let’s me waste five hours every week preparing to waste another five hours of every week 
  watching my creating work get trampled by a bunch of ungrateful fools.  
  The point is: when you think the players should know the answer to the dramatic 
  question, your instincts are almost always right. End the encounter however you have to. Do not 
  let the players keep it open. But, by all means, open new encounters if the players create them. 
  Decision Points: The Reason We Play This Stupid Game 
  You know those moments when you look at one of your players and say "what do you do 
  now?" That is a decision point. And decision points are the start of actions. Without decision 
  points, there are no actions. And without actions, there is no RPG. 
  But the mere presence of decision points is not enough to make an encounter fun and 
  interesting. If a player reaches a decision point and has few or no practical, useful options, the 
  player effectively has no decision point. 
  For example, imagine a combat in which the wizard has run out of spells. All he has left 
  is a crossbow he isn't very good at shooting. Effectively, the wizard has run out of decision 
  points. Aside from scampering away from monsters and firing off crossbow bolts, the wizard has 
  no choices. 
  And keep in mind that the player's perception is what is important. If it is the first fight of 
  the day and the party is confronting a small group of kobolds on their way to fight a big dragon, 
  the wizard might have decided to hold back all his big spells. Once he has used up the magic 
  missiles he's allotted to this fight, he's run out of decision points. 
  When a player is out of decision points, either because there is nothing left to decide or 
  because the number of useful, practical options has become severely limited, that player is 
  about three die rolls from losing interest in the encounter completely. The fun of rolling dice and 
  hoping things work out doesn't last long. 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
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  When a player performs the same action multiple times in an encounter, especially if 
  they preface it with a phrase like "I guess I'll do this," or "well, this is all I can do," in their mind, 
  they have run out of decision points. 
  It is easy to mistake some things for decision points that really aren't. When a player has 
  to react to something with a specific skill or saving throw or defense, that is not an action. The 
  player didn't decide anything. Even if the player gets to choose between one or two defenses or 
  responses, that is still not a decision. It is too limited. 
  Likewise, when a player is given the choice of whether to continue to do something or 
  stop doing it, that isn't an action. The decision to act was already made. The decision to not stop 
  acting, especially when the action is working, is a non-decision. It isn't an action. That is why 
  those locks that take three lockpicking checks to open are stupid. And why the desert survival 
  encounters and following the tracks encounters fall flat too. 
  True decision points only occur when something changes. If you could say "the situation 
  is the same, now what do you do," that is not a decision point. Players act in response to stimuli, 
  in response to things that happen in the game world. This will become incredibly important in 
  the next article when I'm going to be showing you how to build encounters. 
  An encounter can survive one or two heroes running out of decision points for a little 
  while. Not every person at the table will always have something to contribute in every scene, 
  and chasing that particular tail will just run a DM in circles. You need to accept that sometimes 
  one will be bored so the other four can have a great time. That is okay as long as it is a different 
  one every time and everyone gets some fun stuff to do (this will be a big topic in adventure 
  building). 
  But when the majority of the heroes have run out of decision points, you have three 
  "turns" (combat rounds, passes of die rolling, whatever) to resolve the encounter before it sucks. 
  And once again, we're back in "ending the encounter early" territory. End the damned thing. 
  The Time Limit and Extending the Encounter 
  This is a little bit of a digression, but it is worth talking about. First, know this: EVERY 
  encounter has a time limit. That time limit is created by decision points. From the moment you 
  start running the encounter, the encounter hemorrhages decision points until the encounter 
  becomes boring. 
  Think of it like a game of golf (because I'm so f$&%ing adept at sports metaphors). 
  Assume the point of every swing of the golf stick (or whatever it is called) is to move your ball 
  closer to what we golfists call "the hole" and to end up in a good spot from which to take your 
  next swing. On the first swing, there are a lot of different places you can aim for that get you 
  closer to the hole that are also good positions to take your next shot from. But as you get closer 
  and closer to the hole, the number of places to aim for gets smaller and smaller until, at last, 
  there is only one useful place to aim for: the hole itself. 
  All encounters - combats, social interactions, chase scenes, desert navigations - they all 
  work like a game of golf. Once the players settle in, choose a strategy and start making 
  progress, the number of choices starts to dwindle. In combat, people settle into their positions, 
  the number of targets steadily decreases, options are closed off, players are forced to respond 
  to emergencies, and so on, until it comes down to one player making the last attack against the 
  last target. 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
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  You can fight this. You can add new things to respond to, new stimuli, new decisions. 
  But that's like trying to stop the tide from going out. Now, once in a while, it is fun to fight the 
  current. But too much of it makes your encounters suck for the same reason that playing golf 
  with someone who hits the ball in random directions and takes twenty swings to get on the 
  green starts to suck. It is overly long, frustrating, and there is no sense that things are ever 
  going to end. 
  You might have noticed a running theme at this point: end your encounters early instead 
  of letting them become sucky. When the dramatic question is resolved, end the encounter. 
  When the conflicts are over, end the encounter. And when the heroes are out of decision points, 
  end the f$&%ing encounter. 
  It is absolutely always better to end an encounter early than it is to let the encounter turn 
  boring. 
   
   
   
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
   
  4: Structures and Scoreboards - Because You CAN Win D&D 
   
  An encounter is a series of actions that answer a dramatic question, usually after 
  resolving one or more conflicts. And we've covered dramatic questions, conflicts, and we've 
  talked about decision points as the soil in which the seeds of actions are planted. But I promised 
  four things, and that is only three things. The fourth thing is structure. 
  In an encounter, you need to know when the dramatic question has been answered (one 
  way or the other) and you need to know when conflicts have been resolved. And when you start 
  adding multiple conflicts and start bringing your sources of conflict into conflicts, you need to 
  keep track of all of that too. When have the heroes sufficiently answered the dramatic question? 
  When can you say, with certainty, the King will not give in to the party's demands? How do you 
  know when the orc's desire to survive outweighs it's desire to kill and eat the heroes? 
  Sometimes it is fairly easy. When the party leaves the spider cave, one way or the other, 
  the conflict is resolved and the dramatic question is answered. When the dragon is dead, the 
  conflict is definitely resolved. But other times, it can be extremely difficult. And that is when 
  some games try to step in and provide a universal framework for resolving encounters, like skill 
  challenges, challenge scenes, progress tracks, and so forth. I won't say these tools aren't 
  useful, but the idea that any universal framework for all encounters could possibly exist is 
  bulls#&$. And some of them are downright atrocious and focus on entirely the wrong things 
  (counting successes and failures as the measure of progress can f$&% right off). 
  You cannot build a single, universal framework for all encounters of every type. And 
  trying to hamfistedly cram encounters into universal frameworks ruins good encounters. 
  But still, structure is often useful. So, what are you to do? 
  Well, first of all, ask yourself if you really need a structure in a given encounter (whether 
  you are building it or running it). Can you wing it? And if you aren't sure, give it a try. The only 
  way to get better at improvising is to improvise. Make decisions based on the player's actions 
  and your understanding of the world and the things that live in it. This is where a solid 
  understanding of a consistent world comes in really handy. If you know that orcs would rather 
  die in combat than be branded cowards, you can guess their ferocity will almost always 
  outweigh their survival. 
  If that doesn't work, trying asking yourself if there is any obvious thing that will tell you 
  whether the dramatic question has been answered or whether a conflict has been resolved? If 
  the party is no longer in the spider's cave, the dramatic question has been resolved. Likewise, 
  keep an eye out for the party deciding the encounter is over. If the party snatches the thing and 
  then makes a run for it, and the dramatic question is about whether the party ends up with the 
  thing, it is probably best to wrap up the encounter (especially because "running away from the 
  monsters" is not exactly loaded with decision points). If the party is trying to end an encounter, 
  that's a giveaway that it is over. 
  Any encounter with a "capture the flag" or "cross the finish line" component is easy 
  enough to judge. When the party has captured the flagged or crossed the finish line, don't 
  prolong it. And you really don't need any more structure than just knowing where the flag is or 
  where the finish line is. 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
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  But then you have the nebulous encounters like social interactions and combats with 
  complex goals. These are tricky, tricky things. Any structure you impose should almost always 
  be unique to the encounter because every encounter treats different things as important. In fact, 
  part of the art of encounter building is giving the DM running the encounter a good structure or 
  scoreboard (even if that DM is you, the same DM who built the encounter). And, in future 
  articles, I will have a lot to say about structuring encounters. 
  But if you desperately need a quick, handy structure that you can pull out of your a#&, 
  you can do what I do. Figure out what things are important or what things are in conflict and give 
  them a score from one to ten, but don't start them at one or ten. 
  The orcs begin with a ferocity of eight and a fear of two. Each time something happens 
  that makes them want to run away or leave, increase the fear score. Each time something 
  happens to make them more dedicated to killing the party, increase the ferocity score. If the fear 
  ever equals the ferocity, the orcs flee. 
  The party has a head start of seven distance units over the ogre that is chasing them. 
  The ogre, being faster, reduces the distance every round by one. Each thing the party does to 
  slow down or evade the ogre increases the distance by one. When the distance is zero, the 
  ogre catches the party. When the distance is ten, the ogre gets bored and tired and gives up the 
  chase. 
  It is pretty easy to create measurable "things," stick them on a ten point scale, and just 
  increase or decrease them whenever it seems right. And that sort of "on the fly" encounter 
  structure can help you improvise good encounters. 
  You can even create new scores in response to player actions. If one of the players 
  successful intimidates an orc, you can create a "fear" score, push it up, and tell the party "the 
  orc looks around at his allies nervously and their resolve seems to be shaken. They keep the 
  fight up, but it's clear they are losing confidence." That way, the party realizes that you are now 
  keeping score and can take advantage of that, if they want to. 
  Structure helps, but it is not absolutely necessary in every encounter. It is a tool to help 
  you track progress. Nothing more. And sometimes, it can get in your way and ruin your 
  encounters in an unexpected way. 
  The Dreaded "I Win" Button 
  Sometimes, DMs get a little confused about structures and scores. Sometimes, they 
  forget that those things are just tools to help DMs figure out when an encounter is getting close 
  to ending. The only reason monsters have hit points is to help the DM know when the monster 
  is so beat up that it should probably just drop dead. But lots of DMs think hit points are the point 
  of the encounter. You know better. 
  Eventually, a player is going to attempt an action that, if successful, will resolve all 
  remaining conflicts or answer the dramatic question with certainty. Sometimes, this action won't 
  even require a die roll. The wizard might summon an earth elemental with a monster 
  summoning spell to batter down a wooden door. There really isn't much chance that is going to 
  fail, is there? 
  But DMs have this knee-jerk response to players trying to press "I win" buttons too early 
  in an encounter. I know they do. I've done several highly unscientific polls on Twitter to prove it. 
  And it is there. And it is completely asinine. 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
  Get more D&D Advice with Attitude at http://angrydm.com or follow @TheAngryDM on Twitter 
  Once again, let's look at golfing. If you are a golfist, and you manage to drive the ball 
  from the starting line to the hole in one swing, we don't complain that you didn't make enough 
  swings. We don't tell you the game was too short. Or boring. We tell you that you did an 
  amazing thing and we give you high fives. I assume golfists get high fives. Everyone likes high 
  fives. We even have a special name for it. 
  If you are running your game properly, and a player drives the ball off the tee and scores 
  a slam dunk, you have to give them the two-point conversion. If you don't speak sportsball, 
  basically, if your players find a way to win the encounter in a single action, even one without a 
  die roll, they won the encounter. If you can't stomach that, you can't stomach being a DM. 
  The only reason to deny a properly declared action with the intent of answering a 
  dramatic question that you have determined can succeed is because you are more interested in 
  your "points" and "structures" and "scoreboards" and "hit points" than you are in running a role-
  playing game. 
  Never, ever convince yourself that scorekeeping is more important than playing the 
  game. 
   
   
   
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
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  Running an Encounter Like a Motherf$&%ing Boss 
  In all of this drivel about encounters, you might have noticed a distinct lack of any 
  reference to skill checks and initiative rolls or any other mechanical, system-related crap. That's 
  because I already taught you to handle the important parts in Five Simple Rules... and 
  Adjudicating Actions... You Know how to deal with actions. Encounters are just ways of putting 
  actions together in a specific shape. You handle the actions themselves the way you handle all 
  actions: Intention, Approach, Outcomes, Consequences. But now you understand that the 
  Intention is related to answering a Dramatic Quesion, usually by resolving a particular Conflict. 
  And you know that the Outcomes, therefore, should bring the players closer to answering the 
  Dramatic Question, either in the affirmative or the negative. That concept is important. 
  Remember, the dramatic question tells us why we care about the encounter. So, if an action 
  doesn't move us toward an answer to the dramatic question (positive or negative), we probably 
  don't care about the action. That is what DMs actually mean when they talk about actions that 
  move the story forward. The problem is that most DMs forget that moving toward a negative 
  answer is also moving forward, provided the adventure is built the right way. 
  The point is, all of this s$&% works together and builds on one other. An encounter tells 
  you how to start and end an encounter. But the encounter itself is just a container for actions. 
  But actions originate from the players. An action cannot happen unless a player decides on it 
  first. So a DM can't build around actions. We can only build dramatic questions and sources of 
  conflict and make sure there are decision points and some sort of structure or scoreboard. 
  Now, you can try to plan for actions. You can write pages and pages of contigencies for 
  what to do if the players go here or do that or find this or bluff that or whatever. But what a 
  waste. Building proper encounters using the truly important questions is easier and quicker, and 
  you can adjudicate actions at the table within each encounter to handle pretty much everything. 
  So, in this framework, how do you run an encounter at the table? 
  First, you identify the dramatic question. Remember that the dramatic question is a 
  statement of the party's actual objectives at this moment, rephrased as a yes-or-no question. 
  Next, identify the sources of conflict. Remember, a source of conflict isn't just a thing, it 
  is a reason why the thing will somehow prevent the heroes from answering the dramatic 
  question. 
  Ask yourself if you need a structure or scoreboard. If you can get by without one, do so. 
  Otherwise, figure out what you need to measure and how to measure it. If all else fails, assign 
  those things a score somewhere between one and ten and figure out what happens when it 
  drops to zero or goes up to ten. 
  Now, tell the players what is going on. Narrate the opening of the scene. Describe what 
  is happening and mention whatever the thing is that the dramatic question is all about (the far 
  exit, the thing they want to grab, the person who is in danger). Pick out the obvious sources of 
  conflict and describe them as well. I'll do a whole article about describing scenes someday. I 
  promise. 
  Now, ask the players what they do. Either in initiative order or outside of it, depending on 
  whether you are running a combat or a scene with a series of short, quick actions. Adjudicate 
  each action like you know how to do. 
  
  Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck 
  Copyright ©2013 by The Angry DM. All Rights Reserved. 
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  After each action, check to see if the players should now know the answer to the 
  dramatic question and check to see if all of the conflicts have been resolved. If either is the 
  case, narrate the end of the scene and make sure you call attention to the answer to the 
  dramatic question. Otherwise, ask for another action and see where that one takes you. 
  Keep an eye out for any players who've run out of decision points. Are they repeating the 
  same action over and over again? Are they sounding resigned to certain actions? If so, imagine 
  yourself playing their character and see how many useful, practical options you have. Actions, 
  not just reactions or continuations of ongoing actions. If the player is truly out of options, you've 
  got three die rolls before they are gone from the encounter. And if there are too many players in 
  that state, you'd better start wrapping up the encounter. 
  And that's it. 
  Figure Out the Dramatic Question, Sources of Conflict, and Structure; Adjudicate All the 
  Actions, but Watch for the End of the Encounter; then End the Encounter. That is how you run 
  an encounter like a motherf$&%ing boss. 
  Come back for the next part and I'll tell you how to build awesome encounters. 
   
  
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