Treat Encounters as Scenes



by R P Davis

Excerpted from You Can Try - Tips On Becoming A Better DM

Whether it’s a combat or social encounter is immaterial. Treat each of your encounters as scenes. As scenes, it’s easier to judge them with a fiction author’s eye.

There are very few hard-and-fast rules about story creation, but there are three you really, really, really want to observe, because breaking them is fraught with peril:

Everything your heroes do has to happen for a reason.

Do not let things just happen to your heroes.

Everything that happens must move the plot forward.

Let’s take them each in turn.

Everything has to happen for a reason
...is arguable. You can waste days arguing about this at your local writer’s circle. I think it’s true, though, and this is my goddamn ebook, so shut your cake hole. It’s true for two reasons: coincidence is just … unsatisfying. It stinks of deus ex machina. Also, coincidence does nothing to advance the plot.

Do not let things just happen to your heroes
...because it’s not heroic if things just happen to them. The action is only heroic if it derives from the heroes’ choices. If they lack agency, they’re reacting, never acting. Reacting works in the first half of the adventure, before the heroes transition from hunted to hunter, but use it sparingly.

Everything that happens must move the plot forward
...is actually pretty easy. As James Gunn notes in The Science of Science Fiction Writing, “[O]mit everything that doesn’t advance the plot. That doesn’t mean description or essential exposition, but it does include unnecessary scenes […] Everything must work; everything must contribute.”

In adventure design, this means you have to ask yourself if the encounter you wish to include advances the plot. If it doesn’t, revise it until it does advance the plot or toss it in the bin.

That goes for your random encounters, too. You can still have random encounters in your adventure, but they must at least must have the potential to advance the main plot or establish a subplot or two.

NOTE: “Exposition” does not mean “information dump.” Exposition happens precisely where it’s needed to move the story forward. “Information dump” is a massive pile of data most of which doesn’t make sense when it’s given. Telling the difference can be challenging; watch your players’ faces for clues. If they start to look bored or confused, you’re dumping, not exposing.