My DnD Adventure Design Guidelines, Part II...

The board is set. The pieces are moving.

 Continuing off of my earlier post, here are some more thoughts on adventure structuring.

Analyzing my earlier experiments with adventure structure I've come up with another layer to add to it - another refinement. This refinement not only opens up more choices for the players and thus lends itself well to a matrix-style campaign or any ongoing adventure or campaign. It is mean to be a guide for both the DM for making the encounters for upcoming playing sessions but also for players so that they have informed choices for what they want their characters to tackle next. It also contributes to the idea of a living world and a responsive enemy or enemies.

The structure is simple. Give players a choice of, say, three different encounters they can choose from at the beginning of the adventure. Overcoming/not overcoming these challenges leads to others. Time is on the march and the enemy is moving so some options will disappear soon enough.

What makes this different from before is the simple increasing of the encounter's difficulty level. For my group, experiements have shown that encounters 2 levels above the party's level is the norm for what we consider a challenging encounter. So going back to our three choices let's say they all are at the party's level +2. The part chooses an encounter and defeats it. This opens up two more encounters at level +1 - easy encounters, right? Meanwhile every encounter on the table that wasn't solved the last time a choice was made goes up by one level. So now they have to choose from 2 +1 encounters and two +3 encounters.

If the party chooses to tackle one of the +3 encounters they open up two more +1 encounters. Now they have two +1s, two +2s (since the +1s each went up one) and one +4 (and thus very difficult and dangerous) encounter to choose from. Once an encounter hits level +5 it is no longer an option. Or rather it would clearly result in the party's death or be beyond their abilities to handle. Not every encounter opens up new ones and not every one that does open up new ones opens up two. It might only have one new encounter to add. And not every new encounter starts at +1. There might be a small window of opportunity for the players and it starts off at +2 or even +3 or +4. Whether or not they choose to risk it depends on what decisions their characters make.

Now stacked on top of this is the concept of certain encounters giving out more points to different characters - furthering their goals and leveling them up faster as a result. So there will be role playing debate over what to do next regardless of the level of the encounter. But that will play a factor in their decision making.

In addition to this you can add in all sorts of added extras as a DM. Add in bonuses that the characters might get as a result of defeating a certain challenge that comes as a surprise at the end. Say, the ability to knock down the difficulty of an encounter by one. An example of this might be that the players defeat a local bandit and thus the townsfolk who were captured by the bandit will offer their aid to the PCs should they request it. When the players play this bonus it means that they call on the villagers to fulfill their oath and to aid in the assault of that encounter, effectively tying up some of the forces that they would have had to face alone and reducing the number of enemies that the PCs have to engage while the villagers fight as "scenery" in the background of the actual round by round battle. Think of the ewoks when they took on the stormtroopers to aid the rebellion, for example.

Or you could have timed events that effect a large swath of the encounters. Maybe the enemy gets stronger due to the PCs not tackling one of the encounters and all of their encounter levels go up one in a region as a result. Or maybe a plague hits and all forces take a minus one and half of the bonus things available go away. You're only limited by your imagination here for what different effects you can do.