In this blog series I am explaining how I prepare for sessions, as a visually impaired Game Master who uses magnification and a screen reader. This post details how I create encounters and prepare notes for them. When it comes to TTRPGs, people often associate the word ‘encounter’ with combat. Encounters and combat are two different things, in fact, the next blog post after this one focuses solely on combat. Encounters are a narrative prompt intended to present an event which often (but not always) manifests in the form of an obstacle or a choice for players. In this post I will explain how to build your encounters for sessions.

I have read encounters in pre-written TTRPG adventures which are long and often detailed. Building our encounters with accessibility in mind means keeping our notes brief. To begin, remove any details regarding how the encounter will be resolved. It is impossible to know how players may choose to resolve any encounter and it is your job to give them space to think creatively. When writing an encounter, you should be primarily presenting obstacles, not solutions.

The next part of building an encounter, is writing it. I begin with a simple idea, which I then build upon, until it feels good enough. Never will an idea feel completely formed, but having it ‘good enough’ is as close as you can get. To begin working on an encounter, I use the same process as I do for combat, story or NPCs; I take my premise and I use a process I like to call ‘Word Vomit’.

Premise

I used to struggle with creating scenes, encounters and NPCs, because I had no direction. The best direction you can give yourself is to use character goals and backstories. Making the story personal to the player characters is often a good course of action, for player engagement. However, sometimes it is not possible to include character narratives or perhaps you just want something completely unconnected so the players may forge their own destiny. In these situations I struggled to create scenes, encounters and NPCs. That is, until I began using a premise.

People often confuse premise and plot. In an adventure where player characters hunt down and kill a Bassilisk, the plot is the action of finding and slaying the beast. The premise is the underlying theme of your adventure, which often ponders the plot of the game and explores ideas around it. Premises are difficult to describe, but easy to demonstrate. In Shakespeare’s MacBeth, the premise is that ruthlessness leads to self-destruction. In Pokémon, the premise is that friendship is the greatest power. While MacBeth is murderous and Ash Ketchum wants to be the very best, the premise is what motivates the world, the story and the supporting characters. Do not confuse premise with character motivation or the story itself. Premise is what you are using as a guiding light, to structure your creativity.

Premises are often a juxtaposition of opposing ideas. “Frugality leads to poverty”, “Love leads to loss”, “Intelligence outways superstition”, “Escape feels like entrapment”. The important thing is to get behind your premise and invest in it. If you can commit to a premise, then you can use it to help inform the details of scenes, encounters and NPCs.

I only began applying premise to my adventures one year ago, after reading “The Art of Dramatic Writing” by Lajos Egri. Up until that point, my players were going from A to B, doing their thing and the plot had no glue. With premises, I now have a defined idea dictating the structure of everything I create within an adventure. Let me give you an example. I just finished an adventure arc in my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay play-by-post campaign. In this adventure, the players were hunting down an evil Necromancer, known as “The Grave Lord”. The premise I used was, “Fighting great evil, comes at great cost”. Throughout the adventure, players had to make choices in which stopping evil sometimes came at a cost for them or for others. At the end of the adventure, the player characters and NPCs had lost much. They are heroes now, but was it worth it?

Premise will come up again in my future blog post, titled “Jim’s Blog – GM Advice 5 – NPCs”.

Word Vomit

Creating initial ideas for encounters, investigations, combat and NPCs can be difficult. Having read books or blogs containing TTRPG advice, I find they don’t explain how to begin creating ideas. I thought it would be helpful to share how I go about the process, which I call ‘Word Vomit’. I begin ideas by creating a prompt and then throwing words onto the page without much thought. My goal is to get down as many ideas as I can, and to figure out what works and what goes together later.

To create idea prompts, I read through character backstories the players have created or I note down their character’s current goals. The second part of the prompt is often the location. Magical forest trails, industrial hive cities, dark mysterious caverns; a location and a goal can begin to spark ideas and get your imagination flowing.

Inspiration often comes from books, movies, conversations. If you are stuck with trying to word vomit, step away and do something else, inspiration will often find you. When I’m particularly uninspired, I use random tables to generate prompts or ideas. Random tables can often be found in various TTRPG books, providing you with words or sentences describing characters, locations or situations. These tables are often referred to as “spark tables,” as they spark your imagination.

Get down as much as you can on the page. Even if it is just the name of an enemy or a place or a thing or an idea of a thing. Get it down. Throw down everything, don’t worry about it sticking together. The goal is to come back to the nonsense you have jotted down the next day and figure it out. It is speculated that part of sleeping is your brain consolidating information and organizing things. I believe this is true, as often I would find myself coming back to my word vomit the next day and quickly building the base for a solid idea. These days, I’m confident in creating ideas and can often build them quickly. I attribute my comfort with creating scenes and encounters, to the practice word vomit gave me in building those skills.

Scenes

The most common type of encounter, is a ‘Scene’. This movie term refers to an interesting encounter during your session. Scenes are typically comprised of events, locations and non-player characters. I’m often asked, “How do you present scenes to visually impaired players?” I respond that, “We visually impaired folks listen to a lot of audiobooks, we are well-versed in having sighted people describe things to us in common terms. If you are a sighted person, with a visually impaired person at your table, the best advice I could give you is to offer open accommodation. No one expects you to be an expert on visual impairment, so letting players know they can approach you in private to ask for accommodations is always the best option.” Now back to scenes.

Notes for scenes should be short. A sentence or two is enough. Referencing your notes with a screen reader or magnification slows you down, so jot down a few ideas to get you going with the scene you’ve built. My notes for scenes often comprise of a bullet-point or two detailing potential events during a scene, a very brief description of the location and a brief description of NPCs. Once I get my idea down, I read it every day leading up to the session and make changes each day. This does two things. Firstly, it commits the scene to my memory and usually results in me not needing to read my notes for a scene during play. Secondly, adding pieces to a scene and improving ideas each day, results in a well-crafted encounter by the time you are ready to run it. Don’t worry about detailing every possibility in a scene, just get down the basic idea. Players will throw you curveball after curveball and disrupt any detailed scenes you build.

Running a scene can feel intimidating, as you are required to ‘sell’ your players on it. The most important thing to do is present key details to players up front. After establishing the scene, let the players explore and you can build the scene as you answer questions. If you were running a campaign, you wouldn’t present every possible detail about your world upfront to your players, instead you’d get them established and then build the campaign as it plays out. Try taking this approach with your scenes to reduce notes, increase reactivity and foster fun. If you approach the scene this way, it results in less notes and sees the players selling it to themselves. Never force a scene, if players are choosing to move on, let them move on and leave the scene. If you force players to stay in a scene they’re not interested in, because you think it’s a great idea, your session will no longer be fun.

Events

Events make up the action of a Scene, but having a handful of events not linked to a scene, to throw at players throughout a session, is an invaluable tool. Events can be anything from “You bump into a long lost relative” to “A plague is breaking out in the city and causing making things difficult for your task.” Singular events don’t need to be locked to a single location and can be presented at any time. Using events is helpful in ‘haunted house’ style games. What I mean by that is, sometimes your Players enter a big location and you have no way of predicting where they may go. However, you can prepare fun events to throw at them, wherever they may be. Perhaps your players have decided to tour a few taverns with some NPCs, and while they are drinking themselves silly, that is when you launch the event you’ve prepared of the Witch Hunter who has been investigating them finally catching up. Events are good to escalate situations, in the best way possible. They require a small amount of prep, minimal notes and players will often flesh them out for you through their reactions.

For events I will often make an interesting NPC to accompany them. Be prepared to not use the NPC if the event doesn’t come up, but they can always be in your back pocket for later. Don’t get too attached to events. I will often take unused events and add them to the next game’s notes, if that event is still relevant. If the narrative has moved on, don’t try to strong arm an old event in, it often feels odd to both the players and you.

While this blog isn’t going in-depth into how to create events, there are two components to consider when creating an event: How does this event benefit the story? How does this event explain the world? Avoid dumping lore on players about your exciting world and instead put that lore into an event that moves the story forwards. An event could lead to the conclusion of a player character goal, it could reveal information about a quest they’re on or perhaps an event introduces them to an NPC that will benefit the story. I also create a shortlist of location events, interesting things to describe between point A and point B, not to challenge players, but instead to add flavor to places. Not only does it jazz up players moving from the tavern to the blacksmith, but it forces me to think about the location and slowly flesh it out.

Strong Start

An idea I took from ‘Return of The Lazy Dungeon Master’ by Michael E Shea, was ‘Strong Starts’. Kick-off your session with something exciting, interesting or important. Perhaps the game starts with the players already racing to an emergency, maybe they’re already standing over the latest victim of the killer or it could be a meeting with an important informant.

Before I began using Strong Starts, my sessions often began with the mundane. My Players would be travelling on the road, arriving at a town or waiting in a tavern. The trick is to strip away what may not be necessary. Is the travel on the road leading to an ambush? Then begin with the ambush. Will arriving at the town lead to the mayor asking a favor? Then begin in the mayor’s office. Will the evening at the tavern result in a brawl? Then it should all start with a punch.

Players want to jump right into things and usually the Game Master’s long exposition is getting in the way. It’s still possible to include the mundane, if that’s the style of the game, but typically it’s good to get right into it. Often I’ll do my best to leave every other session on a cliffhanger, just so Players know what we’re kicking off with next time.

Journeys

Having played combat heavy games, like Dungeons & Dragons, I often saw journeys as another opportunity for challenge. Throw another combat or quest at the player characters. I’m here to tell you, journeys are sometimes just journeys. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re playing a combat heavy game, throw down those combat encounters. However, don’t be afraid to tell players, “Okay. You get where you are going.”

Perpetual Game Masters may not realize that it’s kind of a pain in the ass, when you are a player trying to go from A to B, but there is always an obstacle. Journeys are often best presented as rides on the wagon, where the Game Master describes scenery and you can watch or stop and engage.

Below are non-combat encounters I use in journeys and design using my premise. I’ve put them in a table to roll on.

1. NPC: Meet a passing NPC whose place in the world helps to explain lore.
2. Obstacle: A minor non-hazardous obstacle lays ahead, helping explain the world.
3. Assistance: Someone needs your assistance with something non-lethal.
4. Landmark: Encounter an interesting natural or man-made landmark, free of enemies.
5. Camp: Describe the environment and ask the players how they setup camp.
6. Scary: Present something which seems threatening, but is in fact not. Allow players to stoke their own fear.

Conversation

If it is a long but safe journey, what happens then? The same thing that happens on your own long journeys: conversation. As the Game Master you’ll have to initiate topics, such as “During this leg of the journey, you find conversation turning to the polarizing topic of necromancy. What are your character’s opinions on that?” I have made a table below for randomizing what topics you may wish to use. These can help you to understand how player characters feel about things in your game world. These can also help you to better present the world or lead the story into things that interest the players.

1. Character: Backstory event, family and friends, motivations and dreams
2. NPC: Why like/hate them, hopes for them, what you want
3. Location: What you expect, your experience there, what is there
4. Lore: Contentious world topic, invent your history, rumors you heard
5. Story: Review past moments, what is next, fears of future
6. Trivial: Hobbies and interests, your favorite food, world’s minor inconveniences

I share this suggestion as someone who prefers narrative games. This may not be for you. I imagine some readers want every journey to be through a demon infested hellscape, and that’s what you should do. I just want to let the other folks know that this method is an option too.

Character Motivations

Earlier in this blog post, I mentioned using character goals and backstories to help guide your scene and encounter building. I would like to take some time to explain why it is important to work with players to create motivations. Player characters need motivations. From the simplest “My character wants coin” to the complicated “My character seeks vengeance against the evil Count Drakenfels for murdering my beloved”. Motivations provide you with a direction to point the characters in. During one shots, a motivation should be very simple, perhaps even a single word like “Escape”, “Kill” or “Rescue”. While in a campaign motivations can afford to be grander (but don’t have to be). It’s also important to ask players to think beyond that motivation, because once it is complete they’ll need to pursue a new goal.

I used to be very laxed about character motivations. I didn’t want to bug players to work on motivations, as I just wanted them to show up and have fun. Now, I work with players on their motivations and figure out what the next step is. As Game Master, never be afraid to engage with player motivations and resolve them. In fact, resolving player motivations should be your top priority when planning a session. I would often plan what I wanted to and then maybe try and work a character motivation into a session. Now, I ensure there is at least one clue or lead for character motivations in each session. Sure, you cannot do that every session and sometimes the current session is setting up to address a Character motivation next session, but you should always have them in your sights (pardon the pun, my fellow visually impaired folks).

Character motivations being completed gives players a great sense of satisfaction and it allows their character to grow. If you feel yourself hesitating to chase those motivations, it’s because you fear change. It is your job as Game Master to illicit change in the game world and leave players unsure as to what the next step may present them (though, they should never be unsure where to go). Change is your greatest tool. Use it.

Game Prep Advice Blog Series Links

Below are links to the other blogs in this series on game prep for blind and visually impaired game masters.

• Jim’s Blog – Game Prep Advice 1 – Introduction
• Jim’s Blog – Game Prep Advice 2 – Combat
• Jim’s Blog – Game Prep Advice 3 – Encounters
• Jim’s Blog – Game Prep Advice 4 – Investigations
• Jim’s Blog – GM Prep Advice 5 – NPCs
• Jim’s Blog – Game Prep Advice 6 – Notes