I'm punching through what is supposed to be the climatic encounter for the APL16 table at the Principality of Ulek's final interactive. What's an interactive, you ask? What the heck is APL?
APL stands for Average Party Level; it's the measure of difficulty used by the RPGA to scale an adventure for groups from level 1 to level 16.
An interactive is an adventure intended to be run once at a convention with the opportunity for the players to have a direct impact on the outcome of the regional campaign. In this case, it's the closing act of the Living Greyhawk campaign for the Principality, so there's some pressure to make sure that what happens is high octane rock and roll smash and grab craziness with a hearty dose of fantastic adventure and the opportunity to save it all from the DastardlySlaveLordsOfThePomarj. And so, that brings us to my current work and the issues I'm finding in designing it.
There are a number of pitfalls to avoid when writing at APL16. There are certain things that must happen, or battles are going to be a cakewalk and the players are going to go home feeling cheated. Let's take a look at them, since I can't very well give away the particulars of the monsters that are in the vat, brewing...
First, you need to provide sufficient threat. There seems to be no bigger wet blanket than feeling like you just had four hours of your life stolen and all you got was this crappy adventure record.
Second, you need that threat to not simply be overwhelming. No one enjoys it when the writer stuffs in whatever he can find into whatever situation he can justify and proceeds to absolutely pulp the players with no chance of survival.
Third, it needs to be an interesting setting, goal, and implementation.
"Ummm, Ben," you'll say, "That's what every serious encounter ought to be..."
And I'll tell you that you're right...but the issues are magnified at the higher level for a number of reasons-- your players are more experienced, more tactically oriented. They wouldn't have gotten to this point if they weren't driven roleplayers intent on getting as much play time as possible with this character and keeping that character alive. The other major issue that accompanies designing for a shared campaign is that you cannot tailor the encounter to a particular party composition. In a home game, you know that Larry has the ranger, Jamie brings the social bard, Geoff has the wizard-artillery, Chris has the sneaksy rogue and Brian has the paladin with a blind eye. You can gauge that group's power and tactics much easier because you helped get them where they are, you know what magic they have, what they will do when faced with particular situations.
This writing doesn't allow for any of that, because you have to design for AnyTable(TM), not considering that a Radiant Servant might obliterate the undead, that a Church Inquisitor might obviate the illusionary feint, that a Occult Slayer might reflect back a disintegrate, that a druid is going to stomp past your obstacles like foodie at a donut tasting contest. So you're forced into a generalist tactic; you need to write the encounter so that it doesn't matter what your foe faces at the convention table, he can put up a decent brawl. Generally, that means finding some aspect of the game and exploiting it as best you can.
Why?
Because. Because this is the varsity squad you're writing for, the combat is going to last 5 minutes or an hour and a half and drag the table into the lunch break between slots. The goal is almost to have the second occur, but without the table chomping at the bit to leave; instead you want them foaming for the next round, engaged, driving for the enemy's action, trying to exploit whatever he can to gain the advantage. And that's the crux of it all...
You have to find a universially tough yet balanced encounter that will provide sufficient challenge and not become an exercise in Total Party Kill, or a "TPK," as it is also known. It's a black art, one where I can only say that no amount of good design will counteract a GM who hasn't properly read the material. I've written groups of invisible Barghest assassins who dimension door to their targets and silent cast true strike before they make combined death attacks on party members. I've created encounters with fiendish purple worms that would knock you into the air so that they get an attack of opportunity on you as you fall past them. I've set up a murder of half-dragon ogres intent on burninating parties; and all of it sabotaged by the GM at the table who decided to run it differently-- either through lack of prep or just failed reading comprehension. They were tough encounters that should have been very memorable, and instead the players were robbed of the experience. You can never account for the GM who gets your material, and so that means that your implementation and tactics have to be clean, elegant, tight and preferrably covering the first five to six rounds of combat because, again, if the battle's gone longer than that, the players have a real problem, and the GM is going to have a situation that should run itself by then.
What does that leave us with? This:
When you design for the high level, you need to make sure the encounter is...
1. Appropriately tough...probably an EL of APL+3 but more likely +4. Be willing to put it at 4.5 because of environment but closer to +4 because of preparation time provided to the characters.
2. Interesting and engaging, it should be more than mooks on a battlefield; it needs to be an original and memorable event.
3. Clean and elegant, not overcomplicated because that just increases the chance a GM will run it wrong.
Combine in equal parts and season with flavor text to taste...it's something that's definitely going to take time. Hell, I've been at this seriously for the last two years and I'm still making it a project of many days. In the end though, when you've lovingly crafted that beautifully ugly brawltastic confrontation, you'll grin with malicious glee knowing that when the players sit down to try their hand at it, everyone is going to enjoy it.
-Ben.
Tags: D&D Design RPGA
