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We are back with another post about my favorite Iconic Encounters of RPG adventures! Some of them are still a staple in most of them, others have become a rare occurrence that deserve a comeback with style, like the one we’re looking into today.

I like to call this one “The Moving Barrier” because it essentially makes a powerful and almost unbeatable creature a barrier the PCs can’t pass through, and it moves around the location, effectively changing how they explore the place every time they bump into the creature. As usual, the encounter has a few characteristics that I will list below and then explore in detail.

• There’s a very powerful creature in the location PCs probably won’t be able to defeat.
• The creature roams around the location seeking the PCs, but it’s slow.
• The location has multiple possible paths to reach various places within it.
• There’s something that keeps the creature at bay, which can be discovered in the location.

In the third post of this series of Iconic Encounters in old-school style RPG adventures, we are going to examine one of those really puzzling encounters that will make the players either completely paranoid, or amazingly entertained while they mess around with it.

This encounter I like to call “WTH is this?!”, and it is also an encounter that happens between more normal and expected encounters in the adventure. It consists of something alien and weird that can be interacted with, but the players have very little information regarding its purpose. It has a few characteristics that I will list below and then explore in detail.

• It usually appears in a clear, out of the way room.
• It can be safely ignored or bypassed.
• It’s function is not clear, and sometimes not even detailed.
• It can inspire the campaign to go in different directions.

On the second post of this series where I analyze and give some guidance on creating and running some of the best Iconic Encounters of old-school style adventures, I am going to talk about a kind of encounter that has become less frequent now a days, but it’s one that always makes me smile when I see it in a recently published module.

I am talking about “Whimsical and Deadly” encounters in which the party stumbles upon exploring a dungeon, ruin, caverns or even some weird place in the multiverse. This encounter has a few characteristics that I will list below and then explore in detail.

• It is usually suited to occur after other more mundane or standard encounters.
• It features weird creatures doing mundane things.
• If left alone, they do nothing.
• If interacted with, you need to play by its rules, suffering if you don’t, or possibly winning something if you do.

I got this idea for a series of posts about the most Iconic Encounters in old-school style adventures. I don’t mean this type of adventure is repetitive, but there are some types of encounters that appear with certain regularity, are quite entertaining and challenging, and thus have become iconic for me.

The first of these I would like to talk about is the “You must be this tall to ride!” encounter, which often is found in the beginning of an adventure, or in a section that will introduce the meaty part of it. I first heard about the term hearing Jim Wampler pass around some of his wisdom. It has a few characteristics I will examine further below.

• In the beginning of the adventure or at the beginning of the most important part of it.
• Involves a very difficult challenge that can cause a TPK if not handled well (it can be a powerful monster or group of monsters, a devious trap, powerful spell, and so on).
• There must be tips the player can pick up that indicates how the PCs can deal with the challenge.
• The challenge can be dealt with in a much easier way using cleverness and exploiting some weakness (which can be inferred using the tips).