Tag: Theory

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.

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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).

Continue reading “Iconic Encounters – You must be this tall to ride!”