It is time for a confession.
I actually do not much care for Dungeons and Dragons as a Dungeon Master. Much of this is likely due to the fact that I've been unable to play off-line games, and have been involved in inferior means of online play involving trading a bunch of IRC chat rooms and Maptools-needlessly complexity that makes the game slow to a grinding halt.
I enjoy encounter building. I do not enjoy encounter running. But it is disingenuous to build a blog on "How to build a proper encounter" without simultaneously having the ability to test the theory that's being proposed. I am unable to test my own theories. As thus, I cannot in good conscience continue this blog.
That being said, more than likely, I will anyway. I'll leave testing up to others though.
I feel your pain, both the online gaming pain and the DMing pain. (I get burnt out quickly.)
ReplyDeleteStill, there's no rule saying you have to test everything you have an opinion about, or that you can't use your blog to talk about other stuff. Good luck!
How much free time do you have? Sometimes if I have some time to kill, I'll play D&D "solitaire" to test out encounters. Sometimes if I'm really bored, I just play solitaire for the heck of it and that leads to encounter ideas when I'm actually planning for a group.
ReplyDeleteThe trick is to make sure that you don't bias the encounter, and have each side "play to win," so to speak. Depending on what kind of "PCs" you're running, it can be tough to keep track of everything and play the encounter smoothly. Stay away from complicated classes and/or classes that you're unfamiliar with!