Building encounters from a mini you liked!
Game night is in a couple of days, and you, the GM, are preparing the next session. You are in the middle of a campaign, adventure, or you even want to run a one-shot game. Great! Be it a pre-written or your own adventure, usually you want it to stand out and be memorable. The players will absolutely love the next game! Just wait until they see the combat encounter you have planned for them!
Hmm… orcs, again? Or no, goblin-kin, they haven’t faced a bugbear with three hobgoblins before (as far as you are aware of). What about last session, or last adventure, or campaign? You really want the encounter to be unique, but the normal resources (books and random tables therein) seem a bit, well, not that interesting. Am I the only GM you has this problem? Hopefully not, or else the next section will not be that useful. 😀
So, you browse around YouTube/Reddit/Instagram or other sites for inspiration, and find yourself deep in the rabbit hole of looking into miniature models that keep popping up almost daily in your feed. Excellent! Now, you may not have to be like me and almost immediately buy a 3D resin printer and start subscribing to Patreons for STL creators, but still you may find a lot of inspiration by just looking at the models.
For instance, I’m running an ancient Greece-like campaign for my players and currently they are traveling to a major city, but they need to go through a small desert. The suggested encounter were some kobolds which worship a Brown dragon, but I wanted something more interesting. And I found this model, from RN Estudio, which gave me some Mad Max vibes!
And just like that, I got not only a whole new encounter ready (this guy with some bandits, which are harassing a trade route), but it also gave me new ideas for future encounters with this faction.
By the way, this post is by no means sponsored, I bought the mini (along with many others from various creators) with my own money.
Now, you absolutely do not need to have a 3D printer, nor buy models. These creators often leave a preview image for their models for free, and that’s enough! You can use existing stat blocks, or make up your own, but now the encounter is different, just by having a model as an inspiration.
Instead of saying to the players the text on the left, try sayin the one on the right:
As the dust storm settles, you faintly see a group of several bandits which begin to encircle your adventuring party. One of them, apparently the leader, approaches you with a sly smile and a dagger in hand. The rest of them soon follow, getting closer and closer. What do you do?
As the desert sands lift, you see a hulky rock of a man, at least 6 feet tall, wielding an axe almost as tall as he is, that has seen numerous battles by the notches alone. Following the brute are several smaller figures who seem to be afraid to stand in his shadow. How do you react?
For experienced GMs, building your own encounters may seem easy as writing a post after a year-long break, but for those of us that have writer’s (or GM’s) block, some inspiration from external sources may come in handy!
