Captain Anorak's Guide to Gaming
Against Programmed Encounters
This follows on closely from The Situation Method.

Many scenarios are witten as sequences of programmed encounters. This means that the GM has a plan of what the characters are going to do and where they are going to go, and he expects them to meet and deal with the encounters in a set order.

Suppose for example that the party is on a mission to steal the Magic Crystal from the Orc Lord's stronghold (a complex of caves and tunnels). Many GMs would set up the scenario so that encounters are expected to take place in a fixed order, perhaps like this:

1. Journeying through the forest, the party is attacked by trolls which lurk in the woods.
2. At the cave-mouth they fight 6 orc guards.
3. At the first cave inside they fight 4 orc guards.
4. At the next cave they fight 7 orc guards.
Etc...

Writing such a scenario, the GM expects his players to deal with each encounter individually and in the expected order. Each encounter is expected to give the party some difficulty, but ultimately allow them to succeed. Some GMs even go so far as to use a technique called 'retconning', whereby they adjust the strength of an encounter to correct for the PCs doing better or worse than expected: if he expected them to be down to half hit points by encounter 3 but in reality they're down to one-third hit points, he will make the subsequent encounters easier.

I find it painful to even think about playing in a game run like that. What's the point of playing? Where's the chalenge? There is no point in making tactical decisions: if I do something clever or make some sacrifice in order to improve my combat effectiveness, the GM will simply compensate by making subsequent encounters harder, and so my effort will have been wasted. Similarly, the more incompetently I perform, the easier the scenario will become - the GM is providing a safety net to stop me from failing even if I do stupid things. In effect, clever tactics are punished whereas tactical blunders are rewarded. Who would want to play in such a game? If I had played in a scenario which I thought we had just managed to win - a hard, narrowly won victory - and then afterwards the GM said that he had been adjusting the balance of each encounter to keep us at the right level, that would completely ruin the enjoyment for me. And I would find no satisfaction in a victory if I knew that I would have been allowed to win regardless of what I did.

Many programmed enocounter scenarios don't use retconning, of course. But still here, the scenario has been written with the idea that each encounter is set up to be challenging but winnable, so the PCs can glide happily through meeting each programmed encounter as it comes, and even if they make no effort to find out what lies ahead of them or to choose the conditions under which they meet the enemy, they will still meet survivable encounters.

I find that unsatisfying. Once again, the GM is providing a safety net for incompetence by making sure that nothing the PCs meet will be too challenging. Why should it be that PCs only ever meet something which they can handle?

When I write scenarios, I tend to create a challenge which the PCs have to overcome. This will generally involve their having to think: blindly rushing in will lead to death. If I were writing a game about stealing the Magic Crystal from the Orc Lord's lair, I would design the lair, its inhabitants and their behaviour. Let's say that there are fifty orcs there. I would work out the watch system that they're supposed to use, and decide on how closely they follow their orders. I would decide on the numbers of orcs on duty in each location at different times, and what they do off-duty. It would then be up to the PCs to scout this stronghold and decide on the best tactics for doing their job. If they blindly rush in, the alarm will be raised and they will be swamped by fifty orcs and killed (I don't run games where PCs are powerful enough that they could defeat fifty competent and well-armed opponents at once in a stand-up fight).

Instead, the PCs would have to work out a clever strategy for dealing with the situation. They might, for instance, spot the weak points in the orcs' lax routine, the use stealth to sneak in past the guards. Or they might use guerilla tactics, killing anyone who tries to enter or leave the lair, forcing the orcs to send out attack parties which the PCs could then waylay and kill using clever tactics. But I would not write a 'right way' for the challenge to be overcome: I would leave that to the players to invent for themselves.

Similarly, I would not ensure that every possible encounter in my gameworld can be survived by the PCs. Some things are not survivable, and therefore should not be attempted. It is the job of the PCs to find out about potential adversaries before fighting them, and knowing when to stay away.

The Haunted Forest is a deathtrap, the domain of tree beasts with a burning hatred of man. If humans enter, they will be killed, or if lucky may just manage to escape with their lives. If the PCs just blindly wander into this forest assuming that there won't be anything that can really hurt them, they will come to grief. On hearing warnings of how dangerous the forest is, they should really heed those warnings and go around it instead of through it. If they refuse to do this in their arrogance, they should make some effort to learn what's in there before trying to pass through it. Wandering blindly into a deathtrap is a stupid, and PCs who do it should suffer for their stupidity.