Dynamic Worlds

Ok so my main goal with the blog is to get the ideas i've been building up and putting it out there for other dm's to use in their campaign.

Tonight I want to talk about the Dynamic World.

One of my favourite things about the D&D Challenges they have released is that they keep changing things up and the environment from one round to another is in a state of constant change

Dynamic Terrain

So when you build your encounter, you can create some options on how the terrain will change and when will it change. Will it change on a certain round or if players step over the area.

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Flooding Room

In this encounter you have a 'trapped' room that does not seem to have an exit. The room is full of columns and pillars of different sizes. Players cannot see the top of the room. When the trap is trigger the room begins flooding and fast. Water rushes from above coating the walls making climbing them almost impossible.

Roll initiative for the water, each round on its turn flood the room 1 square high for each tier the players are.

Some characters can fly, some can swim, other characters can try and jump from pillar to pillar until they get to the top.

On round 2 add some slimes or other swimming creatures that enter battle and cause havoc with the swimming players.

On round 3 add some tiny/small flying based creatures that have been startled by the noise and are attacking the party. This causes problems with the flying members of the party and those trying to jump around

In general the encounter should be free form a bit, it should take the characters 4+t rounds to reach the end. (t being their tier)

If you want to add some extra damage add falling rocks on round 4, burst 1 in random x/y locations

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The flooding room is just one example of dynammic terrain, the idea that the world the players live and breath in changes every moment

Another classic example of this is a collapsing floor.  Perhaps the characters need to cross a damaged section of the keep and if they stay too close parts of the floor collapse. Maybe some collapse anyway

The idea is thinking about how your encounter can change. In the epic levels you can realy experiment. Imagine the party fighting a demon where you have 4 maps set out. Each round on a initiative order everyone plane shifts. they still are in their x/y position but now they are some where different.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Works great. 1 encounter 4 maps.

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It takes some work to set this up and change things every round, but the players will remember it for some time

Anyway, that's the start. Until next time keep your dice on the table.