Encounter Engine - Making a TTRPG From Scratch [Episode 43]

Man, I love your channel so much! This concept of an "encounter engine" is something I have on my system's to-do-list for a long time and have worked on a few times, but it's so helpful and motivating to see a take on it from a different perspective, especially with the concise explanation and visual support your videos provide. I like the idea of having the cards act both as modifiers to a creature and as inspiration for what the creature itself could be. To help the GM a little, you could even include a list of examples on the card. For the "large" card you could list ogres, dragons, trolls and golems, for the swarm card you might list swarm of bees/bats/birds/fish etc. And I'm not sure if it fits your game, but maybe a sort of "challenge rating" or "danger rating" for the cards would also be useful such that the GM has an easier time balancing the encounters. A swarm of very angry ogres sounds like a very quick way to accidentally end your campaign prematurely. And just out of curiosity: Do you have any plans to expand this system for non-living obstacles as well (like crossing a raging river or a trap-filled cave)? I have been trying for a while to implement it in my system, but I find it difficult to come up with an actual list of interesting scene elements for it (for example, what could be added to a scene to make crossing a river more interesting and to give players more options than just swimming across?).

Random thought based off your idea: What if the cards behaved like dominoes? I have a Monster card that I want to use. The card has an Action symbol on its top edge and an Environment symbol on its right edge. I place the card down and based on the symbols I choose my next cards. I choose the Swallow Whole Action card and place it above the monster card. The Swallow Whole card has a symbol for Weakness which must be filled, so I choose a Weakness card and place it down. Then I choose the Cave Environment card and place it to the right of the monster. Each card has symbols and the symbols indicate what type of cards you can place along side it. You eventually end up with a chain of cards that have created a dynamic encounter. Best of all, you've created a minigame for the GM to play while they create adventures.

This sounds very fun. Gray Army Games, another youtube chanal, has a video that this reminded me of. It is "Free Solo Rules! Solo RPG With Magic the Gathering" if I am not mystaken and it uses magic cards to create encounters. That could be an interesting thing to look into for you.

I think one of the things you need to do for this to be successful is to make each card fit multiple scenarios some examples would be Giant: if you have multiple creatures increase there level/hd/challenge rating by 1 and there size by 1, if you have one creature increase it’s level by 4 and double it’s size Swarm: choose one: increase the number of enemies by 1.5, or all enemies become unflankable and immune to non area attacks I am not sure how exactly this would interact with the win condition system you have but I think making each card more versatile is a good thing. I also think that you might need some “core” cards, cards that represent the basic enemies you face like goblin or insect or undead and these cards give you some basic statistics about them like health, attack, speed, abilities, and the number appearing.

Ive been working on a TTRPG that uses a Deckbuilding mechanic for the player characters. One of the ideas ive tested during our first run was different types of decks for the gm to run for different types of things. One Deck generates the "Terrain / Location" basically the "where are the players" the other deck Generates the "Encounters" this could be traps / puzzles / challenges, and the last deck is a Monster deck. A Word of caution though during testing i started to find i had so many different decks and cards to keep track of that it started to become a bit too much rather than if i had just pre-written down things. That said, something you might consider is having 1 Card dictate the "Environment" and have this have a passive effect, example maybe its a Rain-forest and the effect is "overgrowth" slowing down all creatures within the area unless they are native or something. then for the actual encounter maybe limit it so only 3 effects can be active at once as to not overwhelm the GM (you can change this just 3 felt like a good start to test). Then what you do is set it up so the Current Challenge requires a certain amount of success so lets say 12, then as you run the encounter when a card is defeated you add a new card until the players succeed at 12 of them. than THAT entire encounter is over. this makes it so harder challenges can be high numbers and less difficult lower numbers without actually changing the cards themselves or having more difficult cards. (Similar to DnD 4E Skill challenges). the only other thing is you need some kinda fail mechanic too imo if you wanna make this interesting and not a "Beat it till we win it" style.

That's a super cool idea. Can't wait to see you flesh it out.

The most interesting bit is the idea that the GM swaps and adds cards during the encounter. Until you mentioned that, the cards were basically just a fancy d52 table of stuff. Once they become dynamic and changing mid-encounter, now they're very engaging. Focus on the dynamics of the cards. I would recommend making types of cards with different colored / labeled cardbacks. Say, Locations, Obstacles (often monsters to fight), and Twists or Events. The rules can interact with each of the card types differently. It might be hard to change out the Location of an encounter (unless the party runs away and is chased, for example), but it would be extremely easy to change or add an Event or Plot Twist card.

Love this! Don't want to contribute to the ever-present threat of scope-creep but what if some magic options specifically allowed PCs to alter the cards for an encounter. Or maybe an oracle character could get to see a certain number of the cards from an upcoming encounter. Idk if any of that makes sense Also, just stumbled across your channel and I really like it

Have you looked at roll tables? That is a common way to generate Encouters and story hooks.