Tension: What keeps the story moving forward?
Welcome back to our series on making RPG encounters interesting. Our topic for today is tension. This, like stakes, will have to dip into both individual encounter design and adventure design in general. We will discuss both narrative and mechanical tools then look at how to apply them to encounters.
So tension, what is it? Tension in fiction is essentially the rising stakes of how a question will be answered in a narrative. So much like some of the other topics we've covered, it is it's own thing while being absolutely dependent on another aspect of encounter building. Easy right? In a story tension rises through unresolved conflict. It can be a growing sense of risk, escalating conflicts, or growing dissonance between what is expected and what is happening. Pulp and action stories generally use the first two methods. Either the hero is facing more daring challenges (think Indiana Jones) or there is escalating stakes of the problem the hero's are facing (think any super hero movie). If either of these started with the most exciting risk, or the highest stake the movie would be flat. The growing dissonance would be more at home in a Lovecraft book or a twilight episode. Things start off just a little strange and slowly the characters get sucked down a rabbit hole of weirder and weirder occurrences.
In addition to just using narrative tension in a game, particularly a resource management based RPG (D&D, Pathfinder), we have the advantage of being able to use mechanical tension as well. Mechanical tension can be done using time, resources, or increase difficulty.
Before we jump into the different tools here we are going to have a quick discussion on why we've treated stakes and tension as different things, when they are so close. Stakes essentially are the question of an encounter or adventure. Will the PCs defeat the villain? Will the the PCs get the help of the duke? Tension is about how do we create more strain on answer to that question. You can also choose to increase tension over the course of one encounter, increase tension over a series of encounters or both.
Now narrative tension is a bit tricky in gaming. Unlike an author or screen writer we don't get to control when the players figure something out. We don't get to decide how characters respond to situations either. They can ignore a situations or sometimes they immediately use murder as a solution. They may solve the mystery after the first clue. Even though these tools may not always be able to give us the desired effect they are still useful to think about. There are three essential narrative tension building tools you have in your arsenal:
The flow of information
The challenges the PCs encounter
The response of the antagonist, villain, or world
Also we get three mechanical ways to raise tension as well
Increasing difficulty
Resource Drain
imited Time
It should be said that increasing difficulty and the challenges the PCs encounter are pretty much identical. They are just the fluff vs. mechanical equivalent. Using these tools can create very interesting encounters (or adventures for that matter). We will focus on the way to use them in encounters but it should be easy to extrapolate how you might use them in a longer adventure. Also remember earlier advice of ours, games tend to sing the most when narrative tools and mechanical tools are used together to create the desired feeling. We are going to give you examples of using the narrative tools and the mechanical tools, and end with an example that uses both.
So first up is the response of the antagonist, villain, or world. This is probably one of the ones that most GMs know how to use. Essentially this adds up to anything the PCs do, the world responds appropriately. Often it’s the antagonists that is doing it. The PCs embarrass the antagonist, the antagonists tries to frame the PCs. The PCs attack a base, the villain hurts someone the PCs care about. The trick with this goes back to how to handle social encounters. You do need to get into the headspace of your villain. Would a cold, calculating, shadowy figure burn down the PCs hideout and leave his mark? Probably not. In our current D&D campaign there are several main antagonists. One of which is cold and calculating. Her biggest fear is losing control of a situation, so anytime she has conflict with the PCs her first move is always to block the PCs from harming her reputation or in a political way. She makes sure to leave no solid evidence that leads back to her, and taunts the PCs into doing reckless and stupid things. Her responses are always measured to what the PCs do. Another major villain has a lot of power, but a lose grip on reality. He randomly harasses the PCs based on whatever whim he has at the moment. Sometimes he inadvertently helps the PCs as well, assuming the play but whatever weird game or whim he has.
Both of those antagonists raise the tension, though in incredibly different ways. The PCs are always very hesitant to get involved with the first villain. If they do they do their best to find out other information about the situation before they engage, because they know what is coming. The second creates a different sort of tension. If they hear anything about them or if something happens involving him it gets their hackles up because they know they won’t know what to expect.
As we mentioned before increasing mechanical difficulty and increasing the challenges the PCs encounter are essentially the same thing. We will address the two at the same time and relatively quickly. This is Indiana Jones going after the Holy Grail. There is a set of challenges getting harder and harder as he gets closer. You use a combination of bigger description, bigger hurt on a fail, and a higher DC to pull this off. Honestly though? This is the least interesting on it’s own and is a support for all other encounters. It needs to be in conjunctions with other things happening. Either there has to be really cool choices within each of the challenges, the enemies need to get bigger and crazier, or the environment needs to becoming much more opposing.
Resource drain is probably one of the most interesting ones that is often overlooked. In fact the first set of videos to introduce this idea to us, done by Runehammer games called room design (He uses timer dice as a resource drain, which we use as well in many encounters, but we have generalized the idea a bit). Essentially the idea of resource drain is that there is some pressure on the PCs taking away their resources. It can be a string of combatants, it can be an environmental effects, or anything that means the longer it takes them the less resources (HP, Spell Slots, Hit Dice, etc) they have. This works great for dungeon delving or encounters because it puts pressure on the PCs to either end combat or press forward. It also is a huge help in solving the 15 second work day problem (i.e. PCs fight one encounter, wait around for a full rest, then fight another encounter) without using random encounter tables.
We had a dungeon that was covered by the sentient single willed ooze of a create. In that dungeon it would consistently strike out at the PCs, forcing them to roll a DEX save each turn. It did small amounts of damage, but over the course of a dungeon it kept them moving. It made each of their movements matter, it made each of their turns matter, and it made waiting around not an optimal strategy. In addition it amped the tension. The longer they were in this dungeon, the less likely they would succeed. That little bit of damage as they walked around really kept them on their toes.
Finally let’s think about how we can use the flow of information. Let’s go back to our Duke example. Let’s say our party previously met with the duke, got his help, learned about what a kind and caring man he is, and saved the day. (Check out our impact and choice article if you want to read more about that) The adventures have been off in caves spelunking and doing heroic things as they are prone to do. You want in the meantime for a cult or some other BBG have been messing with the town the adventures set out from. So they come home and things are strange. The streets are quiet. People scuttle around scared. The Duke refuses to see the PCs.
Now this is an interesting scenario in and of itself. However, as it stands the tension may grow. But there is no push. The PCs can take as long as they want. It will still be a great adventure, but we can amp this investigation up a little bit (and make it play more like a single dungeon or encounter than just a series of encounters) by using mechanical tension. Give them a time constraint. Maybe the necromancers army is marching on the town and they have x days to mobilize the army or the town is toast. If you want to cause particular panic, put a beloved PC on a time limit. They have been convicted of treason against the duke and have x number of hours (meaning they can go to X number of locations to have scenes) until they are hung. If the PCs can’t figure out what is going on before that NPC is toast.
The time limit is a particular potent choice for tension because it also adds choice. Does the whole party go together, meaning they will more likely get the information they need, or do they split up to cover more ground in that time. Now your very neat intrigue arc has some weight to it and makes the PCs really think about their actions. So by using those two tools, flow of information and limited time you create an awesome and memorable adventure.
Again remember these are just more tools in your encounter building kit. While every encounter should have some sort of tension (particularly narrative tension), don't use the same trick over and over again. Spread it out so that your players can like it for longer. So did we miss anything? Any other ways of building tension?
Also as always, if you have encounters you want to share on this site go to our share page for guild lines and email you encounters to tabletoprpgencounters@gmail.com.
