I’ve recently run a couple of D&D adventures that were just one combat after another.

There have been times in my life when I’ve found that really fun – the interaction of tactical decisions, character building and fortune (dice!) that makes D&D combat so interesting. Hey, I might even enjoy it next week!

But these times I wanted something more, and it would have been nice to see role-playing and exploration as part of these games.

It’s hard when you’re writing a four-hour Organised Play scenario or (even worse) a two hour one! How do you include more than just combat? And how do you make it meaningful?

Making it meaningful is the important bit. You want the players to have to think, and for their decisions to make a difference in how the adventure plays. It’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of investigative scenarios in OP. They’re really hard to write well, but when you get them right, you get exploration, role-playing and combat all together.

My preference is that there’s more encounters than will actually be run in such an instance, allowing multiple paths through the investigation. But those types of scenarios are hard to write, especially if you’re aiming for a consistency of length. It’s not good when a four-hour adventure takes seven hours to play at a convention! Trapdoors to move the plot along, but consequences for failure – that’s what I’d like to see in those cases.

When I’m writing exploration and role-playing encounters, I want to see the players actually learning pertinent information. If they ask the right questions or look in the right places, they can learn secrets about what they’re facing: that they’re actually going up against devil-worshippers. That the high priestess is actually a vampire. That the second-in-command can change sides and aid the players. That there’s a secret door that leads past a fearsome beast – but requires a riddle to access.

I find one of the hardest encounters to run and design is the mission briefing. It’s often the one time the players get to role-play (unfortunate, but true). But even that is often cruelled by the format – here’s your mission, here’s what you need to know, go! There’s rarely a discussion – or, when there is one, the NPC tells them important information only if they guess what the right questions are to ask. (I’ve seen more than one group get into trouble because of this). It doesn’t help when it’s inconsistent – some briefings tell you everything you need and hold nothing back, while others require the right questions.

I’d rather like to see more of these briefings turn into proper planning sessions, particularly at higher levels. Here’s the situation: How will you handle it? The notes give background details and history, the personality of the briefer, and a few notes on a possible plan. Then the players can choose exactly how to handle the situation, with important details coming out from their questions. But this isn’t easy, and you can’t have it go too long.

Also, I tend to want only one NPC in the briefing – more, and it gets hard to role-play them as the DM!

There are adventures that can run the briefings like this, but it’s very easy to turn them into “and here is the info dump!” I wonder if the best way of designing these is to playtest them beforehand. Set forth the basics, then see what questions your friends ask about the situation. Then ask another group of friends, then another group. By that time, you probably have a good idea of what to include.

It’s a big topic. When you want to structure an adventure to run in a set period of time, how do you give the players interesting choices out of combat, and make them matter? How can you enable meaningful role-playing and exploration?

It’s a lot easier in an ongoing campaign – much easier to include secrets and have recurring NPCs. When you can’t assume that any of the players know the setting, what then?