Continuing with my controversial advice for GMs to summarize more, I want to talk about battles.

Not all fights are a threat to the Adventures. Nor should they be. In these cases, end them ASAP. Even go so far as to not roll it out, but summarize it.

I am a big fan of offering at least two threats to the Heroes each night. I think I got this idea from the old TV show Kung Fu. I read that the networks insisted each episode had two martial arts fights. They demanded a minimum amount of action each week.

Players like to roll dice and resolve combat. RPGs, for the most part, are built on the foundation of Wargames. I believe that players like the excitement of battle and the risk of losing. So when I plot out a story, I put in at least two opportunities for threatening combat each session.

So back to my point, not all battles need to be a real threat to the party. If the enemy is not a threat, be quick to end it. The fastest way is to summarize it.

A drunkard commoner gets upset with the Adventures and punches one of them, no need to roll initiative and get all into it. He is not a real threat. Sure he might do 1d4 damage to one of them, but so what. If the Hero says he punches back, then he does it. No need to roll to hit, or damage, or to turn it into an encounter. If he wants to beat the crap out of the drunk, it happens. Or at least the drunk cannot stop it.

The same is true with many enemies. The Party is 8th and encounter some wolves in the woods, they kill and skin them. No dice are needed. No time is required.

Now I can imagine hearing the crowd through the internet screaming: What about rolling it out? Perhaps the wolf will roll 20, 20, 20 and kill the Hero. Sure. But do I want an Adventure to die in some meaningless random encounter? No.

But wait a minute, are you not the GM that says death has to be in the game to have it have story tension. Yes! But meaningless death doesn’t add much in that department.

It is one thing for a Hero to die fighting a dragon, scaling a mountainside, or saving the kingdom. It is another to have him slip and die in the bathtub, battling cancer, or battling a giant rat. Not all character death is equal in weight or value from a story point of view.

If you think meaningless death have value, then I suggest you add a chart to your game and roll each week. Roll 01 and you die of an aneurysm. The end. Fun times.

What about XP? Do you award XP for encounters you don’t roll out?

I think games like 5e have experience points wrong. When you only award killing monsters, then you end up with players that force fights with anything they encounter for XP.

I use a different XP system, so I don’t have this problem. But if I did use a 5e style XP system then yes. The rewards for fighting low-level encounters are small and mostly meaningless. If I felt the players were abusing this system by having non-threatening fights purely for XP, then I would stop awarding it.

Once again, as GM you are under no obligation to role play out the meaningless or mundane. This advice includes combat.

It doesn’t mean you ignore what happens. You do not deny it. You summarize it.

If six 8th level Adventurers enter a chamber with five basic skeletons, instead of rolling initiative and fighting it out, as GM I would say, “They are no threat to you, and you easily destroy them.” Then I would move on to something more interesting.

Next, the Adventures come across three mummies. I think this will be a fight. We start the battle, but I quickly see the mummies are no match for the Adventures. Okay, you kill them. Move on.

Now I am guilty of running these fights to the conclusion, but more and more I am ending them early. They are not attractive to the players or me.

I try hard to offer at least two opportunities for hard and engaging battles each night. Sometimes there are more. And sometimes the other fights that come up I don’t roll them out to the end. In my mind, the worst thing that can happen is spending all evening in some meaningless battles and not have time for the interesting ones to arrive. Same is true in role playing encounters.

Recently, I had joined a gaming group at one of the local comic book stores. I went to two sessions then quit the group.

The GM was decent, and I would have enjoyed playing with him. Unfortunately, it was a wargaming group, and they didn’t want any role-playing to happen. Perhaps a bit of hyperbole, it is far to say it wasn’t my style of game.

One of the encounters made a point of this post crystal clear to me. We came upon four priests of a cult in the middle of a ritual. We rolled initiative and immediately attacked. I had already learned that any asking of questions, talking to the NPCs, or any other interaction would be frown upon by the group. I think the GM did have a story with the cultist but the other players showed no interested in it. And all my attempts to learn about it had been a point of contention with some members of the group.

After the savage first round of attacks by the party, the villains turned into Gaseous Form. They were trying to escape. For three rounds, the Adventures dropped every bomb they had on these guys to kill them. The Bad Guys just moved away. It was a good ten minutes of real-life time of players attacking, casting spells, and maneuvering on the map to kill these priests. The priest never attacked. They all died.

Nothing about the encounter was interesting. We got their XP, looted them, and then went on to the next room. The GM then said, “This next room has a big fight in it, and I don’t think we have enough time. I am going to call it early this week.”

We spent all of our Clock on an uninteresting encounter.