'Consume alien': Reviewing Encounter Critical

...You ever hear of Encounter Critical by Riley and Ireland? A long-forgotten piece of amateur RPG design from the 70s, originally published "on a school mimeograph" and sold through hobby stores, and now available only as a scan.

It's one of those early masterpieces in which fantasy and science fiction tropes collide. And yes, that does mean the currency is "gold credits".

Quest into the slaver kingdoms or hurl yourself into the galaxies of space to find wealth and destiny. Your tactics and your character are yours to control as you undertake ENCOUNTER CRITICAL.

...Of course, it's a joke. This "forgotten gem from 1978" was created by S. John Ross in 2004, with flourishes such as advertisements for an official Gazette (a newsletter in four supposed issues), as well as a reference to "a forthcoming line of Encounter Critical miniatures" and a search for a book deal.

Originally it was cast back in time 26 years from the true 2004 publication. Now 21 years have passed in turn.

How does the hoax hold up?

🛸 The aesthetic is perfectly on point: typewritten; amateur; hand-crafted and hand-drawn; retro; photocopied

🛸 The prose is breathlessly earnest, and preoccupied with its own relationship to conventions of war gaming

🛸 The game is full of sci-fi plagiarism and the kind of dated sexism obsessed with 'seduction' and 'doxies'

🛸 It's the classic nine-stat system we all know and love: Adaptation, Dexterity, ESP, Intellect, Leadership, Luck, Magic Power, Robot Nature, and Strength.

Um

The insane retro creativity of Encounter Critical

You roll for character race. Possibilities include, on the fantasy side, 'Amazons', 'Frankensteins', and Hobbits I mean 'Hoblings'. The purloined sci fi IP includes 'Klengons', 'Planetary Apes', and 'Vulkins'.

You can also play as a 'Wooky' and be penalised for wearing armour, although of course 'a Wooky will seek out magical rings or energy armor when it is available'.

You also have a chance to end up as...

You also may be a mutant, and therefore suffer from character traits such as Cannibal Urges, Allergy to laser, Unusual Sexual Gifts, or Self-Consuming Brain.

The writing mostly serves the "lost 70s indie game" in-joke, but also has its genuine funny moments:

 

Amateur indie design 

The mechanics, while harking back to OD&D, very much like they're just being felt out.

🛸 Warriors get followers and/or animal companions, and an underdetermined number of multiattacks.

🛸 Hit points, damage, and number of monsters appearing, are given as ranges instead of the underlying dice codes.

🛸 The nine stats barely interact at all with the (percentage-based) class abilities, only underpinning the general character abilities.

🛸 Instead, a class's key stats give xp bonuses or penalties. So does Intellect, which means it'll stack for the classes with Intellect as a qualifying stat (pioneer or warlock). If they roll maximum Int they will get +20% experience as well as "a 10% chance at experience bonus", i.e., 10% chance of doubling.

🛸 The terminology is slightly inconsistent.

🛸 The game is stuffed with percentage tables.

In these ways and others, it's all deeply connected to OD&D (while taking sniping pot shots at that game).

The book is laid out as if you pull out the middle pages to use at the table. Pages 23 and 27 are ("mistakenly"?) transposed, breaking the table of monsters.

Which includes extremely compelling types such as: Asteroid Worm, Bee Girl, Dragon of Wisdom, Rogue Robodroid, Sky Piranha, and:

(The entry for the Phasic Wolf helpfully notes that it is "phasic in nature".)

The intended 70s style rings true, IMO

An incautiously designed disease table gives you a chance of getting a brain disorder from sex work. Or you could get the "Pestilence of Dark Withering" or "Curse of Seven Hundred Minds" from a rusty nail.

There is a combat system which somehow combines simplicity, percentage rolls, underspecification, and assuming an understanding of how OD&D did things.

Does the ranged weapon table have "sling", "musket", "tommy gun", and "phasic sniper rifle" on it? Yes. Is it possible to do more damage with the sling than said rifle? Yes.

The text is very persnickety and period-appropriate, with pot shots at house rules and gaming styles, etc. It describes its spells as "correctly balanced", snubs spell levels, and says the authors prefer "a more science fiction approach where a spell is a spell".

(Speaking of spells, I love that a science fiction game has a spell that lets you travel... 500 miles.)

The inscrutably-named abilities are pretty great. Consume alien, Ensorcel, Illicit, Machine friend, and See the future all on one character sheet!

...And Seduce, of course. I've draw a veil over all the gendered stuff, but it's there – doxies, amazons, succubuses, etc. While it's clearly intended as a send-up of the 70s trappings, and works as such, the benefit of another 20 years makes it feels awkward and unnecessary. Rather than making a lot of content actually hinge on it, it could have been presented as a one-note joke.

 

The world of Encounter Critical

In the accompanying adventure, goblins are stealing the brainwaves of abducted girls to fuel up a spaceship in a warlock's lair.

This takes place in the game's setting: "Vanth, a fantasy world of adventure". (Is Vanth just Xanth, but different?)

It comes, of course, with a map:

 

It feels delightfully like the kind of thing I would have been making as an early teen.

My copy of Encounter Critical is from almost twenty years ago. These days you can find it for free on DriveThruRPG. Apparently there's an updated version.

To me, this game reads like a how-it-could have been of the original D&D, like an alternate history Dalluhn Manuscript. The game that resulted from Arneson watching some slightly different films.

Well done.

'Reasons for reactions' to improve random encounters

You don't want your encounters, especially random encounters, to be susceptible to is-this-a-combat-or-do-we-ignore-it thinking.

Plenty has already been written about giving encounters extra contextual details (where are the creatures, what are they doing, what are they hiding, etc).

But it's also important to give the encountered characters the appearance of agency by varying their reactions. The orcs don't always attack on sight. The halflings don't always ask you to join them in a meal.

So how do they feel about you?

Different games go to different lengths with this.

🟩🟩✅ Varied reactions: The rules randomly modify how aggressively a particular set of encountered creatures react, in some way. Most games do this.

🟩✅✅ Default reactions: The rules specify a creature's or group's default reaction (friendly, suspicious, wary, indifferent, curious, issues challenges, hostile, fearful, neutral...), and modify this with a dice roll.

✅✅✅ Motivated reactions: The rules provide plausible reasons for encountered creatures deviating from the default reaction (in case the GM struggles to tie it all together).

That last approach, motivated reactions, is a very useful tool but few games do it. So here are some appropriate options you can roll or pick.

1d10 possible reasons the encounter is unusually friendly:

1. unusual individual/leader
2. need a favour
3. recently sated
4. intimidated and trying not to show it
   
5. hiding a secret
   
6. smell food on the party
7. recent festival, harvest, windfall, or celebration
   
8. hoping to steal / other deceit
9. feeling secure after recent victory
   
10. party is a reminder of old friend(s)
    

1d10 possible reasons the encounter is unusually hostile:

1. on high alert after recent attack
   
2. mistaken identity
3. resource-starved and desperate
4. rabid or maddened
5. hiding a secret
6. already in bad mood
   
7. subject to tyrannical orders
8. party inadvertently breaking taboo/custom
   
9. fear of reprisals from a greater threat
10. bandits, soldiers, hated nemeses sighted in area
    

"The minotaur is trying not to disturb a spider's web by moving, and settles for glaring at you balefully."

It's infamously difficult to get across motivations, secrets, and motivations at the table, so signal the reasons as clearly as you can to the players. Your encounters will have more verisimilitude, be more engaging, and be easier to improvise.

Playtesting D&D monsters

I've been running quite a lot of playtests recently, so thought I'd talk about a few of the ins and outs of the process.

This is through a D&D 5e lens, but I suspect it generalises.

If you're planning to publish a monster, thorough playtesting is a must. It's not, sadly, a case of "run it once for your regular group's entertainment". You must run it until you have complete confidence in your work.

There are lots of design elements that you're going to need to juggle your focus on in playtesting, but we can group them into three main things:

1. Double-checking the maths
2. Ensuring it's fun
3. Watching for corner cases

Double-checking the maths

If you meticulously follow the D&D Challenge Rating rules in the DMG, you get a perfectly serviceable CR... As long as you can draw strong parallels between the monster's traits and those for which the book provides appropriate adjustments. For a trait that's really off the wall and you're not sure how large an effect it might have, playtesting becomes that much more crucial.

Particular things to keep an eye on:

1. Monsters designed for very low or high CR. Low-level D&D characters are more vulnerable to individual dice outcomes; high-level characters can take advantage of synergies and have more options.
2. Huge damage swings. A monster with a magic item that rolls 1d20 for 19 different cantrip effects and a ninth-level spell on a 20 might be balanced at a low-middle CR according to the mathematical averages. In practise, though, you're going to have one of two different unsatisfying play experiences.
3. Offensive/defensive balance. As well as a monster being 'too easy' or 'too hard', being 'too arduous' to fight is also a design failure. D&D 5e (a) makes combat front-and-centre, (b) has a lot of fiddly rules for it, and (c) disincentivises players planning their turn before taking it. This adds up to a big risk of combat encounters dragging on. It's generally (although not always) safer to tweak the OCR higher and the DCR lower.
4. Character optimisation. Creatures with book values are 'safe'. Starting players will on average have a good time fighting them, won't typically struggle at all with a level-appropriate Medium encounter, etc. Optimisers will take the same monsters and run them through the blender in a single round. There's no silver bullet here. In fact, there's no bullet. You simply have to balance for the 'default case' and then expect DMs to make changes to encounter design (or individual monsters) as necessary.

Ensuring it's fun

Monsters can be mathematically sound but boring to play. It's easy to come up with examples. Imagine a beast that negates a huge slew of character powers but can be readily whittled down with a steady barrage of normal attacks, while attacking once per round itself. Or one that hedges a specific character archetype out of the fight, while being unable to harm such characters. Or one that can only be engaged at range.

Judging the fun is the subjective bit of playtesting, and as hours and hours of combat turns pass, it gets harder and harder. Break up the work. Roll the dice instead of using average damage, just to see how it feels. Work out in advance how you're going to track player feedback on what feels satisfying and what doesn't.

Hopefully, you'll find sudden joy in stuff you didn't expect, and that will inform your work as a designer. The other day I tested a weak undead horde creature that I'd given an 'overkill' trait: a good enough roll lets the attacker kill it and cleave through into an adjacent creature of the same type. It turns out that kind of outcome, mowing down chaff with a single shot due to it being such a visibly fragile enemy, feels great for low-level characters who lack many special abilities for area damage!

Watching for corner cases

There'll be all sorts of things you didn't think of while designing. This creature is inorganic; it should be immune to poison. This creature appears in groups; it would be better off without the multiattack.

This creature's special power doesn't actually work as described... or lets it do this cheesy thing... or perhaps more commonly, it works fine, but you didn't describe it clearly enough for a DM to use. Get other eyes on your work as soon as possible (but that's a whole other article).

You won't find the problems if you don't actually examine the monster interacting with the existing rules, in a 'real' situation.

Playtesting is a big task...

...but it doesn't have to be a chore. Be organised, have a plan going in, intersperse it with other kinds of work, take joy from the emergent consequences as you would from a real game, and then the repetitiveness of it won't kill off all your fun.