i made the outline and routs for my event campaign. The dm book says should make a key for encounters for locations. How do I do that? Is it making quest ahead of time or something? it also said that on the map of your world you should have numbers associated with the encounter, can someone explain?
EDIT: I misread the question! I talk endlessly about "key encounters" when you're asking about an encounter key.
If I were you, I would take a look at some of the premade modules for a guide. One good example is Curse of Strahd. If you have it, look on page 28-29 (Chapter 2, "Random Encounters"). There you can see it has two tables, a daytime and a nighttime random encounter table. Basically the players might run into a random encounter while they move about the land of Barovia. In CoS, it says that for every 30 minutes of travel time that passes, DM rolls a D20. On a 18 or higher on the road or 15 or higher while travelling in the wilderness, the characters get a random encounter from one of the tables. So if you roll a 19 when the party is moving on the road during the day, and then you roll a 16 on the table, the party runs into 1d6 werewolves in human form. Then it goes in any direction you and the party want.
That's random encounters. If we're talking "key encounters," then that's more plot-driven than running into random creeps that you fight to stave off boredom.As you put it, it's making a quest ahead of time. A key encounter would be the thing that matters in that area, or maybe the thing that would attract your party's attention or get them questing. So in one town, it may be that bandits have kidnapped the mayor's daughter and is holding her ransom outside of town, so the party has to go do something about it if they want to get anywhere. Or maybe on the roadside between two places is a bridge where some deserters from the army are charging a toll that is holding up trade and traffic. These aren't random, they're the tasks that the party needs or wants to complete in order to advance the plot or to give them rewards or motivation.
What I'm getting at is there should be something to do at any given location. Maybe it's a big plot mover, maybe it's just a mercenary contract, maybe it's just a bar brawl. Regardless of the scope, there needs to be a person or event that is grabbing the players' attention and making them want to do more with it. Otherwise they're wasting their time coming to this place. It's also best to present the event to them in some way. If there's something really cool that can happen but the players have no way of knowing about it or how they can get started, it will never happen.
Personally, I try not to do too many random encounters. My last campaign was very plot-driven, so I tried to make nearly all of the encounters key instead of random. So before each session, I would have about 5 events that seemed like the most likely things the players would run into based on what plans they had made in the last session and built encounters using that. I prefer to only use random stuff if the party is really going off the beaten path. But, depending on what you, your campaign, and your party are like, your mileage may vary.
If you need some inspiration, this site has a list of some encounters that you can build off of. I think they're pretty fun and they can probably get the juices flowing a bit if you've got the old DM writer's block.
An encounter key is a map key. On the map each location will have a number. On the encounter key each number will list and describe what is at that location. So for example: "12. The Inn of the Wanton Wombat. A small seedy tavern. Description of prominent NPCs, map of the tavern, etc, as desired." Or "13: Chamber used for storage by the goblins. There is one bored goblin as a guard (Goblin stat block). In the room are (contents)." The Lost Mines of Pandelver include several examples of encounter keys. They are the listings and descriptions of what is where.
i made the outline and routs for my event campaign. The dm book says should make a key for encounters for locations. How do I do that? Is it making quest ahead of time or something? it also said that on the map of your world you should have numbers associated with the encounter, can someone explain?
EDIT: I misread the question! I talk endlessly about "key encounters" when you're asking about an encounter key.
If I were you, I would take a look at some of the premade modules for a guide. One good example is Curse of Strahd. If you have it, look on page 28-29 (Chapter 2, "Random Encounters"). There you can see it has two tables, a daytime and a nighttime random encounter table. Basically the players might run into a random encounter while they move about the land of Barovia. In CoS, it says that for every 30 minutes of travel time that passes, DM rolls a D20. On a 18 or higher on the road or 15 or higher while travelling in the wilderness, the characters get a random encounter from one of the tables. So if you roll a 19 when the party is moving on the road during the day, and then you roll a 16 on the table, the party runs into 1d6 werewolves in human form. Then it goes in any direction you and the party want.
That's random encounters. If we're talking "key encounters," then that's more plot-driven than running into random creeps that you fight to stave off boredom.As you put it, it's making a quest ahead of time. A key encounter would be the thing that matters in that area, or maybe the thing that would attract your party's attention or get them questing. So in one town, it may be that bandits have kidnapped the mayor's daughter and is holding her ransom outside of town, so the party has to go do something about it if they want to get anywhere. Or maybe on the roadside between two places is a bridge where some deserters from the army are charging a toll that is holding up trade and traffic. These aren't random, they're the tasks that the party needs or wants to complete in order to advance the plot or to give them rewards or motivation.
What I'm getting at is there should be something to do at any given location. Maybe it's a big plot mover, maybe it's just a mercenary contract, maybe it's just a bar brawl. Regardless of the scope, there needs to be a person or event that is grabbing the players' attention and making them want to do more with it. Otherwise they're wasting their time coming to this place. It's also best to present the event to them in some way. If there's something really cool that can happen but the players have no way of knowing about it or how they can get started, it will never happen.
Personally, I try not to do too many random encounters. My last campaign was very plot-driven, so I tried to make nearly all of the encounters key instead of random. So before each session, I would have about 5 events that seemed like the most likely things the players would run into based on what plans they had made in the last session and built encounters using that. I prefer to only use random stuff if the party is really going off the beaten path. But, depending on what you, your campaign, and your party are like, your mileage may vary.
If you need some inspiration, this site has a list of some encounters that you can build off of. I think they're pretty fun and they can probably get the juices flowing a bit if you've got the old DM writer's block.
https://nerdsonearth.com/2016/02/100-dungeons-and-dragons-roadside-encounters-2/
An encounter key is a map key. On the map each location will have a number. On the encounter key each number will list and describe what is at that location. So for example: "12. The Inn of the Wanton Wombat. A small seedy tavern. Description of prominent NPCs, map of the tavern, etc, as desired." Or "13: Chamber used for storage by the goblins. There is one bored goblin as a guard (Goblin stat block). In the room are (contents)." The Lost Mines of Pandelver include several examples of encounter keys. They are the listings and descriptions of what is where.
Ha! I totally misread the question. You're correct.