Like the title says, I'm looking for encounter or event ideas that are engaging but not too intense.
So I am very good at keeping my players on edge, and it's usually great, they usually love the rush, but they have all been going through some stressful times irl and they are the type of players who feel *very* deeply when things happen in-game, to the point where last session, a session where a big, depressing truth was revealed about a character's backstory, a few players left feeling emotionally drained (which I feel awful about)
One of my players told me the characters "need a moment" to chill, so I'm hoping for the next session or two, I can try and veer them off the main path into some low-stress, maybe even humorous, side quests.
A bath house give them a bath house, give the players a kid that they can protect and is there to help them for later use Eg. (Orphan working for the Bath House as a receptionist, and such other NPCs that can help them relax). Full on RP Session. Heck a bunch of cats I guess. There Is a lot that you can do.
Engage them with a competition that they can participate in. A fencing competition, obstacle courses, putting on a show, something along those lines. Make it clear that the competition is in no way lethal, is conducted among friends, but there is a cool reward at the end of it. That way the players have a goal (winning!), get to play their characters (it's surprising how much fun sequential ability checks can be when the results are fun or comical!), but there's no threat to them or anyone else.
Here are two examples I've run in my current campaign, one an obstacle course, the other a variety of competitions:
Compete with Whitebeard in a series of entertaining trials. If this option is chosen, then they each need to be victorious in each of:
An eating competition against Whitebeard. There are 5 dishes served.
Bonnet Spice goose wings. Roll a Constitution check. Keep going until you reach 40. Can stuff face, for advantage, but a fail gives indigestion and score half points next round. A score of less than 8 means you miss your next turn.
A huge plate of squirming marsh squid. Roll a Dexterity check to see how quick you can get them in your mouth. Can stuff face, for advantage, but a fail gives indigestion and score half points next round. Keep going until reach 40. Con save DC10 or vomit.
Dizzying mushrooms. Make an Intelligence check. Scoring below 10 means that you need to make a successful intelligence check to remember what you’re doing. Con save DC14 or vomit when you get there.
In-shell tortoise. Make a strength check to crack it open. Make 3 successful strength checks, DC12 to eat all three tortoises.
A drinking competition. The player nominates how many drinks they will partake of. Each time they quaff some noxious tribal brew, they make a Con save equal to 7 plus the number of drinks that they have already consumed, playing off against Whitebeard himself.
A game of Snakehand. Each player sticks their hand at random into a hollow tree, like in Flash Gordon. Roll a d12 and on a 1, they are bitten. The loser is bitten by the snake, suffering 1 point of piercing damage and 2d4 poison damage (DC10 con save for half).
Obstacle course - make this super fun by describing how the PCs fail when they do! Have all your PCs compete against one another at the same time. They'll quickly find themselves spread across the course, trying different obstacles each turn.
Assault courses work as follows, played against an opponent. Each failure means retrying the same one again:
DC 13 Athletics check (climbing wall)
DC 14 Acrobatics (balancing beam)
DC 15 Athletics check (monkey bars)
DC 16 Acrobatics (leaping between posts)
DC17 Animal handling (stay on a wild boar for 10 seconds)
DC18 Athletics or Acrobatics (warped wall)
The obstacle course was part of a larger festival. There were trippy cakes to eat, dancing, a romantic encounter for one PC, and it all fell on the eve of a huge siege so the end of the session left a big threat coming.
Tone is important. I might suggest giving them some opportunity for downtime activities, trying to spend some of their hard won loot, selling art objects and gems that they don't need for spell components. They can still walk about the town and observe things in furtherance of the current plot arc, but from a passive viewpoint. Maybe give the players and the characters a chance to have a down beat in the story, and when the next up beat comes, try not to make it as drastic or impactful. Let them see an elderly person that requires some help in getting something done, and allow for them to offer to perform a charity or just an act of kindness. Throw some bland filler at them to clear out the path for the next big thing.
You can even do this as moments around a campfire or campsite when the PCs stop for a long rest. You can always ask questions that link back to positive memories or feelings of the PCs past. What have you done as an adventurer that your younger sibling would be proud of? What have you done as an adventurer that would make your mother/father/trainer happy? What is one of the fond memories that you have of home? You can take the PC's mind to places without taking the physical character there. And as a DM, you can make these things last only a moment in game. They can happen when the PCs bed down, during a watch shift, when they wake up, anywhere. The PCs might see something happen in the market square of a town that reminds them of a loved one back home.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Engage them with a competition that they can participate in. A fencing competition, obstacle courses, putting on a show, something along those lines. Make it clear that the competition is in no way lethal, is conducted among friends, but there is a cool reward at the end of it. That way the players have a goal (winning!), get to play their characters (it's surprising how much fun sequential ability checks can be when the results are fun or comical!), but there's no threat to them or anyone else.
Here are two examples I've run in my current campaign, one an obstacle course, the other a variety of competitions:
Compete with Whitebeard in a series of entertaining trials. If this option is chosen, then they each need to be victorious in each of:
An eating competition against Whitebeard. There are 5 dishes served.
Bonnet Spice goose wings. Roll a Constitution check. Keep going until you reach 40. Can stuff face, for advantage, but a fail gives indigestion and score half points next round. A score of less than 8 means you miss your next turn.
A huge plate of squirming marsh squid. Roll a Dexterity check to see how quick you can get them in your mouth. Can stuff face, for advantage, but a fail gives indigestion and score half points next round. Keep going until reach 40. Con save DC10 or vomit.
Dizzying mushrooms. Make an Intelligence check. Scoring below 10 means that you need to make a successful intelligence check to remember what you’re doing. Con save DC14 or vomit when you get there.
In-shell tortoise. Make a strength check to crack it open. Make 3 successful strength checks, DC12 to eat all three tortoises.
A drinking competition. The player nominates how many drinks they will partake of. Each time they quaff some noxious tribal brew, they make a Con save equal to 7 plus the number of drinks that they have already consumed, playing off against Whitebeard himself.
A game of Snakehand. Each player sticks their hand at random into a hollow tree, like in Flash Gordon. Roll a d12 and on a 1, they are bitten. The loser is bitten by the snake, suffering 1 point of piercing damage and 2d4 poison damage (DC10 con save for half).
Obstacle course - make this super fun by describing how the PCs fail when they do! Have all your PCs compete against one another at the same time. They'll quickly find themselves spread across the course, trying different obstacles each turn.
Assault courses work as follows, played against an opponent. Each failure means retrying the same one again:
DC 13 Athletics check (climbing wall)
DC 14 Acrobatics (balancing beam)
DC 15 Athletics check (monkey bars)
DC 16 Acrobatics (leaping between posts)
DC17 Animal handling (stay on a wild boar for 10 seconds)
DC18 Athletics or Acrobatics (warped wall)
The obstacle course was part of a larger festival. There were trippy cakes to eat, dancing, a romantic encounter for one PC, and it all fell on the eve of a huge siege so the end of the session left a big threat coming.
Oh this is great, thank you! I always have so much trouble coming up with activities like this. There is in my game a holiday coming up, perhaps that will be the perfect time for a relaxing festival session.
Tone is important. I might suggest giving them some opportunity for downtime activities, trying to spend some of their hard won loot, selling art objects and gems that they don't need for spell components. They can still walk about the town and observe things in furtherance of the current plot arc, but from a passive viewpoint. Maybe give the players and the characters a chance to have a down beat in the story, and when the next up beat comes, try not to make it as drastic or impactful. Let them see an elderly person that requires some help in getting something done, and allow for them to offer to perform a charity or just an act of kindness. Throw some bland filler at them to clear out the path for the next big thing.
You can even do this as moments around a campfire or campsite when the PCs stop for a long rest. You can always ask questions that link back to positive memories or feelings of the PCs past. What have you done as an adventurer that your younger sibling would be proud of? What have you done as an adventurer that would make your mother/father/trainer happy? What is one of the fond memories that you have of home? You can take the PC's mind to places without taking the physical character there. And as a DM, you can make these things last only a moment in game. They can happen when the PCs bed down, during a watch shift, when they wake up, anywhere. The PCs might see something happen in the market square of a town that reminds them of a loved one back home.
This just made me realize something, ever since I gave them (loot rolled) a Helm of Teleportation, things have sped up immensely. Now they just teleport to or nearby where they want to go and forego the travel time we used to have. Because they definitely used to have a lot of campfire downtime talks and I could add smaller, less intense (even non-combat) encounters during these travels. Everything is go go go all the time.
They currently have an npc in the party (I tried so hard to avoid this, but alas), I might have them offer them some downtime in their hometown. I never really thought about small random acts of kindness and such, that would be the perfect thing. I feel like they have just gone so many sessions without a "win" it's starting to demoralize. And even just small instances that show that not everything is a dire situation would be really helpful for them, thanks!
Have a monster play practical jokes on the party that don’t cause any damage. A Satyr for example where if they catch him he invites them to have some wine with him.
Have a monster play practical jokes on the party that don’t cause any damage. A Satyr for example where if they catch him he invites them to have some wine with him.
This is a good idea. I did a practical joke session with Pixies for level 3 characters but it would work at any level:
As the PC’s venture into the forest, they draw the attention of a group of 10 Pixies.
The Pixies are scared of the adventurers at first, as they have seen all the recent goblin activity, but they are curious and want to know about them. Every 15 minutes, or if the PCs move more than 30 feet from the sight of the last mischief, roll on the following table.
Mischief Table – roll 1D10:
Polymorph – one of the PC’s is randomly transformed into a fawn
Tittering laughter is heard from multiple directions
An invisible pixie will remove some small items from someone’s pocket, then deposit them ahead of the PCs on the trail
A pixie casts Detect Thoughts on a random PC and then does something that ties into them
The pixies go ahead of the PCs and carve the words “DO NOT LICK THIS TREE FOR ANY REASON”
A pixie carries a vial of water over the PC’s head and whilst invisible, dumps the water on them
A number of Pixies follow the PC and make duck like quacking noises whenever they are walking
The pixies follow behind a PC and whenever they are walking sing a little song, always stopping when the PC turns around or stops
The pixies cast Fly on a random PC
The pixies take it in turn to cast Sleep on PCs. When one PC wakes up, they immediately Sleep another. (they affect 5d8 of hp of PC each time)
Discovering the Pixies:
A DC 16 Nature Check can reveal to a player that they have heard that this sounds like pixie work. They will also know that Pixies are timid but Good creatures.
If the PCs show that they mean no harm and attempt to befriend the Pixies (offers of food etc) then the Pixies will reveal themselves. They will warn the PCs not to fall for the tricks of ghosts further on, will warn them about the village of “flying head people” further into the forest.
If they really manage to win them over, or offer them something that they want, the Pixies might show the PCs to a small horde of treasure that they’ve gathered from around the forest. It contains an old silver crown worth 250gp, long since lost but still very sellable.
My players spent an entire session in a magical candy shop, trying out flavors and playing with the proprietor's blink dog. Sometimes, all you need is a neat location for them to blow off some steam.
I've run a couple festival interludes that had games wherein they could compete against NPCs or each other for low-stakes prizes. (Their favorite was a "dragon" race involving costume-wearing iguanas; they were encouraged to cheat to get their "dragon" to win.) I've also done sessions with travel sequences that had them encountering really fun natural phenomena - like rivers that cast Enlarge/Reduce on you, or subterranean auroras, or fields of bioluminescent butterflies. Just pretty things to remind them that the fantasy world can be as breathtakingly beautiful and funny as it is harrowing and deadly.
A wishing tree in a fey circle, allowing the party to make a wish. They have to find their candle in the cave of candles and leave an offering for their wish - let them describe the perfect candle for their character, because that's what they find. The candle is wrapped in a ribbon - remove the ribbon and write your wish on it, then place the candle on the tree, tie the ribbon on the tree, and light the candle. This encounter lets the players try to get a wish (but doesn't guarantee it, so shenanegans are easily avoided), and you as the DM get to see what the party would like to have/get/do from their wishes, and they get to worldbuild a little by making up their perfect candle. It worked well for my campaign!
A fancy restaurant filled with magical meals- meals that dance, or sing, or make beautiful pictures, and have magical effects. It's just a nice place to be, nothing sinister. You can give a quest to hunt down an animal for them (they need "X" steak for their newest dish) which is light and free of emotional issues!
A festival with various events (test your strength, guess the weight of the pumpkin, out-drink the dwarf) which gives each player a method to shine - if the dice agree!
Like the title says, I'm looking for encounter or event ideas that are engaging but not too intense.
So I am very good at keeping my players on edge, and it's usually great, they usually love the rush, but they have all been going through some stressful times irl and they are the type of players who feel *very* deeply when things happen in-game, to the point where last session, a session where a big, depressing truth was revealed about a character's backstory, a few players left feeling emotionally drained (which I feel awful about)
One of my players told me the characters "need a moment" to chill, so I'm hoping for the next session or two, I can try and veer them off the main path into some low-stress, maybe even humorous, side quests.
I would much appreciate some suggestions <3
A bath house give them a bath house, give the players a kid that they can protect and is there to help them for later use Eg. (Orphan working for the Bath House as a receptionist, and such other NPCs that can help them relax). Full on RP Session. Heck a bunch of cats I guess. There Is a lot that you can do.
Engage them with a competition that they can participate in. A fencing competition, obstacle courses, putting on a show, something along those lines. Make it clear that the competition is in no way lethal, is conducted among friends, but there is a cool reward at the end of it. That way the players have a goal (winning!), get to play their characters (it's surprising how much fun sequential ability checks can be when the results are fun or comical!), but there's no threat to them or anyone else.
Here are two examples I've run in my current campaign, one an obstacle course, the other a variety of competitions:
The obstacle course was part of a larger festival. There were trippy cakes to eat, dancing, a romantic encounter for one PC, and it all fell on the eve of a huge siege so the end of the session left a big threat coming.
Tone is important. I might suggest giving them some opportunity for downtime activities, trying to spend some of their hard won loot, selling art objects and gems that they don't need for spell components. They can still walk about the town and observe things in furtherance of the current plot arc, but from a passive viewpoint. Maybe give the players and the characters a chance to have a down beat in the story, and when the next up beat comes, try not to make it as drastic or impactful. Let them see an elderly person that requires some help in getting something done, and allow for them to offer to perform a charity or just an act of kindness. Throw some bland filler at them to clear out the path for the next big thing.
You can even do this as moments around a campfire or campsite when the PCs stop for a long rest. You can always ask questions that link back to positive memories or feelings of the PCs past. What have you done as an adventurer that your younger sibling would be proud of? What have you done as an adventurer that would make your mother/father/trainer happy? What is one of the fond memories that you have of home? You can take the PC's mind to places without taking the physical character there. And as a DM, you can make these things last only a moment in game. They can happen when the PCs bed down, during a watch shift, when they wake up, anywhere. The PCs might see something happen in the market square of a town that reminds them of a loved one back home.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Oh this is great, thank you! I always have so much trouble coming up with activities like this. There is in my game a holiday coming up, perhaps that will be the perfect time for a relaxing festival session.
This just made me realize something, ever since I gave them (loot rolled) a Helm of Teleportation, things have sped up immensely. Now they just teleport to or nearby where they want to go and forego the travel time we used to have. Because they definitely used to have a lot of campfire downtime talks and I could add smaller, less intense (even non-combat) encounters during these travels. Everything is go go go all the time.
They currently have an npc in the party (I tried so hard to avoid this, but alas), I might have them offer them some downtime in their hometown. I never really thought about small random acts of kindness and such, that would be the perfect thing. I feel like they have just gone so many sessions without a "win" it's starting to demoralize. And even just small instances that show that not everything is a dire situation would be really helpful for them, thanks!
Carnival comes to town?
Mix up the competition/tournament ideas with simple shows to see, drinking, eating, etc.
Have a monster play practical jokes on the party that don’t cause any damage. A Satyr for example where if they catch him he invites them to have some wine with him.
Professional computer geek
This is a good idea. I did a practical joke session with Pixies for level 3 characters but it would work at any level:
My players spent an entire session in a magical candy shop, trying out flavors and playing with the proprietor's blink dog. Sometimes, all you need is a neat location for them to blow off some steam.
I've run a couple festival interludes that had games wherein they could compete against NPCs or each other for low-stakes prizes. (Their favorite was a "dragon" race involving costume-wearing iguanas; they were encouraged to cheat to get their "dragon" to win.) I've also done sessions with travel sequences that had them encountering really fun natural phenomena - like rivers that cast Enlarge/Reduce on you, or subterranean auroras, or fields of bioluminescent butterflies. Just pretty things to remind them that the fantasy world can be as breathtakingly beautiful and funny as it is harrowing and deadly.
Some I have used (or am lining up to use):
A wishing tree in a fey circle, allowing the party to make a wish. They have to find their candle in the cave of candles and leave an offering for their wish - let them describe the perfect candle for their character, because that's what they find. The candle is wrapped in a ribbon - remove the ribbon and write your wish on it, then place the candle on the tree, tie the ribbon on the tree, and light the candle. This encounter lets the players try to get a wish (but doesn't guarantee it, so shenanegans are easily avoided), and you as the DM get to see what the party would like to have/get/do from their wishes, and they get to worldbuild a little by making up their perfect candle. It worked well for my campaign!
A fancy restaurant filled with magical meals- meals that dance, or sing, or make beautiful pictures, and have magical effects. It's just a nice place to be, nothing sinister. You can give a quest to hunt down an animal for them (they need "X" steak for their newest dish) which is light and free of emotional issues!
A festival with various events (test your strength, guess the weight of the pumpkin, out-drink the dwarf) which gives each player a method to shine - if the dice agree!
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