Way back in the first installment of this series, I talked about mood, tone, and theme. In the theme section of that post, I talked about story themes and how they can power the focus in your adventure. Today (and in the upcoming months), I’m going to talk about thematic environments, thematic bosses, and thematic mooks. Each of those will be a different article spread across three months.

In that first installment, I urged you to seek out lists and examples of literary-based themes for your stories. I’m going to shift gears a bit on you this month and talk more about specifics that will support the feels you’re going for in the encounters you’re going to create. That’s right. We’re moving from the high-level views of storytelling and hooks and backgrounds and some world building and moods and tones and themes and all that. We’re following the camera into a tighter focus on what encounters should look and feel like.

Since this is a system-agonistic series, I’m not going to delve into encounter balance, proper rewards/treasures gained, experience points (or whatever your system uses), or anything along those lines. Instead, I’m going to help you build encounters that evoke certain feels in your players by way of how their characters will view and interact with the encounters.

Support Your Story Theme

If you take your notes on the story theme you’re wanting to evoke throughout the adventure, you can use this as a creative compass on creating adventures that support that theme. If you recall from the first article in this series, I used a single example of ravagers attacking a village, but twisted it around several different ways to produce a list of different themes. That list of options in my examples came out to be:

• Righteous Justice
• Unrequited Love
• Fated Love
• Survival

If I choose “fated love” from my list above, then the ravagers leader and the village’s mayor’s daughter are in love, and the leader is attempting to rescue the daughter from her controlling father’s clutches. The PCs will be presented with a simple hook of “find the ravagers that are raiding the village,” but it might quickly shift around to how are the PCs going to get the daughter and leader to freedom and safety where they can express their love for one another?

I’m going to use the “fated love” example as the basis for my other examples within this article.

Imagery

Since the focus is love that is fated to succeed, I’m going to choose mid-spring for the season that the adventure will take place in. This will allow me to describe gently-buzzing insects, blossoming fruit trees, blooming flowers, green fields, singing birds, and other peaceful images to bring to the forefront. Yes, you can use any season for a fated love story, but this is the “easy button,” so why make things harder on you than they need to be? Yes, I could have gone with deep winter, blizzards, warm fires, and safety in numbers within buildings, but that’s a real stretch to get to “in love” during the stress of a blizzard.

As the PCs traverse the spring forests with the green leaves overhead, soft grass underfoot, and surrounded by chittering chipmunks and singing birds, they may see signs of love, such as hearts carved into large oak trees. There may be rocks lain out on the ground in the shape of hearts as well, or find half-written, abandoned love letters crumpled up and tossed aside to land in the crook of a giant tree’s roots.

Environment

Your exterior and interior should reflect the theme you’re going for. In my case, the “fated love” theme would involve wild birds in mating pairs in the wilds, partners in the village holding hands or walking close to one another, maybe a public display of affection from a young couple (or a madly in love older couple, no ageism here!), and other symbols of love. These can all setup the tone you’re going for with your story and support your theme. Perhaps a couple got married the day before the PCs arrived, and the decorations are still being displayed.

Color Scheme

The color schemes used throughout the adventure should support the themes of the story you’re telling. If you ever watch a slasher/horror flick, the scene settings might start bright and airy (a time of innocence), but when the killer shows up on the scene, things get dark, bleak, and high contrast shades of gray pretty quickly (a time of terror). When the killer is escaped or defeated or captured, then the closing scene is usually one of brightness and the return of color (such as a sunrise) to reflect a return to normalcy and to give a sense that happiness is returning.

The colors you choose for your exterior, interior, and transitional areas should support the mood, tone, and theme of the current section of the adventure. In my case, I’d set things up with a peaceful, springtime setting as the PCs arrive in town. Then shift to stark colors of blood, burned buildings, and smoke in the sky during an attack. During the search through the forest, I’d have storm clouds roll in (and perhaps dump rain depending on how hard I want to make things on the PCs) to indicate a dark time of the soul. When they finally arrive at the ravager’s encampment, the clouds will have moved on to reveal a sweet and celebratory scene of the daughter and leader pledging their love to one another in a wedding. This wedding would include bright, vibrant colors (probably mostly whites, pinks, and reds) for the decorations and starkly clean clothing (especially for the daughter) in the wedding party. However, I’d keep the witnesses (fellow ravagers) dark and unclean to reflect their deadly nature.

Sounds and Smells

Smells are the most evocative sense we humans have. It has the shortest path to the brain and attaches in near memory centers. Ever wonder why the smell of a loved one’s favorite meal reminds you of them? Yeah. It’s a science thing. Use smells in your environment to support the theme you’re going for. Don’t forget sounds, either. It’s not necessary to see the wild mating dance of a parrot to know it’s there. The PCs can hear the tweeting, singing, hooting, cawing, clicking, and other sounds the male parrot makes during his attempts to attract a mate. This would actually be a wonderful time for the wilderness expert in the party to drop some dice on the table during a skill check to determine if they can identify the bird just by the sounds alone. It’s not critical or important to the tale, but it adds to the world building, the environmental build-up, and can allow a character a moment to shine.

Static and Active Elements

When I described the wedding between the ravager’s leader and the mayor’s daughter above, I mentioned some decorations. Odds are, the wedding will be taking place in the midst of a wilderness setting or forest clearing. The wilderness elements are static in their descriptions. The same thing goes for the wedding decorations. I usually start with these items in my descriptions. It’s exactly because they are passive. It does not inspire a player to shout, “I roll for initiative and shoot the leader with my longbow!” Starting with the trees, clearing, nearby animals, and then into the wedding decorations sets the scene.

Once the scene is set, then you can get into the active elements of the encounter. Please encourage your players to keep their dice aside while you finish the descriptions. Sometimes it takes some “training efforts” to get your players to be patient. They’ll get the hang of it, though. These active elements can be the crowd witnessing the wedding and arrayed around the center of the clearing in ranks forming a circle. The wedding party and groom and bride will be the center of focus for everyone as they kneel or stand before a member of the local wilderness clergy. Depending on when you want the PCs to exactly arrive, you can have the vows be in progress or the bride and groom approaching the clergy, or the groom patiently (and nervously) waiting for the bride to leave a nearby tent to approach the ceremony. There are many options for the timing. It all depends on what setup you want to present to the party.

Break the Mold

Lastly, you can break the mold. As I mentioned above, the trek through the forest might be shrouded by storm clouds or fog or other ominous weather. This clearly is not in support of the overall “fated love” theme, but if all you put in front of your players is love, Love, LOVE!, they will get bored with it. They might actually start to resent the theme that you’re pushing in front of them because it’s inescapable. Just change up the mood and tone a bit here and there, so you’re not hitting the same drum’s note over and over and over.

To support this breaking of the mold, if you’re really careful about watching horror flicks, you’ll notice the follow. Right before a big scare moment (or extended scary scene), the writer(s) of the movie will present one of two things. The most likely presentation is a lighthearted or funny moment to put you off guard. The secondary presentation is a moment of normalcy or calmness to get you to let your guard down. Yeah. I know. I’m ruining horror movies for you in this post. My apologies.

Conclusion

Pick and choose the elements in your environment to support the theme you’re going for. Keep in mind that the theme can shift and change as the story moves through its motions. This is especially true of RPGs because the GM is not in full control of where the story goes. The tale is going to bump into (and off of) PC interactions and decisions to change things up. These bumps and thumps on the road might alter the current scene’s themes just a tad.