I was running Kingmaker 1 last night. I have added a story line of my own to go along with the bandits theme.
We came to a section of the adventure that was kind of a dungeon crawl sectioin. The enemy was very week and the key item to be found in the crawl was discovered early on.
My question - Do you enjoy going through battles or parts of a dungeon that do not contribute in any way to progressing the story forward?
How do you handle this? Do you still go through them because the PC doesn't know if it is important or not?
This part of the dungeon was just so easy and there didn't see to be anything to gain. With my limited game time, I wanted to get to something more important or more relevant to the story.
What do you think? Did I rush the PC's too much? I basically skipped the part of the dungeon I thought had no relevance.
Thanks for your input.
Here are several thoughts I have on this:
Experience
Many encounters are designed to provide experience points for the adventurers. If you are awarding experience points then you should probably make award adjustments whenever you remove encounters.
Resources
Part of adventure design is to slowly widdle away at the party's resources (health, spells, charges, equipment, etc). If a GM lets the party rest after every encounter then this sort of defeats the designers intent though. You don't always need to stick a big bad guy in for players to encounter -- a well balanced encounter can be a lot tougher if the party has already gone through half its resources.
Journey
Anyone who has done a lot of travelling knows that a big part of the adventure, is the journey there. All the things that can happen on the way form part of the adventure and in this case the story.
Roleplaying
Every event that comes up provides a chance for the characters to interact. Who does the cleric heal when two companions are hurt and he has to make a choice of who to heal? Will a character who doesn't get healed get mad because he was not healed first? Will a character do something tactically poor that will brand him for the rest of the campaign? There a lot of unique roleplaying interactions that can come from every combat -- but this may also depend on whether your group is comprised mainly of hack & slashers or roleplayers.
Regardless of all the above, there will be situations where some encounters may be a waste of time (a big concern if your group meets infrequently). In these cases, its best to just give a narative account of what happens. (i.e. a party of 5, level 6 adventures stumbles upon a group of 8 goblins. The party defeats any goblins stupid enough to attack them, and they let 1 or 2 go with warnings to leave the area.)
Considering that there's no such thing as plot in my games, yes.
Personally, I love random encounters both from a DM's and player's perspective given that:
1) They are semi-random. As a DM I plan for random encounters. As soon as you take the decision of rolling for a random encounter, it isn't that random anymore. It basically become a plot encounter, except that you don't know what will turn out or when it will happen.
2) Random encounters don't necessarily mean a fight. I prefer when random encounters also include things like bad weather and risk of getting lost in wilderness etc. An unexpected chance meeting with a friendly encounter is usually welcome, even if the impact on the game is minimal.
3) The encounter isn't completely out of whack. I prefer when random encounters are plausible. Creatures way out of their natural habitat can be distracting if the players start investigating why this yeti attacked them in the middle of the desert.
In conclusion. Random encounters should complement the game, not take the focus away from the main plot (if main plot there is). For some stories (or for some groups of players), this could means no random encounters at all. It's like sugar coating; sprikle enough and it makes the game more yummy. Put too much and it ruins the flavour of what's underneath.
'findel
The random encounters in a dungeon are not really random. They are there to wear the party down before they get to the boss. As for random encounters while traveling from point A to point B I don't mind a few, and most people I have played with feel that way.
Red herrings are important in both mysteries and resource allocation stories.
For most classes, Pathfinder is incredibly immersed in the "limited resources per day" theme. Do we use up our party's big spells, rage, bardic performance, etc. this fight or save some for later?
Adventures are more exciting when the rounds of combat per day vary. Encounters that do not fit the story-plot can still be helpful with plot-like elements of planning and tension by threatening to deplete resources.
Most of my adventures include a medium-sized red herring fight. If the players have been paying attention to earlier clues they will have learned to skip it, or obtained the means to bypass it. Otherwise they have an "extra" fight and fewer resources for the climactic struggle.
I find random encounters to be very useful for several reasons.
1. Unpredictability. A party that is ready for what is coming is a lot stronger. Random encounters feature random enemies, and thus hard to players to predict and plan for. The Wizard who stacked the deck in their favor when fighting undead may find a single random troll encounter to be very challenging.
2. Red Herrings. The players do not inherently know what is or is not a random encounter. This adds a certain level of noise to their information gathering. Is that random group of bandits part of the plot to assassinate the king or not? Without random encounters, it becomes a lot easier for players to metagame information about what is really going on.
3. Danger. I do not sanitize random encounters. This prevents my players from being able to metagame that "All encounters are level appropiate". If a group of level 1 players stumble into a lone troll, they had better run like hell.
4. Fun. Some of my groups most memorable encounters were random encounters. One was a fight that they should have run from, but didn't. The short version is that the party meatshield survived with 3 hit points due to a lucky greataxe crit. The other was a random encounter with a group of patrolling knights that ended with some hilarious dialogue.
I'm also GMing an AP (in this case Carrion Crown), and I've come to notice that players are interested not only in the plot, but also pursuing their own agendas, even if these plans aren't even tangential to the story. I've got to handle a balancing act of both making the plot go forward in interesting ways, and also making sure that the players are able to fulfill their own character concepts. But outside of that, all encounters are planned for, and I rarely ever use the random monster generator.
On the original question, ask your players. I don't think anyone wants to do frivolous work, but if a random encounter results in a novel piece of equipment, more wealth, or even a spontaneous tie-in to the main quest as decided by you, the players should be happy.