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Do you strive to be a better GM, and desire to deliver the scenarios in the most enjoyable manner possible to your players? Of course you do, you're a PFS GM! We have something to talk about, but first go and watch this YouTube video.
In this video the Extra Credits Team (more about them) dissects an old Baldur's Gate Dungeon and goes into great detail about designing engaging encounters.
Although we are not writing encounters, we are delivering encounters written by others and strive to deliver these encounters in the most engaging manner possible. I think reviewing the design principles presented above during scenario preparation can help us up our game.
Discuss.
This looks less like a PFS post and more like marketing of a third-party product.
I see now how it looks like that. Feel free to flag it to move to Advice or Gamer Talk.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Definitely not PFS-specific, but I'm really struggling to see how "Here's a video where people break down dungeon design" resembles "marketing a third-party product".
But, whatever. Beside the point.
Anyway, the above is actually a five-video series, which I watched already. It is indeed very relevant to GMing, but moreso to homebrew dungeon design than to PFS scenario preparation.
Still, good stuff.
I also heartily recommend the Extra Credits channel on YouTube for anyone with even a passing interest in game design. Although some of their content is specific to video games, a lot of the design principles translate very well to tabletop gaming. One of my favorites was their video about the relationship between complexity and depth, in which they frame the former as a sort of "currency" that the designer spends to acquire the latter, hopefully while being as economical as possible and not going over budget, so to speak.
Going to throw in my +5 for Epic Credits videos. They explore good design and how you as a game designer can create good games.
*Some of the things include opening up (or reducing) options for players.
*Influence decision making by players
*Telling better stories through various mediums
This sort of thing is really important if you want help your players discover interesting story points without beating them over the head. Or teaching your players through mechanics without hand holding them.
Thanks for the positive comments Jiggy and Deadalready! I really wanted to share this latest cool thing I found with my friends (all of you).
So I've been trying to take their four part Narrative/Combat/Puzzle/Loot approach and think about how I'll deliver each of those during every encounter while preparing PFS scenarios. It is as simple as looking at a combat encounter that is just loot and combat and realizing that I should go out of my way to dial up the fluff and atmosphere of the area.
PFS is limiting on that you can't add combat or traps or loot to a one-dimensional encounter. But you can really brush up on the terrain rules so that the player can approach to battlefield as a puzzle to be solved.