Usually when I look to build an encounter I ask myself "Whats the tension?" for obvious reasons. However, I've been thinking about making an encounter that is more surrealistic in nature, sort of based on the song "All Along the Watchtower". The song has some built in tension because it seems to be building to some kind of crescendo but never actually gets there and ends before any sort of resolution takes place. I think it would be interesting to have an encounter like this where tension builds but then ends abruptly without any resolution. However, since there would be no conclusion or resolution I'm worried that it wouldn't be much fun for my players and end up being just sort of underwhelming for them, leaving them thinking it was a waste of time or confuse them, making them think they missed something they should have noticed. What say you forum denizens?!
Avoiding a potential hazard would provide the same results.
Having the PCs deal with an apparent threat in a simple (yet anti-climactic) way is the best way to do this, since it gives the PCs a sense of accomplishment, while also proposing the ideal that there is something that may or may not happen. A misunderstanding is perhaps the most obvious method to do this, such as having a bad guy who is pointed out that he screwed something up, and as such runs away to set his plan into proper motion.
The problem is whether the PCs will actually bother to resort to the simple plan (which would resolve the "encounter"), instead of being their inherent murder-hobo selves, to which point, I say use your best judgement. You're the GM for these PCs, you should be able to gauge whether they will resort to non-murder-hobo tactics to finish a potential encounter, and if they can't, the quite frankly the odds of you pulling something like this off is slim to none.
It can also make them very paranoid that the actual "event" is yet to come.
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There would be no potential for any actual combat, unless they decide to just start randomly murdering good people who show no hostility towards them. However, everyone they encounter would seem to be expecting people to arrive who would start some kind of unknown conflict, these people would be seen miles away on the horizon, and then the encounter would end and they would be removed from the area.