Written By Lee Alailima-Rose
The Mission
It’s a tale as old as tabletop role-playing games. We’ve spent all day plotting and planning a glorious adventure through the dungeons of our dastardly death knight, complete with detailed terrain and miniatures and maybe even a monologue or two. Our players arrive, and we describe the perilous journey into our subterranean death trap beneath an old forest when the conversation suddenly turns.
“Let’s check out the old forest around the entrance.”
We suddenly find ourselves scrambling for anything our players can encounter in this unforeseen turn of events. Fortunately, we can improvise an entire session with a good Czepeku map, some Tome of Summoning minions, and a little imagination.
The Maps
Players love exploring, and sometimes a session goes in unexpected directions. Luckily, Dungeon Masters can paint pictures of any environment with their words, frequently more immersive than any image. But when things go sideways and combat starts, nothing beats an excellent map illustrating the granular details of a character’s tactical surroundings.
When it comes to immersive illustrations and granular details, Czepeku maps are the top of the line with their expansive selection of high-quality maps, each with numerous variants covering every environment from the everyday to the exotic. A small folio of maps for commonly adventured environments will significantly expand a Dungeon Master’s options for improvised encounters. Here are a few recommended maps to start your map collection for everyday encounters: Banshee Moor Original Day, Crossroads Original Day, Harpy Cove Golden Sand, Slum District Clean Day, Megalith Gate Deep Winte.
In our situation, where players would instead explore the old forest rather than our meticulously crafted dungeon, a map like Dark Woods Edge Natural would be perfect for an improvised encounter.
The Minions
Every good encounter needs minions, and the Tome of Summoning keeps an arsenal of them at the Dungeon Master’s fingertips to deploy at a moment’s notice, which is perfect for a last-minute improvised encounter. Each pack contains convenient folded reference cards and paper minis of over 45 commonly encountered creatures in Fifth Edition, each fitting neatly in the pocket pages of the Tome storage binder.
With this, a Dungeon Master can quickly flip open their Tome and pick any needed creatures, pulling out its illustrated reference card and labeled paper minis to deploy on the battlefield.
An old forest around the entrance of a death knight’s dungeon would likely have deathly denizens occupying it, including will-o-wisps, zombies, and skeletons. Non-undead options could include a green hag, dryads, or druids. Maybe combine the two, creating an encounter to tie back into the death knight’s dungeon by having one of the old forest’s occupants be attacked by an undead creature. This creates a living and immersive world and points the players back towards the previously planned dungeon.
In our improvised encounter, we’ll have a helpless dryad attacked by zombies created by the evil necrotic energies radiating from the dungeon below. Reference cards and paper minis of these creatures can be found in Tome of Summoning’s Core Pack I and NPC’s & Familiars packs.
If we have trouble coming up with minions and encounters, we can always use a random encounter table instead. The Deck of Encounters is a perfect tool for coming up with encounters that are engaging and balanced for any level of adventuring party, all from the easy-to-use and compact convenience of a card. Each card features beautiful environment artwork, and every encounter uses creatures found in the Tome of Summoning, synergising perfectly with a collection.
The Encounter
Our improvised encounter is simple: undead from the death knight’s dungeon are terrorizing the inhabitants of the old forest. Our dryad is a likeable NPC in need, and our undead are obviously evil creatures stemming from the nearby dungeon. Once our players have explored the seemingly mundane forest, they can overhear the nearby cries for help and investigate. Upon arrival, they can see a wounded dryad surrounded by horrific zombies.
We enter initiative. The zombies have simple motivations: attack the nearest living creature. The dryad is frightened and injured in an open patch of forest surrounded on all sides by several zombies. If the players do not intervene in time, the dryad is killed.
Once the zombies are defeated, we will point our players to our dungeon. If a player character can speak elvish or sylvan, the dryad will describe the expanding influence of necrotic magic emanating from the dungeon entrance and plea for help from the adventurers, possibly offering assistance. Upon inspection, players can discover bits of treasure on the undead corpses, maybe ancient jewellery or burial coins, hinting at more treasure wherever these zombies came from.
The Conclusion
This improvised encounter is only an example of the infinite possible encounters we can create with a folio of Czepeku maps and a pack of Tome of Summoning creature cards and minis. Maybe a band of orcs ambushes our players at a crossroads, a group of harpies tries to lure them to a watery grave, or a young white dragon hunts them on a snowy mountain. Mastering the art of improvisation can be the difference between a good Dungeon Master and a great one. All you need is the right tools and a bit of imagination.