Symbol Encounters (On map enemies)

So, I'm a random encounter enjoyer.  It's what I grew up on. Whether it was in my video games or my tabletop RPGs, it makes sense to me that you travel, and, for simplicities sake, you roll some dice to determine random events that might happen while doing so.  They're not totally random, they're from a predetermined list.. but this makes every adventure a bit different.

Yet, taking in feedback from game jam and playtesters, The younger gamers don't like random encounters. They like to see the enemy on the field (A symbol) before the encounter begins.  Mostly, so they can avoid it, because to them, combat is a punishment.

I find this baffling. Combat is the game, kiddos. Everything else is just window dressing.

It should be said that for D&D, I usually like an even split, maybe even 60/40 hack'n'slash to roleplay ratio. If a game is all mechanics and 0 story, that's not fun to me. But a game that's all story and no mechanics, also no fun - That's what every other type of media is for, not games!

Anyway, A little variety is good, right?. So we made a Bandit Camp with only symbol encounters and it turned out to be a lot of work.. another reason not to do enemies this way, at least not all the time. But this was fun!

So first, we make the map, a little camp with some tents, and the tents have internal maps. OK cool. Easy.

Next, we need NPCs. Well, I'm not using any "standard humans" in this game, so every NPC is either a monster or made from scratch. Meet the Infernal Bandits.

Since I've made my own fantasy races, I have to use the character generator to pump out more and more and more of them. This time though, I maybe, possibly, just slapped masks on their faces and changed the color of their clothes.  But I think it's a good thing I have such an inventory of Infernal NPCs that I can do stuff like this now. Feels like an MMORPG.

Well, each of them needs a sprite.. Something like this, as an actor sprite.  Then they get converted to enemies by Yanfly plugins, even allowing some randomization with the sprite (EG "Bandit Rogue" can appear as the first 4 faces/models, etc). Hook them up to some player skills and voila, they are pretty compelling enemies.

So now we have bandits, we have a camp, let's make a bandit camp. Some events and switch coding later,  and now we have 4 bandit battles, which start when the player triggers them various ways. No randomness here, and they're fairly easy / low level enemies, Though the boss is a longer fight (as he brings 7 bandit buddies). 

The player can pick the fight with the bandits when they're ready..

Then you fight them... 

And then kill them.. And they stay dead. Once they're gone, the camp is empty. You get exactly the same bandit camp experience as every other player, every other time. Personally, I would hate a game that worked that way the whole way through, but I think a few sprinkled in may work.

I thought this was a waste -- so, some of the bandits now appear as overworld encounters in that area too. Randomness prevails!  I may end up coding them to behave differently before/after the camp, EG if the bandit leader is dead, maybe random bandits will run away from battles.

I wouldn't want to design a game with only Symbol Encounters, because it takes the agency away from the player regarding EXP, levelling and the types of challenge they face. And it's very hard to do that in a way that feels right -- Like Baldur's Gate hard.  If there's no random encounters, you're saying the developer should track every little point of EXP and make a handcrafted journey for your level up experience.  

But without a multitude of other meaningful choices and options to provide variety, that amounts to a fake journey where your goal is to collect all the EXP on the map.  There's no real growth if it's all predetermined. There are checks and balances, sure, but at the end of the day, I think if you want to be stronger in an RPG, you should have to go try to get stronger. And if you don't want that, then there should be other options too. In a heavily scripted symbol encounter game, you are exactly as strong as the dev wants you to be, which means you probably can't lose unless they want you to. 

Asqueria will kick your ass and won't apologize for it. 

But not in the Bandit Camp. Probably.