Encounters

Encounters are the core mechanic of a tabletop roleplaying game, whether they are friendly encounters, exploration of room, or full on combat. So it’s not surprising that we spend a lot of design energy in making sure that its easy to start, run, and finish an encounter.

There are three distinct ways to start an encounter in Shard: on the fly, random, and planned.

On the fly encounters are started by simply loading your map and hitting Add Monsters at the bottom of the tracker. The Pick Monsters dialog (shown below) will pop up and allow to search for or create the monsters you want. When you have the selected, just press Select to start the encounter. The monsters will automatically be added to the map and to the tracker.

Random encounters are started by pressing Add Encounter at the bottom of the tracker or Start in the top menu bar. Either will invoke the Pick Encounter dialog (shown below) and allow you to select a random encounter table appropriate for the situation. Clicking on the random encounter table in the list will bring it up (also shown below). Just pick the row or roll the appropriate die to select one and click the dragon icon to start that encounter. Once again, the monster or monsters in table will automatically be added to the tracker and to the map.

Planned encounters are shown as pins on the map. To start one, click the pin and select Start Encounter from the context menu (shown below). The advantage of planned encounters is that they often include treasure and additional map tokens as part of their definition. When you invoke one, all those items are added to the map and to the tracker.

Once you’ve started an encounter, if combat breaks out, you can run the encounter directly from the tracker and map. Characters roll their own initiative and can enter it directly on their character sheets. It will appear in the tracker automatically. Roll for initiative by clicking the fist icon at the top of the tracker. Advanced the turn by clicking the turn arrows. Record damage either in the tracker or by clicking on the token. When the combat resolves, you are ready to the finish the encounter.

Finishing encounters just got a major upgrade in the form of a new Finish Encounter dialog (shown below). This dialog allows you to add notes (shown in the blue box), select whether any monsters should be kept (especially useful for NPCs or friendly creatures that should stick around), distribute any treasure that the characters found (by hitting the Grant Treasure button (another big enhancement discussed further below), and distribute experience points to the characters.

The Grant Treasure dialog (shown below) can be invoked either from the Treasure button in the top menu bar or from the Grant Treasure button in Finish Encounter dialog. It allows you to grant any treasures that were found by the players. For predefined treasures that were setup in planned encounters, they are grouped by the treasure token to which they were attached. You can also just pick additional treasure to grant directly using the Pick Additional Treasure button. Once you have things selected, just press Grant to push all these items into the characters shared treasury. They can then access it and distribute it from there. If you want to access the shared treasury, you can by clicking on the campaign name and selecting Shared Treasure.

We hope you enjoy these changes. Keep the feedback coming and join us over on Discord to connect directly with us and other members of the community.

Thanks and happy adventuring!