Writing encounters in pairs

Easy adventure connectivity

Sean McCoy’s post Writing Rooms in Pairs was one of the most important blog posts of 2025. It demoed a simple, fool-proof way of building connectivity into your adventures. Great news: we can apply this logic elsewhere.

We can write encounters in pairs.

We’ll start with a basic example, then I’ll show you how things can get more developed with examples from the quickstart for my megadungeon, Inkvein.

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Basic example

Let’s take a simple d6 encounter table and write in the first 3 entries.

1: An ogre.

2: d4 shadows.

3: 2 level-1 clerics.

Now, instead of filling rows 4-6 with disconnected ideas, let’s write something paired with entries 1-3 and add some extra details for all entries.

1: An ogre, searching for its club.

2: d4 shadows, risen as their remains were disturbed.

3: 2 level-1 clerics, trying to find their friend.

4: An ogre, failing to hide a stolen club.

5: d6 graverobbers, startled by the shadows.

6: A level-1 cleric, lost and badly injured.

Something neat we can do is expand this table to a d8 where 7-8 means we roll 2 encounters and combine. That means our two ogres can meet and have a fight.

Why do this?

• It makes writing encounters a bit easier since when we write 1 encounter, it is leading us into the idea for its paired encounter.

• We make the world feel alive.

• We give players more interesting options on how to engage with encounters.

Let’s look at this idea from a few more angles.

Linking to locations

We can also pair encounters with locations instead of other encounters. Look at this encounter sequence from the Inkvein quickstart:

Image credit: Murkdice

Here, a creature is aiming to collect an item from a location. The second time we encounter it, it has acquired the item and is moving it to a drop off point.

This is a great way for us to connect encounters to specific places within our adventures, and give NPCs explicit goals.

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Clusters and conditions

We can expand the scope further. This pair of encounter sequences from the Inkvein quickstart demos some possibilities:

Image credit: Murkdice

We have two NPCs with the same goal. The second encounter for each implies they are the one who wins without PC intervention: only one of them can get what they want. We get automated conflict resolution without the PCs doing anything: one of these NPCs will succeed, the other will fail, and the world feels alive as a result.

This encounter pair is also linked to a location where the goal is. In that sense, this is a cluster: we have two NPCs with competing goals, a location, and an item within that location.

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Summary

So, next time you write an encounter, consider either:

• Pairing it with another encounter (or multiple encounters).

• Pairing it with a location or locations.

• Doing both!

This will get your adventures feeling even more connected. Inkvein utilises this structure throughout many of its encounter tables. If you like the sound of a megadungeon filled with this sort of connectivity - check out Inkvein.