Right now that means me building the story arc with encounters for the group I'm running. It's not really a cohesive group. But that's more specific than these posts are meant to me.
If you can't come up with the name of a town, an inn, and/or an NPC you can pretty much always wing that one. If you know that's a weakness of yours there's plenty of online generators where you can either make a list in advance or bring them up to save your bacon.
It starts getting more difficult as you try to plan more elaborate things. Encounters are currently my stumbling block. I know I need to progress the story and I also need to make sure the encounters are balanced, appropriate, and enjoyable. That's a difficult set of requirements.
I'll probably go into these in more detail in separate blog posts but here's kind of an overview.
Balance isn't too bad given the CR system to use as a base. That and winging it based on how well the encounter is progressing. The intent is to make the characters work towards the end goal and not stroll through to it. At least it is for me. The characters should feel like they've accomplished something at the end of it.
Appropriate starts getting into more murky waters. That means you should have some idea of a goal in mind. Simply doing a dungeon crawl that ends with a big monster doesn't really advance the story much. Being appropriate can be a dungeon crawl to line their pockets if the loot has been less than what they should have at that point. They're good for that. But a random "hey - dungeon!" can be distracting and feel gratuitous. At least to me.
Enjoyable is another one of those nebulous and difficult things. Enjoyable for who? Do you want to showcase a character's abilities in this encounter? Do you want them to use their skills to the best of their ability? If your players like solving problems do you put the right kind in their path? Do you have players who sulk when they can't be the bestest and how does that come out in their play style?
As you can see there's a lot of questions. I've used pre-build adventure modules as either a base or a launching point for my encounters. I drop in what is suitable for the party and remove what isn't. I change things on the fly if I can sense it's not clicking with the group or if it's going off the rails. I've painted myself into a corner more times than I can count and have to work to pull it out of my hat.
What I've found works best for me personally is to have a few opponent types available, some kind of reward that they need or want to get further along in the story, and try to make it so at least half of the party can show off their skills. That's my outline. Then from there I can work around it to make a more fully fleshed out encounter.
But I still keep names and other necessary things in physical lists so that I don't have to come up with the name of the goblin in the corner of the inn when they're back from whatever they were doing.
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