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Gan The Grey
2010-05-03, 03:15 AM
As a DM, I've always tended to stick to a few key moves. However, after spending a large amount time thread-lurking here on the Playground, I was inspired by the wide-assortment of ideas, ideas that I myself would never have thought to use on my players. And the best part is, by combining your ideas with my unique spin, I've managed to throw highly entertaining curveballs to my group of players.

With those successes, I started focusing on aspects of the game I had previously ignored. I never really used random encounters because I felt like they distracted from the story, but after including a few in my recent campaign, I found that random encounters can really help to define a setting and give players a bit of a break from the main plot.

In my next setting, I'm trying to take fiat and storyline out of the game as much as possible. I want the game to be driven almost entirely by players/characters and random chance, as I'm very interested in seeing what happens when my storyline desires are removed from the game.

So...in that light, I'm looking to develop a series of highly dynamic random encounter tables that will function for multiple different landscapes and provide a wide selection of different events for my players to face. What I'm looking for are two things:

1. I'm looking for ideas on how to design the layout of said random chart and what sort of elements to include.

2. Feedback from the playground regarding the effects of running random encounters for their groups and what they do to help make them successful/memorable.

So far, I figure I'll check to see if a random encounter is called for via a percentile roll. If it is, I then roll again to determine the type of encounter. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Change in Weather – Roll on the Weather chart in the DMG, disregarding a result if it means the weather doesn’t change.
Animal – An encounter with a number the Animal type creatures, or with signs of an animal. Animals begin at either neutral (1), unfriendly (2-5), hostile (6), or signs of an animal (7-8).
Beast – An encounter with a number of unnatural and generally scary creatures. Includes the uncivilized monstrous humanoids. Sometimes the encounter is just signs of the creature’s passing.
Humanity – An encounter with civilized humanoids, though they may not always ACT civilized. Traveling merchants, squads of soldiers, and bandit ambushes all fall under this heading.
Landscape – An encounter with some interesting manner of landscape like a cave opening, some ruins, or even a copse of darkwood trees.
Item – The players happen upon a discarded or misplaced item, valuable or not.
Mysterious – The players come upon the scene of some strange and hard to explain phenomena. Could be magical, could be natural. The point of this entry is to confound the players into wanting to investigate.
Area Specific – Monsters of fable, forgotten ruins, and magical events are all included under this heading.
Roll Twice/Thrice - Roll multiple times and combine the results.


After that, I go to other charts to determine the exact encounter. What do you think? Anything you can add? Ideas to make it better?

Anxe
2010-05-03, 09:26 AM
Landscape encounters already exist in the DMG. You could just apply a number to each monster listed there and roll when you want a random encounter. I do that. Weather "encounters" also already exist in the DMG.

If you want to be more advanced about your randomness you can have encounters that are more likely to happen have more numbers attached to them than numbers that are less likely to happen. And remember that you could roll a result that is listed as "roll twice more and combine."

The benign encounters should occasionally be your plot hooks. It could contain merchants, beggars, fey creatures, other adventures, patrols, or any other thing one would encounter in the factual middle ages.

Mysterious: Watch some horror or suspense movies. Or just read the synopses of a few. That'll give you some ideas.

Area specific: well that's not really random now is it?!

Animal and Beasty: This one's a bit harder, but just searching through the MM I'm sure you could design a table if you took a few hours. It'd also have to be modified for location though.

Gan The Grey
2010-05-03, 09:39 AM
Landscape encounters already exist in the DMG. You could just apply a number to each monster listed there and roll when you want a random encounter. I do that. Weather "encounters" also already exist in the DMG.

If you want to be more advanced about your randomness you can have encounters that are more likely to happen have more numbers attached to them than numbers that are less likely to happen. And remember that you could roll a result that is listed as "roll twice more and combine."

The benign encounters should occasionally be your plot hooks. It could contain merchants, beggars, fey creatures, other adventures, patrols, or any other thing one would encounter in the factual middle ages.

Mysterious: Watch some horror or suspense movies. Or just read the synopses of a few. That'll give you some ideas.

Area specific: well that's not really random now is it?!

Animal and Beasty: This one's a bit harder, but just searching through the MM I'm sure you could design a table if you took a few hours. It'd also have to be modified for location though.

Thanks for the feedback! Didn't think ANYONE was going to say anything.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Change in Weather – Roll on the Weather chart in the DMG, disregarding a result if it means the weather doesn’t change.
Animal – An encounter with a number the Animal type creatures, or with signs of an animal. Animals begin at either neutral (1), unfriendly (2-5), hostile (6), or signs of an animal (7-8).
Beast – An encounter with a number of unnatural and generally scary creatures. Includes the uncivilized monstrous humanoids. Sometimes the encounter is just signs of the creature’s passing.
Humanity – An encounter with civilized humanoids, though they may not always ACT civilized. Traveling merchants, squads of soldiers, and bandit ambushes all fall under this heading.
Landscape – An encounter with some interesting manner of landscape like a cave opening, some ruins, or even a copse of darkwood trees.
Item – The players happen upon a discarded or misplaced item, valuable or not.
Mysterious – The players come upon the scene of some strange and hard to explain phenomena. Could be magical, could be natural. The point of this entry is to confound the players into wanting to investigate.
Area Specific – Monsters of fable, forgotten ruins, and magical events are all included under this heading.
Roll Twice/Thrice - Roll multiple times and combine the results.

Anything I'm missing?

Anxe
2010-05-03, 10:59 AM
Not sure if you're missing it, but your humanity section seems to only include traveling humanoids. Some would be settled along the trail and offering services or something. It wouldn't be random after the first encounter because they would still be there, but just an example.

The animal chart is fun, but not realistic. Far more often there will only be signs of animals than actual animals. And remember animals can include beasts that are normally domesticated, but wild within your campaign, such as cows, dogs, cats, or horses. All those animals had to be caught before they could be domesticated.

Everything else looks like a good outline. I suggest you pursue it further.

Missing things: Encounter tables for different times of day. Possibly planar encounter tables as well, although those already exist I think.