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Tanuki Tales
2011-12-27, 02:10 PM
With the large plethora of books devoted on monsters and combat encounters for Player Characters (in both DnD, Pathfinder and nearly every other table top game), I find myself upon a quandary that vexes me and I would like the opinions of you all here on the forums.

Do you simply throw monsters at your parties? Do they just go about as violent hobos who just happened upon the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere)?

Or do you try and justify every creature as being where it is for a reason? Do you take the monster you plan for them to fight and build a whole ecosystem around them, justifying their presence that the PCs are intruding upon? Do you come up with a backstory to explain, in your mind, why it has wandered where it has, outside of its normal home?

Do you do some combination of the two?

I'd like to know everyone's thoughts on the matter.

koboldish
2011-12-27, 02:12 PM
I hate random encounters as a player, so I try to throw a very small number at my players when I DM.

Tanuki Tales
2011-12-27, 02:16 PM
I hate random encounters as a player, so I try to throw a very small number at my players when I DM.

Oh, I don't only mean literal random encounters.

This can apply to any aspect of the game where the players have to fight and kill X monsters that are impeding their way to the plot.

Might be clearing out a dungeon for the MacGuffin at the bottom or stopping to save a town from a group of rampaging Trolls on the way to see the King for his summons or what have you.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-27, 02:31 PM
I try to have at least a basic reason...it may not be any more complicated than "there's stuff to eat here", but I've played games in which a 10 by 15 room inexplicably had over 30 medium sized monsters in it of various types, just chilling. Us players painted a glorious mental image of what this room would look like if they all lived there, and told each one they were welcome as we put them out of their misery.

I've also seen some modules where there's great story reasons for encounters, but they're in such a way that the players will almost never see the reason. That seems...almost like wasted effort. I like the reasons existing, but if there's no way for something to ever see screen time, it's of limited use.

Edit: It does depend somewhat on group. My tue group gets more background than my friday group, on account of my friday group referring to anyone with a name as borkbork before gleefully trying to smash it's face in.

DrBurr
2011-12-27, 02:33 PM
I always pick my dungeon monsters carefully to best fit the party's location in my world right now, though traveling in a heavily civilized nation means lots of bandits and other criminals.

As for random encounters i let it slack a bit more always putting in a convenient forest or cave near by for wolves or bears

DMBlackhart
2011-12-27, 02:34 PM
With the large plethora of books devoted on monsters and combat encounters for Player Characters (in both DnD, Pathfinder and nearly every other table top game), I find myself upon a quandary that vexes me and I would like the opinions of you all here on the forums.

Do you simply throw monsters at your parties? Do they just go about as violent hobos who just happened upon the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere)?

Or do you try and justify every creature as being where it is for a reason? Do you take the monster you plan for them to fight and build a whole ecosystem around them, justifying their presence that the PCs are intruding upon? Do you come up with a backstory to explain, in your mind, why it has wandered where it has, outside of its normal home?

Do you do some combination of the two?

I'd like to know everyone's thoughts on the matter.


Perhaps I'm an oddity, but I don't think I hear this enough from fellow GMs/DMs/STs. I Ad-Lib it. Or to phrase that better, I throw a "random encounter" at my players as the dice or situation deems fit, and from there I answer whatever questions the players have, as appropriate.

As an example, putting a water ghoul (forget the proper name) in the middle of a desert my indeed be the very definition of "random" encounters. But after the thing is dead or unconscious my players generally like to play detective and figure out why this thing is where it is.

Obviously you can go any route with this, perhaps it was a cursed wanderer who messed with the wrong Djinni, or perhaps a rather wealthy noble had it shipped in for some nefarious purpose. The end result doesn't matter in my opinion.

So to sum that all up, basically just "wing it". Use totally random events, and then just pull the facts out of thin air. Has always worked for me.

Edge of Dreams
2011-12-27, 02:44 PM
There's two options that I've both used as GM and seen used by others that I really like.

1) I tell a story. This is exactly what it says on the tin - the GM is telling the story, and he has specific reasons why each and every opponent (whether monster or human or other NPC) is where it is. Sometimes this needs no more explanation than "Guys, you're in the dungeon of the Chaos God, of COURSE there's gonna be mutant half-dragon gelatinous cube abominations."

2) The DICE tell a story. This is where the GM uses randomness as a spark for improvisation. A room is supposed to have 3d6 goblins, and you rolled a 3? The others must be on patrol, or got eaten by something larger. The random encounter table says you meet a friendly gnome wizard, but you're in the middle of a dead magic zone in the underdark? Well, surely he's got some interesting tale of how he got there.

Some times, with mode 2, the rolls don't totally make sense, but we, well, "roll with it", as you might say. Other times, though, I've seen more interesting encounters and stories emerge from the randomness combined with the GM's on-the-fly explanations than anything that was ever planned ahead of time.

horseboy
2011-12-27, 04:06 PM
Generally I know what the bad guys are doing and why. As the players choose what they want to do, they come across different schemes the baddies have going on. Sometimes I'll throw in a "random" thing that's typical of where they are to remind them that there's the rest of the world out there.

Tanuki Tales
2011-12-28, 01:56 PM
So it sounds like generally, of those who posted so far, that even when you throw out random things, you still try to rationalize why the encounter was there and why it happened.

Does anyone just throw that to the wind and just do it to do it? Does the party ever complain from the lack of explanation? Do they just grin and go along with it because that's just how it is and they're having fun anyway? Or does that mind set run smoothly because the party ultimately doesn't give a single damn about consistency and just want to vicariously live out like they're playing an MMO or Dragon Quest-esque RPG?

DMBlackhart
2011-12-28, 03:19 PM
So it sounds like generally, of those who posted so far, that even when you throw out random things, you still try to rationalize why the encounter was there and why it happened.

Does anyone just throw that to the wind and just do it to do it? Does the party ever complain from the lack of explanation? Do they just grin and go along with it because that's just how it is and they're having fun anyway? Or does that mind set run smoothly because the party ultimately doesn't give a single damn about consistency and just want to vicariously live out like they're playing an MMO or Dragon Quest-esque RPG?

That depends on the players, really.

From my experiences, some players are completely content with sheer "random" in their encounters or plots. While I personally avoid just pure randomness, and often give at least the smallest of reasoning behind an encounter's presence, it is more then acceptable to just roll the dice, throw the monsters in, and enjoy the ensuing chaos. Of course, you should judge your player's opinions on if this is fun/acceptable or not.

horseboy
2011-12-28, 03:32 PM
Does anyone just throw that to the wind and just do it to do it? Does the party ever complain from the lack of explanation? Do they just grin and go along with it because that's just how it is and they're having fun anyway? Or does that mind set run smoothly because the party ultimately doesn't give a single damn about consistency and just want to vicariously live out like they're playing an MMO or Dragon Quest-esque RPG?After a random dragon stuck it's head in an inn in the middle of town and got surprise on us, we started throwing things at GM's for bad random rolls.

Agrippa
2011-12-28, 05:09 PM
After a random dragon stuck it's head in an inn in the middle of town and got surprise on us, we started throwing things at GM's for bad random rolls.

He should have had the dragon order a few barrels booze for himself and chat for a bit with the inn/barkeep. Make the big firebreathing lizard a regular customer and really confuse the hell out of the players and their PCs. Then afterword your DM, acting as the dragon, could hire your party for a job or two. See, not all random encounters have to involve violence!

valadil
2011-12-28, 11:59 PM
I don't like fights as obstacles. I never want to have the players fight a randomly determined CR appropriate monster just because it's on the road they're traveling. It doesn't make sense and it doesn't add to the story. I can wrangle the setting to force it to make sense, but it's still just filler at that point. Why bother?

If my players are going to fight someone to the death, it's going to be premeditated murder. Either the PCs have found an NPC that needs killin' or an NPC has decided to off those meddling PCs. This usually means that one side knows the names, or at least descriptions, of the other side. These fights are a whole lot more personal and meaningful than the slaughter of a herd of Tendriculos who rooted themselves near the wrong crossroads.

navar100
2011-12-29, 12:45 AM
If every time the party travels they are attacked, then how the heck do all the NPCs of the world manage to arrive at their destinations without incident? If travel is such people are attacked every day, then that is the plot the adventurers are supposed to take care of: the bandits, the goblins, the orcs, the whomever attacking caravans and people just going to and fro.

Same with traveling by boat. If every time the party travels by boat they are attacked by pirates, sea monsters, bad weather. or any two or all three, then how can any nation have a navy or there even be commerce for trading ships to want to cross the seas?

It's really not a big deal to say "After a week you arrive at City." or "Despite a little rainstorm your voyage is uneventful other than a fun cruise for the two weeks, and you arrive at Port Adventure on Other Continent.".

Just because the party travels doesn't mean something must happen. Not saying never, either, just not all the time every time just because the party travels.

Mastikator
2011-12-29, 02:36 AM
Not a fan of random encounters as a player or as a DM. If the players are traveling on a road that is plagued with bandits that ambush travelers, then yes there is a chance that those bandits will encounter (and possibly attack) these PCs, but I wouldn't roll an encounter table. It slows the game down and frankly my group is slow enough as it is :P

Manateee
2011-12-29, 04:46 AM
Depends on the game.

I'm not going to pull out random baddies or encounters in a calculated and controlled spy game, unless it's a non-random red herring. And I'm probably not going to introduce a lot of those elements to a game where it's the players' job to make things complicated like Dust Devils.

But in a game where uncertainty is the name of the game - Zombie Apocalypse games, or beer-and-pretzels D&D-types, absolutely. I might discard an idea if it's blatantly ridiculous or completely counteracts the fiction, but if I can come up with an even tenuous plan for the random encounters in those sorts of games, I will use them in a heartbeat.

They're actually one of my favorite tools for impromptu gaming sessions in pulpy systems. If I'm not totally sure where I want the plot to go in say a Spirit of the Century game, I might toss out a ghost dinosaur, let the players figure out what they want to do to investigate, and see where I can build a plot in reverse from there.

Knaight
2011-12-29, 06:10 AM
I almost never use monsters, and conflict tends to be between people. Occasionally, in some genres, that can mean violence, but even the most random elements of that have a reason behind them.

Badgerish
2011-12-29, 10:11 AM
I (almost) always have a reason for why the NPCs are there and what they are doing, but I don't sweat the details.

e.g. my most-recent dungeon was a damaged dwarven fortress taken over by an evil cult. All the NPCs there where either cultists, slaves or some dwarven undead that the cultists had sealed behind a ward.

Each group had a place to sleep/hang out, a place to work, a simple interaction chart with the other groups etc. However, there really wasn't enough sleeping space and not a single toilet in the place (the entire two-floor dungeon was mapped out, as opposed to just the encounter areas)

horseboy
2011-12-29, 01:46 PM
If every time the party travels they are attacked, then how the heck do all the NPCs of the world manage to arrive at their destinations without incident? If travel is such people are attacked every day, then that is the plot the adventurers are supposed to take care of: the bandits, the goblins, the orcs, the whomever attacking caravans and people just going to and fro. They pay the protection toll.


Same with traveling by boat. If every time the party travels by boat they are attacked by pirates, sea monsters, bad weather. or any two or all three, then how can any nation have a navy or there even be commerce for trading ships to want to cross the seas? The reason the US created it's Navy was in direct response to Pirates.

But yeah, don't over do it either way. Sometimes it goes alright, sometimes it's a struggle just to get there.

Tanuki Tales
2011-12-29, 02:29 PM
Well, the premise of this thread's topic isn't "Do encounters happen"/"Should encounters happen"/"How often do you use encounters"/"Are encounters in large numbers good or bad"/etc. but "Do you explain/rationalize/etc. the encounters or do they, in the words of Didactylos "just happen, what the hell.""

Urpriest
2011-12-29, 03:06 PM
I don't think anybody actually just uses encounters as a "what the hell" unless they're (intentionally or unintentionally) doing something fairly different from normal roleplaying. If you're not telling a story at all, then you're not really playing an RPG. If you are, and you aren't using your fights to contribute to the story, then you've lost the reason that your RPG has combat rules in the first place.

Thinker
2011-12-29, 03:14 PM
Well, the premise of this thread's topic isn't "Do encounters happen"/"Should encounters happen"/"How often do you use encounters"/"Are encounters in large numbers good or bad"/etc. but "Do you explain/rationalize/etc. the encounters or do they, in the words of Didactylos "just happen, what the hell.""

I do rationalize encounters. Random encounters are drawn from a table specific to the area so there's already a bit of built-in rationale. I also don't only use random encounters for combat, but also often as beginnings of quests.

Tanuki Tales
2011-12-29, 03:30 PM
I don't think anybody actually just uses encounters as a "what the hell" unless they're (intentionally or unintentionally) doing something fairly different from normal roleplaying. If you're not telling a story at all, then you're not really playing an RPG. If you are, and you aren't using your fights to contribute to the story, then you've lost the reason that your RPG has combat rules in the first place.

So you build your encounters to always further the overarching plot? You never have the party fighting a group of bandits who have been putting pressure on the local village because they were displaced from their normal haunts by a tribe of Hill Giants or because an Adult Red Dragon torched their city leading them to the life of a cut throat? Or have the party beset upon by a Tendriculos that has recently taken residence in the forest they are traveling through because the heavier rain fall and more plentiful game made the forest a more suitable environ then the arid grasslands the creature had originally romped around?

Edge of Dreams
2011-12-29, 08:06 PM
Another way to look at this is to think about WHY a particular monster is on your encounter table in the first place.

One of my favorite GMs to play with uses random tables and rolls for a lot of stuff - loot, encounters, number of monsters in a group, morale checks for whether the enemy will attack or retreat, etc. etc.

BUT, he always customizes the table to fit the current situation. So, if he's random rolling monster encounters in a themed dungeon, he'll remove any entries on the table that don't fit the theme. We never encounter frostwolves in the middle of a volcano because they were never on the random table to begin with.

Urpriest
2011-12-29, 11:31 PM
So you build your encounters to always further the overarching plot? You never have the party fighting a group of bandits who have been putting pressure on the local village because they were displaced from their normal haunts by a tribe of Hill Giants or because an Adult Red Dragon torched their city leading them to the life of a cut throat? Or have the party beset upon by a Tendriculos that has recently taken residence in the forest they are traveling through because the heavier rain fall and more plentiful game made the forest a more suitable environ then the arid grasslands the creature had originally romped around?

Those sorts of encounters turn up in one of two situations.

In the first case, you're in a campaign where each event is in some way a natural consequence of some grand sandboxy world. A campaign in such a world is part of its own story though, the simulationist counterpart to the pseudo-gamist Tippyverse. You're running a campaign with those sorts of natural events because your players want to tell that sort of story. Thus, those events fit into the story just as much as any others.

In the second, those areas are particularly dangerous. You've foreshadowed that the woods are full of bandits, that the forest is dark and deep, and the "random" encounters are milestones along the hero's quest that serve to highlight the environment around them. Again, it's because it advances the story.

Fights that don't advance the story don't have that sort of logic, because unless they're in an intentionally storyless campaign they're inherently interruptions. They're mood whiplash, and mood whiplash that doesn't serve the wider purpose of the narrative.

valadil
2011-12-30, 12:08 AM
So you build your encounters to always further the overarching plot?

Encounters always further a plot. It doesn't have to be the overarching one though. I like to run a lot of plots at once and see what happens.

The scenarios you describe are reasonable. If the players investigate the Tendriculos, maybe they're find that the increased rainfall has to do with a druidic ritual that recently took place. Or that a portal has opened connecting the material plane with the elemental plane of water. Or that someone cast Fly on an Everpouring Bottle and set it free. Maybe these things will tie back to the main plot. Maybe they won't. I probably wouldn't run something like this in one of my games, but that's because I inevitably have more plot than game sessions. I'd be happy to play in something like this though.

What I won't do is run a fight for fight's sake. In one of the last games I played, the GM insisted on making us travel a lot and he measured travel by how many fights we got in. In the third to last session, when we should be gearing up for the finale, we spent an hour killing snakes in a marsh. He made us go through the marsh just so we could have the snake fight. It added nothing to the story. It didn't even entertain us as a fight, because we were all powerful and couldn't be challenged by mere snakes. It only happened because the GM thought a fight should happen. That qualifies as a random intrusion.

Knaight
2011-12-30, 12:33 AM
So you build your encounters to always further the overarching plot? You never have the party fighting a group of bandits who have been putting pressure on the local village because they were displaced from their normal haunts by a tribe of Hill Giants or because an Adult Red Dragon torched their city leading them to the life of a cut throat? Or have the party beset upon by a Tendriculos that has recently taken residence in the forest they are traveling through because the heavier rain fall and more plentiful game made the forest a more suitable environ then the arid grasslands the creature had originally romped around?

There's more to telling a story than "furthering the plot". Background is critically important, and having the PCs be attacked by, say, pirates off the coast of a particular country provides that. One can gather the idea that the country has a limited naval presence from that alone, and if there are more details known that will provide yet more information.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-30, 08:53 AM
Well, reasons are nice, but I don't always tie things to the metaplot. Often, sure, but I feel like if absolutely nothing is unrelated to that...it all ties together TOO neatly. Real life is messy sometimes. There's a million things for a million different reasons. Sometimes folks are doing things for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the metaplot.

So...it may not advance The Story, but it advances a story. One that may, perhaps, never be revealed or important of not pursued, but I take a sandbox approach to such things. There's always a *lot* of threads that players can poke at and explore if it strikes their interest, but if they opt not to...meh, plenty more down the road.

Measuring travel distance by fights is bad. Sure, I roll on a table for any notable travel, but at *least* half the table is "nothing important happens". And some of the things on the table are frequently things other than "something tries to eat you". Fights are good and fun, and D&D tends to make heavy use of them, but mixing in other types of encounters for variety doesn't hurt. I do avoid the hell out of riddles, though.

valadil
2011-12-30, 09:23 AM
Measuring travel distance by fights is bad. Sure, I roll on a table for any notable travel, but at *least* half the table is "nothing important happens". And some of the things on the table are frequently things other than "something tries to eat you". Fights are good and fun, and D&D tends to make heavy use of them, but mixing in other types of encounters for variety doesn't hurt. I do avoid the hell out of riddles, though.

I've taken to letting the PCs narrate their own story in this case. They tell me who they meet on the road, what misadventure befalls them, etc, without getting into encounters. It works great, but you have to make sure to record and reuse the things they add to the game so they don't feel like they're just making up filler.

horseboy
2011-12-30, 03:24 PM
I've taken to letting the PCs narrate their own story in this case. They tell me who they meet on the road, what misadventure befalls them, etc, without getting into encounters. It works great, but you have to make sure to record and reuse the things they add to the game so they don't feel like they're just making up filler.

I like that idea. Do you roll to see who creates the encounter or does everybody in the group get to create one?

Volos
2011-12-30, 03:27 PM
I use a random dungeon generator for most of my player's adventures, and it gives reasons as to why any given monster or group of monsters are there. It explains what their motivation is and a breif explination of how they got there. There is nothing funnier than an encounter a couple of levels higher than the party running right past them because it is fleeing a 'more powerful opponent' in a dungeon filled with kobolds.

valadil
2011-12-30, 06:12 PM
I like that idea. Do you roll to see who creates the encounter or does everybody in the group get to create one?

I only did this for a few sessions before my game ended, so it isn't totally refined. Basically I'd pose questions and the players would answer them. It was loosely inspired by Dresden Files character creation.

Here's how it went down. The players had to get somewhere 1000 miles away. I had a bunch of ideas for how to occupy them with months of travel. The wizard reminded me that he was trained at their destination and could probably teleport there. Instead of coming up with a contrived reason to block them, I said okay. But, since I was expecting the players to be 4 levels higher when they got there, they had to tell me how they earned those levels.

One of the players suggested the fort they teleported to was under siege. Another player suggested they break the siege by infiltrating the enemy army and sending them against the best defended portions of the castle. That worked for a bit until I decided they milked it too far and the enemy caught on. The players were jailed and each devised their own escapes. No combat was rolled. We may have done a couple skill checks. I pretty much let them attempt anything they wanted and threw in a complication if their idea seemed unlikely. I honestly can't remember. It was more about open ended solutions than specific skills and abilities. In some cases I even asked them to complicate the scene for me. They sent the kobold into a hazardous area and then described a trap so vile that the only way to determine damage was to roll ALL the dice.

At any rate, that was way better than the travel plots I had come up with. And that was only the first two levels replacing their travel time. They ended up getting sucked into some sort of evil vortex and meeting Larloch (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Larloch) who convinced them to try and steal back the MacGuffin they just gave to Elminster, in exchange for power. Believe it or not, Larloch (who I had never heard of before this session) actually solved a ton of plot holes I hadn't worked out yet and remained in the game until the very end. It's one thing to let the players tell their own misadventure, but to take their creation and shape it into part of the main plot will make them feel like they're contributing to the story.

Tekren
2011-12-30, 07:35 PM
I ran a game where I started out pretty heavy on random encounters. There was one particular road where bandits, giants, and other nasties forced travelers to either pay a toll or die. the first time the players went down that path, they encountered _three_ different toll booths, and slaughtered the inhabitants.

As the game went on, there were less monsters along the road.

By the end of the campaign(2 years in game time), they finally encountered three human settlers, building an inn in the wilderness, about three days from the nearest town.

What started out as me doing a random encounters intrusions eventually became a comment on the safety of the roads and the level of 'law abiding woodsfolk' in the areas the party had been sweeping through.

Note that this road had NOTHING AT ALL to do with the campaign. It was just the road that the party moved along the most, and I think the players picked up on the fact that life was getting better for everyone because of their actions. They were making a difference not only to those that they helped directly, (questgivers) but they were actually making a difference to society at large.

So, I used to do random intrusions. Now I put some thought into them, and they are more like sidequests that that the players know almost nothing about until they follow up on them.