Random Encounter Tables?

[SovelsAtaask]

I'm setting up a new campaign that should be starting up soon (my first ever IRL campaign), and I have a few questions for some more experienced DMs about random encounters. I'm playing with 3.5, but really any advice is probably useful across systems.
First off, do you use random encounter tables? If so, do you make your own or pilfer them from the various rule books? If you make your own, how do you go about building the tables? Got any neat tools I might not know about? How do you make sure the encounters are more or less balanced if CR is sort of a muddy unclear mess, any tips for a newbie? What tips do you have to make random encounters actually make sense? How much prep should I put into each random encounter? How much does the CR on your tables usually vary? I have a group of all new players, should I lower CR a little bit for them? Encounter design tips in general would also be appreciated, as well as tips about random encounter tables that I didn't think to ask about.

Thanks for any advice you have for a new DM trying to get new players into the hobby. :smallsmile:

[Telonius]

I generally take more of a "dramatic theory" approach to encounter design. If an encounter doesn't set the mood or advance the plot, I don't bother my players with it.

[Troacctid]

Usually what happens is I roll for a random encounter, then go, Aha! 19! Wait, what does a 19 mean? I should probably have pulled out a table before rolling this, now I'm going to look stupid. Screw it, I'll just make something up, they'll never know the difference. "You see two manticores swoop towards you."

[Malimar]

One of my games is a story-driven plotted game; in that game, I don't generally use random encounter tables.

One of my games is a sandbox. In that game, I almost exclusively use random encounter tables. I build these in Excel, and I have them set up so that if a party kills a random encounter, the frequency of that random encounter is reduced by 1 -- in theory, a party could wipe out all the random encounters in an area and make it perfectly safe. I build the encounters based on a theme for the area and a combination of CR and the Organization entry in the monster's statblock, aiming at a general range for most encounter levels for any given area (but monsters can wander from one area to another, via the "Roll on <other area> Table" entry on my tables, which can lead to higher or lower level encounters in an area).

I find that the main benefit to random encounter tables is that they often call up monsters and even strategies and tactics that I wouldn't normally think to use. Another benefit is that if you've got a random encounter table, it's easy to roll on it when the players, say, elect to take a long rest in the middle of a dungeon without rope trick, rather than having to decide what monsters from other rooms in the dungeon might wander in.

[erok0809]

I've used them in the past, building my own for each area, based on how civilized that area is, and thus what's typically going to be found there. I still try to make it cr appropriate-ish, but because the world itself shouldn't be built around a single campaign, that doesn't always work out. As for when I roll on it, I'll generally do it a couple times per travel, just so that it doesn't become fast travel between plot point areas, since that doesn't feel like a properly told story to me.

[SovelsAtaask]

Snip

An Excel document sounds like an interesting way to figure that all out, any chance you could share that with me? It's probably not too complicated, but I don't have the slightest idea of how to set that up.

[nedz]

I use them occasionally. I normally choose encounters based upon the geography of the region they are passing through - just to reflect the local fauna and flora - but sometimes I will make a small table and roll on it. This works best in limited areas - islands, pocket planes, dungeons even.

I used to use them all of the time, but came to realise that players can't actually tell the difference between a randomly determined encounter and an arbitrarily determined encounter.

[Malimar]

An Excel document sounds like an interesting way to figure that all out, any chance you could share that with me? It's probably not too complicated, but I don't have the slightest idea of how to set that up.

Sure. Here's an example (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-c_3A-A27ZjSldSRE9sMmplM28/view?usp=sharing) pulled straight from my master document (looks like you'll need to download it and open it in Excel to view and manipulate the underlying mechanics. It's reasonably simple to replicate if you know Excel well, but copy-pasting is even simpler).

First two columns are for system use; I usually hide those columns. Dice column is the auto-generated dice range -- usually you're unlikely to have a d411 or whatever on hand, so a random dice roll -- and the encounter it corresponds to -- is provided at the bottom. # column is how many of each encounter can be found in the region (and is also how many numbers wide that encounter's dice range is) -- if the party encounters one of the region's two crocodiles and kills it, you reduce that from 2 to 1 and the probability of encountering a crocodile is halved thenceforth. Encounter is rather self-explanatory. Src is the book source -- some also include a page number, but not all, because I only started including page numbers more recently than I first populated this table, I recommend having a page number for everything, makes it easier.

If a party encounters a creature and lets it go, then I make some brief notes about the encounter, and maybe what happened, in the list -- e.g. "Cerete the Pixie (Cladius stole her hat)", and the same individual can potentially be encountered again.