What is the purpose of random encounters?

[Talakeal]

Random encounters have been a part of the hobby for fifty years, and I am still not sure if I see the point of them. I sometimes include them, and they seem to always piss the players off.

Furthermore, many random encounter tables include a few things that are wildly out of line with the rest in terms of difficulty. For example, most D&D encounter tables have an adult dragon as the maximum result, despite the fact that the vast majority of PCs will have no chance against one in a fight.

So what actual purpose do random encounters, particularly powerful ones, serve on either a mechanical or narrative level?



My players thought of a few reasons, none of which I really buy and all seem overly cynical:

1: They are there to add a horror element of the game to placate the small minority of players who enjoy horror at the expense of normal players who are there for fantasies or power and control.
2: The original designers are trolls, and later designers are just aping them.
3: They are there as a crutch for new GMs who don't actually know how to build or balance an encounter on their own.
4: They are included as a warning system for players; any GM who uses random encounter tables by the book is clearly incompetent and you should leave their game.

[KorvinStarmast]

What is the purpose of random encounters?
Short answer: time pressure, force decisions (parley, fight or flight)

As to points 1 through 4.
1. placate the small minority of players who enjoy horror at the expense of normal players ~ what the heck are normal players?
2: The original designers are trolls, and later designers are just aping them. ~ pathetic and wrong
3: They are there as a crutch for new GMs who don't actually know how to build or balance an encounter on their own. ~ Nope. Random encounters are not, by default, balanced.
4. Why do you keep GMing for these people?

[RandomPeasant]

Random encounters are there so that regular travel is different from fast travel (e.g. teleport). There are also some groups who like variance, or just don't care that much about the difference between a random and planned encounter and are perfectly happy rocking up to a randomly-generated dungeon for randomly-generated loot.


Short answer: time pressure, force decisions (parley, fight or flight)

This is just what encounters do. At most you can say that because they force the players to spend additional resources while traveling, they slightly increase time pressure, but even then you're spending the overwhelming majority of your travel time walking rather than fighting. Marching for an extra hour makes up for as many random encounters as you are likely to have or survive.

[NichG]

Random encounters are suited towards sandbox style play more than play with a guided flow. If they're somewhat predictable in difficulty and vary based on where you are and where you're going, then random encounters serve to establish some places as categorically more or less dangerous, determine how long a group might be able to survive or how far or deep they could travel into the danger zones before they'd likely get into trouble, and basically structure decision making.

If they're not predictable in that way, I think there's not that much use for them. They're the repeatable experiment - ten other groups traveled through this mountain pass and encountered ogres and trolls, five of them survived and told the tale, so now you get to know there will likely be ogres and trolls before you go. And you get to work through the question of, for example, if you end up stranded in the mountains after half your party dies and you need to bring their corpses back to town within the next 30 days to get them resurrected - is it better to try to carry their corpses back with you at the cost of spending 5 days more in the danger zone with a reduced party size, or to rush back, hire some mercenaries, and spend 15 days more in the danger zone total but all of those days with a full group?

So basically I think to be effective, random encounters should not be surprising. But you also can't really just not have them, because then there is the metagame logic of 'well the DM is probably bored of running random encounters so they're not going to have them unless we particularly make ourselves vulnerable' or things like that.

Is that tradeoff worth it? For a sandbox game, maybe, but I'd tend to phase them out once the party has things to make travel or avoidance trivial in other ways. For a more narrative driven campaign (even a player driven narrative, which is not quite the same as a sandbox) where the party is never going to go somewhere twice, I don't really tend to use them.

[Mastikator]

IMO the purpose of a random encounter is to inject an encounter into the situation that puts only a small burden on the DM.

They can be used for emergent narrative, but only if the players don't think the DM uses random encounters. IMO scripted encounters are better because the DM puts more effort and deliberation into it. But that also takes time and energy from a limited supply.

[Fable Wright]

*facedesk*

Random encounters were designed in no small part because of the initial skirmish game design of Dungeons and Dragons.

The initial inspiration for random encounters was Wandering Monsters. They fit into the initial design of the game; you are playing a small, elite fighting force entering a hostile dungeon. Your goal is to get as much treasure as possible and get out, whether by combat, magic, or stealth. Initial behaviors of players involved them laboriously searching every nook and cranny of a room to be sure that they got all the loot, resting in the dungeon, or otherwise taking actions as though there were no time pressure. Wandering Monsters in the dungeon were introduced to occur every couple of time intervals to keep the party moving. The more lootless wandering monsters you fought, the fewer resources (spells, HP, consumables) you would have to defeat the treasure-laden encounters. They were pretty effective at the job.

When the game was expanded to be a more RPG-heavy system with mechanics like overland travel, there was a narrative need for something to break up that travel to represent time passing. They're also an incentive to avoid going too far abroad. The further out you go with no loot, the less worthwhile it is. This keeps adventurers in their own geographic lane.

For large-scale exploration games, most random encounters should probably not be combat encounters, but be more like Oregon Trail. You're running out of water, and people want to refill from the river? Dysentery time. This made sense in the old AD&D design where it could take the spellcasters days to restock on spell slots. You'll have a certain number of random event rolls to be resolved by combat, magic, or skill, before even getting to the dungeon. Or you're forced to retreat because of an overwhelming encounter, and have to eat a large loss by giving the dragon your horses and treasure as you flee on foot. This is resources spent before reaching a location, and function like Wandering Monsters within the dungeon, except for geographic barriers.

This makes no sense in D&D 3.5e and subsequent variants where you have resources restock on a daily basis, and so they're speedbumps and a literal joke (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html).

In a game designed for their use, there needs to be an understanding of said random encounters. If players need to burn mana per encounter that won't restock before the dungeon, great. This needs to have a purpose, though. A way to mitigate the losses such as packing extra food/water to sacrifice them to monsters, alternative routes with different random encounter choices that players are informed about (this path is only five days, but filled with difficult fights; following the river would take nine days, but the encounters would be easier and far less frequent; how valuable are those four days?) or pick alternative valuable sites (well, the rewards for that mountaintop temple are pretty huge, but we'll need to deal with a large number of fights there and back. We could instead go to this local dungeon, which has less loot but should be less of a hassle to get through).

If they're unavoidable roadblocks ("Your mission is to go to this temple with this route; time to roll X random encounters") they are an unavoidable resource tax and thus suck. Why not just have the encounters in the dungeon instead, or have them be scripted?

They can have a use as an unnecessary roadblock if they're designed for establishing the threat level of a new geographic zone for later, but they need to be a resource for players to ration and make decisions around for them to be meaningful.

[MonochromeTiger]

This makes no sense in D&D 3.5e and subsequent variants where you have resources restock on a daily basis, and so they're speedbumps and a literal joke (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html).


It also can cause setting and story issues sometimes. If just walking from one village to the next has a decent chance of running into anything from a Dire Bear to a group of hostile Gnolls to a Dragon for instance suddenly you've got questions of how most people ever survive going more than a few minutes away from their homes. Or worse how any settlements still exist instead of being razed to the ground by the nonstop tide of powerful monsters lurking at short intervals apart throughout the wilderness / bandits and gangs hanging out in every third alley in towns and cities.

Story wise the only positives I see are an attempt at making the world feel a bit more alive by throwing in situations that aren't just preplanned encounters or a way of saying the world is dangerous. Issues then being that the way either of those things are said matters, if they're done wrong they could instead backfire and make the world less believable.

Mechanics/game wise as you point out it's a resource spender/extra challenge thing and that doesn't work with every system. In some games it's little more than a way to get a bit more experience, in others it's just a chance for the party to wander into something big enough to kill them all, and in a few cases it's both because the random encounter tables weren't written with balance in mind so something pathetic and harmless is listed right next to something that eats cities.

[Eldan]

Eh, I would suggest that in the kind of classic game where you have random encounters and it's all about resource management, you're in the wilderness anyway, so there's no walking between villages. You're six days beyond the borders of civilization.

[Xihirli]

To sell the idea that the world is dangerous, and to make sure the PCs have the opportunity to get the correct amount loot and xp between story beats.

[Kol Korran]

Some of the answers have been addressed above me, but I'd like to touch on a few more points:
# Their main roke is to enhance danger- If you mess around too much/ Waste time- You might draw danger. Note that the time to roll for wandering monsters in dungeons was decided both on time spent, but also if the party made a lot of noise/ tarried too long in one space. It was one of the reasons that parties couldn't just rest anywhere they wanted.

# Note that most published adventures/ modules who use random encounters have a tighter "CR range" in their tables (Usually up to -3/+3 of the PCs group), with encounters that fit much more the nature of the adventure and region. This is an application of the suggested Random Encounters rules in the DM guide, put into actual context.

# Also as mentioned above, the wider range random encounters are used for a more sandbox/ free exploration style of game, where there is no (Or very little) plot, and a lot of content is randomised to an extent, but you can somewhat prepare in advance. (If we plan to go to the spidery woods, we better carry anti venom and means to free ourselves of webs. If we go into the region controlled by a known red dragon, we better prepare accordingly, if we happen to encounter it).

# But far more importantly- they are a tool, not a hard rule. You use them when they fit, and a lot of the basic encounter tables in DM guides and the like are supposed to inspire the DM to create his own tables, to suit his adventure design, and not to force him to use them. If they don't fit the adventure, campaign, or gaming group- Don't use them. Like any tool- they are great if they fill a role or a need, and used porperly (More on that soon enough), but if used just because "it's a rule" then they will suck.

# Note also that to encounter a monster, does not necessarily mean an immediate combat encounter. In fact, in one of the older DM guides, the "High end of the table dragon encounter" is specifically addressed, and it is suggested that if the dragon may be too powerful, the party might glimpse it flying overhead, and sense it's aura of fear. If they don't try to hide quickly, they may encounter it, but the main idea is that the encounters don't HAVE TO start with fight.

# More modern games expand on that, and include other variables , such as attitude/ motive/ desire of the encountered creatures, situation (hunting/ hunted/ tending to it's offsprings/ wounded after a fight and more) and sometimes- another hazard, such as avalanches, forest fire, magical storm, and more. Many more modern random encounters also include opportunities, such as wandering merchants, a meeting with a neutral/ beneficial NPCs, finding a natural special resource, or even just specific thematic scenery. These latter additions also help shape and enhance the nature of the world.

# I personally really like them, as player and DM. They can really add to a game. The thing is to first make sure what you are going to use them for, what is their purpose, and plan them accordingly. For simple adventures I usually have no more than 6 types of random encounters, and they are used to reflect the adventure site/ travel, add tensions and complications. For broader uses (such as a region that will host many adventures), I dedicate more effort, and it can pay dividends! The players start understanding and planning according to what they have learned. "Look, of we DO decide to go through the dark forest, we better get really fast mounts, and do it while there is light. You remember that comes at night, don't you? But I suggest we ride the river. We can get some small gems if we meet the water fey again to distract them, and we might meet the smugglers again. I have an idea on how they might help us..." (True story)

To sum it up:
---------------------
# It's a tool. Learn what it is for, what it isn't for, and how to use it.
# Fine tune it to your needs.
# Include more than just a monster name and number (Though this isn't a must if you improvise well). Consider natural hazards, magical phenomenas, scene/ atmosphere/ region enhancers, and opportunities.
# Put some thought and effort to make them interesting, and contributing to the game experience.

Good luck!

[Fable Wright]

Following up on random encounter tables with dragons and Kol Korran's point above:

If you include them on the table, they should be a big deal. Like. If someone is warning you about going into the forest because there's a terrifying Green Dragon in there, that's probably the apex encounter of that table. Red Hand of Doom had a Fiendish Behir that the locals were all terrified of on the table as a published module example, and that got suitable reactions from the players in campaign logs I've read. Because it would swallow party members whole one after the other. If you don't get that kind of warning from locals, the area should be fairly safe for travelers... and if you find a wandering monster that strong in an area that was traditionally safe, that's a Big Deal. That's "the party could get a bounty for reporting this and adventurers should be dispatched" kind of deal. A big risk for traveling unknown/unexplored territory is that you don't know what the terrifying apex predator is, and if you have the tools to evade, distract, or slay it. It's a good reason to speak with locals when you reach a village, see what the wandering threats are and how they deal with them, and see if you can adapt if your travels bring you outside your known, 'safe' areas. And a good reason why some of the more remote places are currently unexplored.

If you really want to mess with the players, let them know that Bazelgeuse and Deviljho have also been sighted in the region—if you're unfamiliar with Monster Hunter, those are random encounters in a non-RPG video game that lead to some of the more memorable moments in the series. They're extremely wide-ranging monsters that can appear nearly anywhere on a map, they're drawn from large distances to the sound of combat, and they can be an opportunity or a major setback to a team of Hunters... because when they detect combat, they will start attacking both the player and the player's quarry indiscriminately, and can have some nasty AoE attacks to hit both at the same time. Three entries on the Random Encounter table for high-end threats, even if the rest is fairly low-level, with the risk of it potentially turning into a four-way brawl (as both Deviljho and Bazelgeuse can potentially simultaneously show up and even have unique fight animations for each other) where the scariest combatants will retreat to fight another day when driven off. If those monsters are a sufficient menace, PC-initiated quests to hunt them down to their lairs and kill them can be a vindicating experience, opening entire sections of the map up for exploration where they were previously too risky or annoying.

[wilphe]

Not everything exists in the world as a fair and balanced encounter for your PCs to fight and beat. Sometimes you meet something way too powerful and sometimes something completely beneath you. In either case combat is not how you handle it.

Neither does everything have to be plot relevant to the PCs concerns
As the GM your world probably does resolve around the PCs; that doesn't mean that the world ceases to exist when the PCs aren't looking at it.

The wilderness is supposed to be a dangerous place, not a skip in the flowers to the dungeon
If you can't survive the trip to the dungeon and back, maybe you shouldn't be out there in the first place

Some GMs and Players like the verisimilitude of all that, but players who are used to everything revolving around the PCs and solving everything with violence may have a hard time with that.

So I will add a 5th option:


1: They are there to add a horror element of the game to placate the small minority of players who enjoy horror at the expense of normal players who are there for fantasies or power and control.
2: The original designers are trolls, and later designers are just aping them.
3: They are there as a crutch for new GMs who don't actually know how to build or balance an encounter on their own.
4: They are included as a warning system for players; any GM who uses random encounter tables by the book is clearly incompetent and you should leave their game.

5: Your players are munchkins and you've been coddling them.

[Vahnavoi]

Random encounters have been a part of the hobby for fifty years, and I am still not sure if I see the point of them. I sometimes include them, and they seem to always piss the players off.

Your players are special babies who get upset at anything not being in their control. Remember that when you take feedback from them.


Furthermore, many random encounter tables include a few things that are wildly out of line with the rest in terms of difficulty. For example, most D&D encounter tables have an adult dragon as the maximum result, despite the fact that the vast majority of PCs will have no chance against one in a fight.

It should be obvious that this is not an inherent feature of random encounters, and instead has to do with some other element of game design beyond simply randomness.


So what actual purpose do random encounters, particularly powerful ones, serve on either a mechanical or narrative level?

My players thought of a few reasons, none of which I really buy and all seem overly cynical:

1: They are there to add a horror element of the game to placate the small minority of players who enjoy horror at the expense of normal players who are there for fantasies or power and control.
2: The original designers are trolls, and later designers are just aping them.
3: They are there as a crutch for new GMs who don't actually know how to build or balance an encounter on their own.
4: They are included as a warning system for players; any GM who uses random encounter tables by the book is clearly incompetent and you should leave their game.

1: Yes, that is a legitimate use, when the actual encounter is meant to be horrifying.

2: Yes, Gygax and Co had their trollish side, and a lot of things happen in contemporary games only because Gygax and Co did it first. This is, however, far from the main reason why this specific mechanic exists.

3: Completely false. Encounter design is a separate matter from simply making said encounters random.

4: Completely false, completely ignoring both the idea that a game master is by-the-book supposed to fit the encounters to their game, and all the real reasons to use them. In truth, usage of random encounters has about as much to do with game master competence as the usage of dice has - in other words, none at all.

---

Now to the actual main reason to use them: to model motion without having to keep track of where every object is. This is why the classic random encounter table people think of is properly called the wandering monsters table. Get it? The monsters wander. Sometimes they're here. Sometimes they're over there. We could place a token for every monster on a map and exactly track where they are, which direction they're moving, etc., but this gets slow fast as the number of objects increases. So, instead of of doing all that, we assign a probability for all of the monsters to cross path with player characters, and periodically check to see if this happens. Boom, we've reduced tracking an ever-growing number of objects with a single die roll and a table look-up!

If you want a game series that makes this obvious, consider Pokemon. Dozens, then hundreds of species scattered across multiple routes, climates, times of day etc.. So which Pokemon is a player seeing right now? Again, the options are, we can place each 'mon by hand and them track their motions explicitly... or we can make a table for each route, with modifiers for weather (etc.) and then check when the question comes up.

Pokemon also makes it apparent how hating on random encounters has very little to do with that "random" part. You randomly encounter an "adult dragon", such as, say, Dragonite in the wild in Pokemon? That's great! Because the fact that it is there means you can catch it, befriend it and use it in your own party!

From there, we get to the second main reason to use random encounters: to increase replayability. If you can always find the same Dragonite at the same spot, this trivializes some of gameplay. If, instead, you sometimes find a Dratini or Dragonair or something else entirely, this changes how the game goes for that playthrough. On a higher level, this applies to all random generation: terrain, weather, shop contents, etc.. Things change between playthroughs, or between entering routes, or whatever other suitable checkpoint - meaning the player has fresh challenges to face, new tactics to try out, so on and so forth.

The actual aspect you and your players seem to hate, unexpected difficulty, has nothing to do with randomness. It's perfectly possible and common to populate random encounter tables with objects that are all suitable challenges to the players and perfect fit for the area they are in. The unexpected difficulty exists in most editions of D&D because of the idea that the players should occasionally meet overpowering foes. Seriously, check the encounter guidelines for, say, 3.5.. They don't say every encounter ought to be "fair and balanced". They instead say encounters should have a spectrum of difficulties, from so easy player characters can win by default and hence gain no experience from them, to so overwhelmingly difficult player characters are never expected to win and hence gain no experience even if they somehow do, because such a victory could only be a fluke.

[GloatingSwine]

Furthermore, many random encounter tables include a few things that are wildly out of line with the rest in terms of difficulty. For example, most D&D encounter tables have an adult dragon as the maximum result, despite the fact that the vast majority of PCs will have no chance against one in a fight.


Who says they have to fight it?

Random encounters fall into two categories. Ones for when the players are actively invading hostile territory (these should be fights) and ones for when they're not, some of which can be fights but not all of them should.

Remember there's still a human DM in the loop who can roll up an adult dragon on that random encounter table and then decide what the dragon is doing.

Random encounters also don't necessitate whatever you rolled on the table just be chilling in the middle of the road, they could be things the party notices at a distance from it that aren't coming for them but that they can pursue and fight on their terms if they want.

[Vahnavoi]

Random encounters can in fact fall in all categories planned encounters would. It's also worth remembering that when talking of old school random encounters, they can randomize significantly more than just when and where the encounter happens. Number of characters, amount of fungible resourced carried by those characters, attitude of those characters (friendly, neutral, hostile etc.), what they are actually doing when encountered, etc. details can also vary. In old versions of D&D, who spotted who first also varied, so when player characters spotted something before being spotted themselves, they had the option to avoid the encounter or open with parley, etc.. The idea that random encounters exist just to fight and be fought is bastardization of the idea.

[JellyPooga]

Now to the actual main reason to use them: to model motion without having to keep track of where every object is.

This here? This chombatta gets it.

Random Encounter (or Wandering Monster) tables exist so you can build the appearance of a living, breathing scenario/campaign/civilisation/ecology without having to actually build a living, breathing model of one.

Walking through Night City, who knows who might show up? Could be that Shakey Janes the scav go-peddler just itching to give you a tip, or it could be Anderson Brown looking to off-load his latest shipment of head-chips, or maybe you'll have to deal with the Shrikes; word is their Chief's piece is dirtnappin' and some of Araska's boys are to blame. Say...din't I hear tell you did some work for the Tower last week? Watch your six, Samurai...street's a dangerous place. As GM, you could just write in whichever one of these you want to happen whilst the PC's are getting from A-to-B, or have nothing happen at all, but by simply adding in small events, encounters, story beats and consequences of the PC's actions into a random table, you can have those things crop up without having to worry too much about whether it negatively impacts the delicate balance of your campaign, or agonise over when and where to fit them in; you just leave it to chance. Sometimes you need the inconsequential to happen to give the campaign a little life; not every encounter has to be a masterpiece of game design and just sometimes it's the off-the-cuff and unplanned stuff that hits the best beats. As GM, there's nothing quite as frustrating as your PC's failing to pick up on the hook or detail that is critical to the campaign you have planned...and that's a sign that your hand is too firmly held on the reins, that your grip is too tight. Adding a little chaos and letting your players take the lead will often result in a better experience; random encounter tables are a key part of that. It's not to say you have to use them for everything, that would be absurd in most games, but judicious use for when the players are picking at frayed leads, or simply not getting on with things, or you just need a fresh injection of new material for the players to digest...throw in a random encounter.

It's also worth bearing in mind that just because the encounter is random, doesn't mean it has to be simple or throw-away. It can be a bunch of random thugs or bandits, sure, but it can also be a carefully planned ambush, or a curious item dropped in the street, or a mysterious cultist bemoaning the end of the world, or a gang of toughs harassing an old lady, or one of the guards from the heist you pulled the week before (or that you're going to pull next week), or anything you can possibly imagine, from moving scenery like a runaway cart, to bumping into the BBEG five acts too early. Random Encounter tables are also a good way to gauge what sort of content your players will engage with; are they Samaritans that will return a lost wallet, or thieves that'll steal the money, for example?

[DammitVictor]

Two things:

1) like hit points and spell slots, they're a pacing mechanic to encourage the efficient use of time and resources. they provide an element of threat to prevent players from getting complacent.

2) they add a degree of verisimiltude to game environments. having potential encounters moving around the area makes those environments feel more lived in and "real", instead of setpieces waiting for PCs to come along.

The... nature of the random encounter tables is certainly subject to criticism. But it's worth remembering that they were designed in a time and play culture that "fairness" wasn't an expected or particularly valued feature of the game. The potential power imbalance of random encounters was an important part of the tension they were designed to maintain.

[Sapphire Guard]

Mechanically, they discourage the players from traveling more than they need to or falling into patterns, like your previous 'Clearing one room and then returning to town' thing, which runs the risk of meeting something dangerous along the way, or generally having a set pattern that is always effective.

Narratively, they make the world feel alive and that traveling is dangerous.

For the 'adult dragon', they can show up anywhere because they are flying around looking for food/mates/nice caves to sleep in, and relatively few people can stop a dragon from going wherever it wants to go. Rolling a random encounter doesn't mean you have to actually fight it. There may be an option or running away/hiding, just going around it or whatever, or the dragon has just eaten three cows in someone's field and is asleep.

[Talakeal]

For the 'adult dragon', they can show up anywhere because they are flying around looking for food/mates/nice caves to sleep in, and relatively few people can stop a dragon from going wherever it wants to go. Rolling a random encounter doesn't mean you have to actually fight it. There may be an option or running away/hiding, just going around it or whatever, or the dragon has just eaten three cows in someone's field and is asleep.

This was actually what prompted the "horror game" comment above.

My players insist that running away and hiding is not fun for anyone, except for the few weirdos who enjoy "horror games" and that for normal players there is no reason to ever put such an encounter in a game.

[Catullus64]

My impression from playing earlier (AD&D and BECMI) editions is that random encounters were crucial to the pacing of a dungeon. It's what really drives the players to be efficient with their exploration and use of resources, since there's a chance every turn for danger to appear, even when backtracking. It's what makes getting treasure out of a dungeon a risky endeavor.

But of course, that could be accomplished without truly "random" encounters: the GM can decide to throw persistent planned encounters at the PCs to accomplish the same thing. Random encounter tables and rolls help alleviate all that planning for newer/less capable GMs.

In a game that's all about the power fantasy, I agree they're usually a poor fit, since by their very nature they take your awesome god-PCs by surprise.

[LibraryOgre]

Generally, they work to sap resources. This is a lot less noticeable in 5e, where resources are generally measured only against a day (since, with a long rest, you get back almost all of your resources... HP, spell slots). But in earlier games, random encounters cost you HP. They cost you spells. They cost you arrows. And you might be far from town, and crossing from where you were to town was dangerous, in part because of those random encounters. Do you try to find a place to hole up here, or go back to relative safety? How long will you hole up? The cleric has two healing spells, so you're healing at 1d8+1 HP per day. How long will your food last?

It was a far more survival-oriented game.

[Jay R]

From my "Rules for DMs" document:


32. Wandering monsters exist to prevent the game from bogging down. If the players spend over five real minutes in useless discussion, then it's ghoul o'clock.

a. Be careful with this. Not all discussion is useless.

33. There should be encounters that have nothing to do with the main quest, or there is no world – just a party and a quest.

a. Yes, the quest is your focus. But set it in a complex world, much bigger than the quest.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I want to distinguish between two classes of "random" encounters:

1. "in-character random", aka non-plot-related encounters that happen while the party is doing something else. These are only random in character--they may or may not be fully planned just like any other encounter. No random tables are used as anything but inspiration.

I use these frequently. Setting the scene, showing what kind of area they're in, letting the players show off (the encounter with a group of bandits that was tense at level 1 is now an opportunity to showboat or display a reputation at level 10+), mix it up with friendly or neutral things, or even just make the world more of a living place (like the dire forest yeti I threw in in a level 2-ish-appropriate quest area. They didn't have to fight it--it was simply sleeping. But the paladin thought he'd challenge it to solo combat...he lost and got eaten.). These may also just be a "hey, the party has been dealing with some heavy quest stuff, now we need to lighten the mood by letting them destroy some monsters" tension breaker. Or maybe something to run from...or learn from. Lots of my best quests have come from these, in a round-about way.

For example, I had a "random" harpy + basilisk encounter. The party (well, the monk) decided to spare one of the harpies and take and hatch its egg. The harpy chick is now the monk's "daughter" (being raised by some gnomes), and the harpy mom is, well, a new antagonist. I won't go into details because that's an ongoing story-line, but it's one that wouldn't have happened if they'd simply have slaughtered everything.

2. "random table" random encounters. Especially ones rolled from a generic table. These are the "ghoul o'clock" ones--a mechanical device used to drain party resources, keep the party moving, etc. They're random both in and out of character--many times they're less random/chance-based in character than out. The trigger might have been "rolled a 6 on that random monster check" but the actual encounter might be "a group of wandering skeleton guards passes by and notices you while you blather..."

I don't use these much, personally. Mainly because I'm not running the kind of game where those benefits are something I need regularly. I don't do big dungeon delves, so I can plot out each individual encounter of any significance. And I have this need for all my tables to be tightly integrated into the micro-setting (the exact place and situation at hand), so random tables are much less useful for me because they're so generic even if I make them--I'd need a very different random table for each place they happen to find themselves, and that's more work than just figuring out what's there!

I don't hate them, however. It's a plotting/pacing/game device like any other--it has its pros and its cons, its uses and its weaknesses.

[Sapphire Guard]

This was actually what prompted the "horror game" comment above.

My players insist that running away and hiding is not fun for anyone, except for the few weirdos who enjoy "horror games" and that for normal players there is no reason to ever put such an encounter in a game.

...huh.:confused:

I think you're just stuck with level appropriate encounters only, then. If they react that strongly, I don't see a way to make it work.

[Vahnavoi]

My players insist that running away and hiding is not fun for anyone, except for the few weirdos who enjoy "horror games" and that for normal players there is no reason to ever put such an encounter in a game.

You should point out that Hide & Seek with its variations is one of the most common and popular children's games ever and that there is an entire genre of stealth-based games on computers, in addition to myriad stealth-based missions that exist as subgames both within computer and tabletop roleplaying games. They aren't even horror by default.

Clearly, your players are detached from reality. We can talk about what makes Hide & Seek work or not in your game, but talking about that with your players is pointless before they acknowledge their appeals to "normal players" have nothing to do with anything.

[Eldan]

Okay, so. Let me describe an encounter with a randomly rolled dragon I had. This was early in my RPG career, with an older and very much old school DM.

THe party was low level, on their way to the dungeon of whatever. As we walked through the forest, we increasingly saw signs of a fearsome battle. A shattered lance. Trees on fire. Arrows stuck everywhere. Eventually, there was a giant swathe of forest where all the trees had been mowed down by something crashing into them. And at the end, on a forest clearing, a gigantic dragon, lying on its side, lances stuck in its neck, several dead knights and horses at its feet.

After some deliberation, we decided to wait and see if it would die, so maybe we could then loot the knights. We made several stealth checks and eventually failed one, just as night fell. The dragon, still alive, cast a mind control spell and compelled two of the party to show themselves.

The dragon was indeed dying and could not heal itself. But it was willing to negotiate with the party cleric. It swore an oath to spare us and share gold from its horde, if we pulled the lances out and healed it. We did, we got some gold, and, later in the campaign, a very useful friend when we needed some muscle and had money to bribe it.

Totally random encounter. Awesome story.

[GloatingSwine]

You should point out that Hide & Seek with its variations is one of the most common and popular children's games ever and that there is an entire genre of stealth-based games on computers, in addition to myriad stealth-based missions that exist as subgames both within computer and tabletop roleplaying games. They aren't even horror by default.


True, but that doesn't really interact well with a random encounter unless the players are it.

Stealth for the players wants to be a way for them to get something they wanted, not just avoid a thing that wouldn't have happened if the dice weren't being annoying. So they'll only feel good about hiding from a random encounter if there is some kind of benefit to not having any encounter at all right now.

Which is why I would say that an explicitly dangerous (higher level/CR) and hostile (no nonviolent options) "random encounter" is best placed as something the players notice and can pursue if they want, not something they need to proactively avoid.

Having encounters where proactive avoidance is the best strategy is fine, but it should be the best strategy for some reason not directly connected to the content of the encounter (get somewhere faster/with surprise etc).

[Vahnavoi]

As with Hide & Seek, the players don't need a greater motive than the fact that if they're found, it's game over. A more complex game, such a tabletop roleplaying game, allows piling on more motives, but they're not necessary.

If you want an existing Hide & Seek scenario, which has both random & non-random rules for the pursuit so you can see pros and cons of both, the God that Crawls of Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a good example. It also helps make it clear the earlier point that the stealth and horror elements of a random encounter have nothing to do with it being random, and everything to do with overall encounter design of a game incorporating stealth and horror.

[GloatingSwine]

As with Hide & Seek, the players don't need a greater motive than the fact that if they're found, it's game over.

It isn't though. There are any number of rules for resetting the game (usually last to be found is it for the next round). The game is only over when everyone is bored of it or it encounters an outside context problem (like the end of break).

And context is the thing that determines whether "hide from it" can mesh well as a response to a random encounter in an RPG.

If the only reason the players are hiding is "it's game over if they don't" then the answer to that is almost always that it won't, because the only thing they get from hiding is the same thing they would have got if there hadn't been a random encounter at all. They get to continue playing the game as if the entire thing hadn't happened. Maybe there was a tense "do they find us" moment where nobody's sure how good their successes are, maybe everyone rolled 1s and failure was obvious so the dragon ate their level 2 party and everyone agrees to crack open a beer and watch TV for the rest of the evening because the game is over now, right?

The context where it will mesh well is "you can get something you want more by avoiding this encounter than by fighting it", even if "thing you want more" is just "arrive at a place faster, where an existing time constraint is understood to exist to make you want that".

But that doesn't even require the encounter to be dangerous, just not so trivial it is over immediately.

[Vahnavoi]

It isn't though. There are any number of rules for resetting the game (usually last to be found is it for the next round). The game is only over when everyone is bored of it or it encounters an outside context problem (like the end of break).

Sure, getting to be it serves as motivation for players. But only when players are interested in seeking. There's nothing more to the basic versions, there are no prices or terminal victory conditions, what determines how long players remain interested is how inherently interesting they find either the activity of hiding or the activity of seeking. The reason these activities are inherently interesting is because out in the real world, they serve to create endless permutations of the same game-like problem. You don't need more for a game.


And context is the thing that determines whether "hide from it" can mesh well as a response to a random encounter in an RPG.

If the only reason the players are hiding is "it's game over if they don't" then the answer to that is almost always that it won't, because the only thing they get from hiding is the same thing they would have got if there hadn't been a random encounter at all. They get to continue playing the game as if the entire thing hadn't happened. Maybe there was a tense "do they find us" moment where nobody's sure how good their successes are, maybe everyone rolled 1s and failure was obvious so the dragon ate their level 2 party and everyone agrees to crack open a beer and watch TV for the rest of the evening because the game is over now, right?

What the players actually get is the gameplay of hiding from an adversary and satisfaction of solving the related problems. Which isn't at all the same thing as no encounter at all. It's not about the outcome. It's about what players have to do to get that outcome. Effectively, your error is presuming trivial stealth rules, which lack the open-ended nature of real Hide & Seek. A tabletop game can have poor enough stealth rules that it's incapable of supporting random Hide & Seek encounters, but I'd expect such a game to be incapable of supporting any Hide & Seek encounters. Because the random part is irrelevant.

[GloatingSwine]

That's because most RPG games do, in fact, have relatively trivial stealth rules and this is a thread about random encounters in an otherwise generalist RPG, not one with a deeply developed stealth subsystem.

[Jay R]

So what actual purpose do random encounters, particularly powerful ones, serve on either a mechanical or narrative level?

I gave an answer on the mechanical level earlier. ["Wandering monsters exist to prevent the game from bogging down. If the players spend over five real minutes in useless discussion, then it's ghoul o'clock."]

I also gave an answer on the narrative level. ["There should be encounters that have nothing to do with the main quest, or there is no world – just a party and a quest."]

But here's the real narrative level answer: The DM can give it a narrative purpose. Nobody else can. The rulebook can't. The table can't. Only the DM can do that.

A random encounter isn't just somebody who magically appears on the road in front of the party, weapons drawn, preparing to fight and die. Why is that monster there? What is its current motivation?

Is it eating? Caught in a trap? Trying to reach something that fell down a well? Setting up an ambush for the ogres that are due any minute? Is its child injured? Does it need to know if there is a cleric of Tiamat in the town the party just left? Does it know the clue the party needs? Does it have a magic item to trade that it can't use but the party can? What does it need that the party can do?

Like everything else in the game, it has only the narrative purpose that the DM gives it. The DM is, after all, the narrator.

Finally, one more consideration: even when you're using a random encounter table, the table isn't the final authority; the DM is. From my "Rules for DMs" document:


11. The DM can change, annul, or overrule any rule in the rulebook. This is not a toy or free privilege to change the game at whim. It’s a heavy responsibility to make the game go right, and to be fair to the players, even when the rules aren’t right for a specific moment.

a. Printed rules should be the standard. Rules changes should be the exception.
b. Never ignore the rules. When you change or make exceptions to the rules you should be most focused on the written rule, its intent, and its effects.
c. Applying the published rules is like eating food. That should always happen. Changing the rules is like taking medicine; it's only a good idea if something is wrong, you know how it’s wrong, and you know how to fix it.
d. Never change a rule unless you know why it was written.

So roll on the table -- then apply a judgment call. Can you use this roll to create a good encounter for these characters played by these players at this moment in the game?

If not, either roll again, or make something up, or don't have an encounter. You know the state of your game and your players right now, and the random encounter table doesn't.

The published rules are not the final authority (just like my "Rules for DMs" are merely suggestions). Your game is your responsibility.

Neither having random monsters, nor not having them, will improve the game. DM judgment calls make a superior game.

[KorvinStarmast]

*facedesk*


The initial inspiration for random encounters was Wandering Monsters. They fit into the initial design of the game; you are playing a small, elite fighting force entering a hostile dungeon. Your goal is to get as much treasure as possible and get out, whether by combat, magic, or stealth. Yep. Clever play was rewarded.


For large-scale exploration games, most random encounters should probably not be combat encounters, but be more like Oregon Trail. You're running out of water, and people want to refill from the river? Dysentery time. This made sense in the old AD&D design where it could take the spellcasters days to restock on spell slots. You'll have a certain number of random event rolls to be resolved by combat, magic, or skill, before even getting to the dungeon. Or you're forced to retreat because of an overwhelming encounter, and have to eat a large loss by giving the dragon your horses and treasure as you flee on foot. This is resources spent before reaching a location, and function like Wandering Monsters within the dungeon, except for geographic barriers. And then WotC bought it.

In a game designed for their use, there needs to be an understanding of said random encounters.

They can have a use as an unnecessary roadblock if they're designed for establishing the threat level of a new geographic zone for later, but they need to be a resource for players to ration and make decisions around for them to be meaningful. yes. And discussing this approach at Session Zero won't hurt. Need to understand player expectations, and DM expectations.

Eh, I would suggest that in the kind of classic game where you have random encounters and it's all about resource management, you're in the wilderness anyway, so there's no walking between villages. You're six days beyond the borders of civilization. Yes. Monsters that dangerous do not have villages next to them, or, they extort the villages in some way (sacrifice, grain, livestock, what have you)

Some of the answers have been addressed above me, but I'd like to touch on a few more points:
# Their main role is to enhance danger- If you mess around too much/ Waste time- You might draw danger. Note that the time to roll for wandering monsters in dungeons was decided both on time spent, but also if the party made a lot of noise/ tarried too long in one space. It was one of the reasons that parties couldn't just rest anywhere they wanted.

# Note that most published adventures/ modules who use random encounters have a tighter "CR range" in their tables (Usually up to -3/+3 of the PCs group), with encounters that fit much more the nature of the adventure and region. This is an application of the suggested Random Encounters rules in the DM guide, put into actual context.

# Also as mentioned above, the wider range random encounters are used for a more sandbox/ free exploration style of game, where there is no (Or very little) plot, and a lot of content is randomised to an extent, but you can somewhat prepare in advance. (If we plan to go to the spidery woods, we better carry anti venom and means to free ourselves of webs. If we go into the region controlled by a known red dragon, we better prepare accordingly, if we happen to encounter it).

# But far more importantly- they are a tool, not a hard rule.

You use them when they fit, and a lot of the basic encounter tables in DM guides and the like are supposed to inspire the DM to create his own tables, to suit his adventure design, and not to force him to use them. If they don't fit the adventure, campaign, or gaming group- Don't use them. Like any tool- they are great if they fill a role or a need, and used porperly (More on that soon enough), but if used just because "it's a rule" then they will suck.

# Note also that to encounter a monster, does not necessarily mean an immediate combat encounter. In fact, in one of the older DM guides, the "High end of the table dragon encounter" is specifically addressed, and it is suggested that if the dragon may be too powerful, the party might glimpse it flying overhead, and sense it's aura of fear. If they don't try to hide quickly, they may encounter it, but the main idea is that the encounters don't HAVE TO start with fight.

# More modern games expand on that, and include other variables , such as attitude/ motive/ desire of the encountered creatures, situation (hunting/ hunted/ tending to it's offsprings/ wounded after a fight and more) and sometimes- another hazard, such as avalanches, forest fire, magical storm, and more. Many more modern random encounters also include opportunities, such as wandering merchants, a meeting with a neutral/ beneficial NPCs, finding a natural special resource, or even just specific thematic scenery. These latter additions also help shape and enhance the nature of the world.

# I personally really like them, as player and DM. They can really add to a game. The thing is to first make sure what you are going to use them for, what is their purpose, and plan them accordingly. For simple adventures I usually have no more than 6 types of random encounters, and they are used to reflect the adventure site/ travel, add tensions and complications. For broader uses (such as a region that will host many adventures), I dedicate more effort, and it can pay dividends! The players start understanding and planning according to what they have learned. "Look, of we DO decide to go through the dark forest, we better get really fast mounts, and do it while there is light. You remember that comes at night, don't you? But I suggest we ride the river. We can get some small gems if we meet the water fey again to distract them, and we might meet the smugglers again. I have an idea on how they might help us..." (True story)

To sum it up:
---------------------
# It's a tool. Learn what it is for, what it isn't for, and how to use it.
# Fine tune it to your needs.
# Include more than just a monster name and number (Though this isn't a must if you improvise well). Consider natural hazards, magical phenomenas, scene/ atmosphere/ region enhancers, and opportunities.
# Put some thought and effort to make them interesting, and contributing to the game experience.

That's a great post, and good GM/DM advice.

Not everything exists in the world as a fair and balanced encounter for your PCs to fight and beat. Sometimes you meet something way too powerful and sometimes something completely beneath you. In either case combat is not how you handle it.

Neither does everything have to be plot relevant to the PCs concerns
As the GM your world probably does resolve around the PCs; that doesn't mean that the world ceases to exist when the PCs aren't looking at it.

The wilderness is supposed to be a dangerous place, not a skip in the flowers to the dungeon
If you can't survive the trip to the dungeon and back, maybe you shouldn't be out there in the first place

Some GMs and Players like the verisimilitude of all that, but players who are used to everything revolving around the PCs and solving everything with violence may have a hard time with that.

So I will add a 5th option:
[QUOTE]
1: They are there to add a horror element of the game to placate the small minority of players who enjoy horror at the expense of normal players who are there for fantasies or power and control.
2: The original designers are trolls, and later designers are just aping them.
3: They are there as a crutch for new GMs who don't actually know how to build or balance an encounter on their own.
4: They are included as a warning system for players; any GM who uses random encounter tables by the book is clearly incompetent and you should leave their game.

5: Your players are munchkins and you've been coddling them. Not sure about the blue text there. :smallbiggrin:


This is just what encounters do. Nope. (See various other answers by other posters for more details). In the past year, I have had a host of random encounters in the two games that I run. In each case, the party had a choice to avoid, parley, or engage and it was interesting to see what kinds of responses the party opted for in each case. In two particular cases that come to mind, the encounters ended up with the NPCs in that encounter becoming NPCs that I kept track of and whom the party interacted with in future sessions based on how the players made those choices. Which means that a random encounter can enhance world building also.

It's a tool that you can use to great benefit if you (1) use your imagination and (2) don't treat a TTRPG as a video game /CRPG~ARPG.

Back when I finally got talked into DMing again (I had only agreed to play in the 5e campaign on the promise that someone else is the DM) I had a random encounter that resulted in the defeat the party. ("They chose poorly" was an understatement). In an older edition this would have TPK'd them, but this was 5e and death saves are a thing.
They all ended up unconscious and stable for 1d4 hours. (And one had rolled a 20 and woke up wth 1 HP.).
They ended up naked and in chains in a cave. The next scenario was roughly Jailbreak after they finished complaining about it. It was a fun session, and their growth in teamwork was a joy to behold.


Okay, so. Let me describe an encounter with a randomly rolled dragon I had. This was early in my RPG career, with an older and very much old school DM.

THe party was low level, on their way to the dungeon of whatever. As we walked through the forest, we increasingly saw signs of a fearsome battle. A shattered lance. Trees on fire. Arrows stuck everywhere. Eventually, there was a giant swathe of forest where all the trees had been mowed down by something crashing into them. And at the end, on a forest clearing, a gigantic dragon, lying on its side, lances stuck in its neck, several dead knights and horses at its feet.

After some deliberation, we decided to wait and see if it would die, so maybe we could then loot the knights. We made several stealth checks and eventually failed one, just as night fell. The dragon, still alive, cast a mind control spell and compelled two of the party to show themselves.

The dragon was indeed dying and could not heal itself. But it was willing to negotiate with the party cleric. It swore an oath to spare us and share gold from its horde, if we pulled the lances out and healed it. We did, we got some gold, and, later in the campaign, a very useful friend when we needed some muscle and had money to bribe it.

Totally random encounter. Awesome story.
Warms the cockles of my heart.

[Talakeal]

Thanks for the responses. This is giving me a much better understanding on the issue.

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.

The actual event in game that prompted this discussion wasn't about a monster generated from a table, rather a monster that patrolled its territory and came up behind the PCs while they were exploring, blocking them off from the exit while they were already beat up and not in a good position to actually fight it.

[Vahnavoi]

Non-random wandering monsters work fine if you have a small number of them. Having a map or game board and tokens to follow their movements helps. The design space for them covers several entire genres of subgames, including all the best Hide & Seek variants.

[kyoryu]

Random encounters were designed in no small part because of the initial skirmish game design of Dungeons and Dragons.


All of this.

They're a constant pressure to keep moving and not be overly cautious.

It's also worth noting that in early D&D, the intention was never "encounter = combat". That's why it's an encounter. Encountering a dragon in the wild could mean that it's flying overhead, or that you stumble upon it. It doesn't have to mean "roll initiative". So tough encounters weren't meant to be party-wipers - they were meant to disrupt plans. You were gonna go this way, but now you'd better think of something else...

Keep in mind that a lot of the old-school megadungeon games were designed around the idea of going to the same dungeon repeatedly, so people would start to learn routes and plan their route in advance.

[wilphe]

The best analogy I have heard for this is that early D&D is a heist movie

Your objective is to get out of there with the treasure, you may not even get XP for fighting and being in combat at all is a fail state

Later editions are a martial arts movie, combat is the primary way you interact with the environment


++++++++++++

This also ties in with how early editions didn't really have classed monsters, so players could accurately evaluate encounter threat by where the enemy came on the:

Kobold-Goblin-Orc-Troll-Giant

continuum


3E made it a lot easier to have advanced monsters, even ones with classes; on one level this was great, on another players lost a lot of ability to eyeball if an encounter was level appropriate for them and a lot of them would just trust that it was a challenge they were "supposed" to beat because that was how they had been trained

[wilphe]

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.

Having watched a lot of "Cave diving gone horribly wrong" videos

When you are going into a very hostile environment you have to have a plan and stick to it. Even if that is "if something comes up we haven't thought about we should GTFO"

2 hours from the entrance #in a flooded cave is a lousy time to have a all hands staff meeting about what to do next

Same is true for dungeons



The actual event in game that prompted this discussion wasn't about a monster generated from a table, rather a monster that patrolled its territory and came up behind the PCs while they were exploring, blocking them off from the exit while they were already beat up and not in a good position to actually fight it.

Maxim VIII. A general-in-chief should ask himself frequently in the day, "What should I do if the enemy's army appeared now in my front, or on my right, or my left?" If he have any difficulty in answering these questions, his position is bad, and he should seek to remedy it. Napoleon.

This is the sort of thing they should consider before continuing to explore

Now if their previous experience has been monsters that only stay rigidly within their assigned 10x10 room with no obvious access to food or water no matter how little sense that makes, I can understand it a little better

[kyoryu]

The best analogy I have heard for this is that early D&D is a heist movie

Your objective is to get out of there with the treasure, you may not even get XP for fighting and being in combat at all is a fail state

Yeah, exactly. You know the dungeon, you're hitting a target. You figure out how you're getting there, and go do it, trying to minimize friction.

Like, spell memorization works well in this scenario becuase at some level you know at least a reasonable amount of what you're going through, for the route to the target, even if your knowledge may not be 100%. You're not just going in blind, so more specialized spells can become viable.

[KorvinStarmast]

The best analogy I have heard for this is that early D&D is a heist movie
===
Later editions are a martial arts movie not a bad comparison. :smallsmile:

[Fable Wright]

Thanks for the responses. This is giving me a much better understanding on the issue.

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.

The actual event in game that prompted this discussion wasn't about a monster generated from a table, rather a monster that patrolled its territory and came up behind the PCs while they were exploring, blocking them off from the exit while they were already beat up and not in a good position to actually fight it.

Excellent as long as they're foreshadowed. If you give players foreknowledge of 'it looks like this enemy has been wandering the area' at the start of the dungeon, and occasionally refrain it as they enter new wandering monster territories, you can give them pause on burning everything they have in the 'final' fight because they need to deal with their exit strategy. Or they go in with the idea of 'find the wandering monster before the boss fight to decide we're in shape for the boss fight'. Or 'have an exit strategy prepared if it's blocking the exit.' If it's an obstacle to plan around, it's generally in a good place.

[gbaji]

If the only reason the players are hiding is "it's game over if they don't" then the answer to that is almost always that it won't, because the only thing they get from hiding is the same thing they would have got if there hadn't been a random encounter at all. They get to continue playing the game as if the entire thing hadn't happened. Maybe there was a tense "do they find us" moment where nobody's sure how good their successes are, maybe everyone rolled 1s and failure was obvious so the dragon ate their level 2 party and everyone agrees to crack open a beer and watch TV for the rest of the evening because the game is over now, right?

Except that this is only addressing the mechanical/resource aspect of the game. If you want to create a game setting that "feels real" and is "filled in with stuff", then having things happen (including "random encounters") outside of what you have written on specific spots on the map actually is useful. The value for encountering something and then avoiding it, versus not encountering it at all, is that the PCs know that this encounter exists in the area. If they see a wandering band of orcs, out in the distance, and decide to avoid them, they now know there are wandering orcs in the area. If they see a dragon flying by, high overhead, then they know there is a dragon nesting somewhere in the area, and to maintain a lookout for that.

A lot of this is about setting the... well... setting. Um... I also don't really do "random" encounters either though. I do "random seeming" encounters. Typically, I flesh out the area the party is traveling through, and determine what types of things are in the area (and I make sure that they make sense, so no random dragons on a cart path from the town to a nearby village). I write up a handful of these and have them available to run. Often, I already have an idea in mind for the encounter. Some will occur during the day, some at night (if they are traveling outdoors of course). Then yeah, some die rolls to see where/when exactly these things may show up.

This is not at all about resource expenditure (though it may cause a bit of that), but about "filling in the gaps" in the game world. And sometimes, it's about "filling in the gaps" in the time available in game night. I may know (from my game notes), that the next thing they're going to encounter on the map is something major to deal with, and maybe we're already 2/3rds of the way through the game session time. I might decide I don't have time to do that, and don't want to stop mid-scene somewhere, so I'll look at my writeups for "random encounters" in the area, and drop one on the party.

But yeah. I don't use random encounter tables. Ever. I pre-determine what sort of things may "wander" in the area, and then have those show up periodically. Keeps the players on their toes if nothing else.


It's a tool that you can use to great benefit if you (1) use your imagination and (2) don't treat a TTRPG as a video game /CRPG~ARPG.


Yup. This x1000. If you treat random encounters just as formulaically as you might treat on-map encounters, then it's going to be received just as poorly. If instead, everything feels like it fits into the ecosystem of the area the party is exploring, then it will work. And yes, often what makes up the random encounters is an offshoot of what is on the map. If there's an orc fort in location X (with an entrance to an old mine, which is maybe the object of the adventure), and an orc village at location Y, it's a good bet that there will be some wandering orcs in the area as well. And there may be some roaming enemies of the orcs about as well. Wild animals/monsters are always decent bets, but again, should be something that "fits" with the area.


I will also comment on the wandering monster scenario Talakeal mentioned (was from another thread). The issue with that was not that it was a wandering monster, but with the sheer power level of it. Most random/wandering encounters should be somewhat less tough than the things that are intended to be combat encounters drawn in on the map (obviously, there can also be non-combat encounters on the map as well). If you've put something in that is a combat encounter, and is wandering, it should be weaker relatively speaking (usually). And the more powerful said wandering monster is, the easier it should be to avoid. The dragon flying overhead, should be something the party sees from 10s of miles away, and maybe decides to just hide while it passes. The large orc warband should similarly be able to be avoided if the party so wishes. Smaller or more stealthy things might get the drop on the party (or they just stunmble on something). But very rarely should something really powerful and dangerous just randomly happen to wander into the party, with no chance of avoiding it.


A while ago, we were adventuring in an ancient fallen dwarven mine complex (dwarves had been wiped out and enslaved, their city abandoned, and other bad things had happened long long ago). At one point we heard some loud irregular clanking noises. Turned out it was a pretty powerful iron golem, left over from when the dwarves were in control of the area. It was damaged (was limping on one leg terminator style), but still continuing its programming of "patrol the mines". This thing had literally been wandering around for thousands of years, just continuing to do its thing. Everything just got out of its way though, since you could hear it long before it got close, and it didn't actually move that fast. When we first encountered it, we just ducked down a side passage and let it go on by. We did eventually take it on (it had something on it we needed to gain access to a sealed part of the complex), but the "random encounter" allowed us to know this thing was in the area, know it was really tough (cause it really freaking was), and when we later learned that we needed to get this key thing from "the guardian", we knew exactly what that meant, and then had to locate it and plan out an attack to take it down. But this was absolutely not something we wanted to fight without a lot of prep and planning.


Random encounters should be things that enhance the gaming experience. If the players feel like it's just a trap the GM hits them with whenever their resources are low, then they will both not enjoy them and will begin playing that much more cautiously (have to plan for the wandering monster to attack us after we finish clearing the last room/area for the day before resting). What you don't want these to become is just part of the mathmatical calculation players do when exploring. So yeah. Don't make them that. Make them informative and/or fun instead.

[GloatingSwine]

Except that this is only addressing the mechanical/resource aspect of the game. If you want to create a game setting that "feels real" and is "filled in with stuff", then having things happen (including "random encounters") outside of what you have written on specific spots on the map actually is useful. The value for encountering something and then avoiding it, versus not encountering it at all, is that the PCs know that this encounter exists in the area. If they see a wandering band of orcs, out in the distance, and decide to avoid them, they now know there are wandering orcs in the area. If they see a dragon flying by, high overhead, then they know there is a dragon nesting somewhere in the area, and to maintain a lookout for that.


Yes, I agree.

I wasn't talking about the existence of higher level content in general, but the specific case of higher level content in a random encounter only avoidable by the stealth mechanics of the game. Playing hide and seek where the outcomes are "win" and "game over".

There's a difference between a dragon flying high overhead (exists, can't interact with yet), a dragon visibly fighting someone on a hilltop a few hours diversion away (optional interaction), and a dragon cruising low over the road looking to add your meagre level 2 possessions to its hoard (roll 18 for hide or roll a new character Clanky Dave!)

Using the stealth mechanics to avoid a random encounter only has satisfying outcomes where the outcome of success is something more than "didn't have this one encounter" (ticking clock, strategic stealth, etc).

[glass]

I do not use random encounters often, but when I do the reason is one or more of:

To simulate movement across a medium/large scale where it would be impractical to actually track the movements of all possible actors.
To prevent me from falling into a pattern and thereby making the game too predictable (and therefore boring) for me or the players.
I am running a published adventure and it tells me to.

Since I mostly run published adventures these days, 3 is probably the most common (albeit the most prosaic). That is also the reason I don't use them more often - prewritten adventures that do not already have randomness built in generally have more than enough non-random encounters for me to want to add more.

[Mastikator]

Thanks for the responses. This is giving me a much better understanding on the issue.

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.

The actual event in game that prompted this discussion wasn't about a monster generated from a table, rather a monster that patrolled its territory and came up behind the PCs while they were exploring, blocking them off from the exit while they were already beat up and not in a good position to actually fight it.

IMO I think moving monsters make more sense than ones that sit still, unless you happen to catch them when they're eating or sleeping or something.
It is a thing that people sit around doing nothing, but I don't think it should be the default for most creature types. Undead and constructs are the exception to the rule, wandering is the default behaviour of monsters IMO.

It does suck for the group though, but I think approaching a dungeon like Diablo takes away more than otherwise.

[JellyPooga]

IMO I think moving monsters make more sense than ones that sit still, unless you happen to catch them when they're eating or sleeping or something.
It is a thing that people sit around doing nothing, but I don't think it should be the default for most creature types. Undead and constructs are the exception to the rule, wandering is the default behaviour of monsters IMO.

It does suck for the group though, but I think approaching a dungeon like Diablo takes away more than otherwise.

To be fair, outside of military emplacements, it would be unusual to find anyone entirely unoccupied, whether they be taking their leisure (telling stories, eating, playing games or just talking) or engaged with the task of living, such as cooking or attending a profession such as weaving or the like. People don't, generally, just sit around doing nothing, waiting for something eventful to happen. It's likely that such folk would also be unarmed; weapons beyond anything improvised (such as a utility knife) are cumbersome, no matter how militaristic your society, so weapons (and armour) are likely to be in a dedicated place in the room rather than immediately to hand (with the exception of tools that are also improvised weapons suchas a felling axe or kitchen knife).

Anyone found outside of their activity room (whatever their activity) is likely to be alone, moving from one activity to another or moving as part of that activity (e.g. getting meat from a larder to take it to the kitchens). Occasionally, you might find pairs or threes if the activities of the day are group or team focused, but outside of military patrols, caravans/convoys or large scale industrial concerns, it's unlikely to see more than those two or three at a time. As a rule, people tend to stay put unless they need to move, to the extent of people eating and relaxing where they work.

[Jay R]

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.

No problem. That's part of building a world. A forest might have a specific druid protecting it; there might be a traveling bard you occasionally meet; a dragon might regularly check out a given area looking for food. Their narrative purpose is already established.

Those are all pieces you designed for your world.

Random encounters are there to simulate the 99.999999% of the creatures that the DM never actually designed. The DM has to give them a narrative purpose extemporaneously.

[KaussH]

This was actually what prompted the "horror game" comment above.

My players insist that running away and hiding is not fun for anyone, except for the few weirdos who enjoy "horror games" and that for normal players there is no reason to ever put such an encounter in a game.

I get the feeling your players do not in fact fit the line of "Normal players". Just saying. I know I use random encounters to build the flavor and setting of the world. Stuff you may meet is also stuff you get to experience. What kind of bandits, why is the barge stuck, thats a very strange tree that is now trying to eat the horse, ect.

[Mastikator]

To be fair, outside of military emplacements, it would be unusual to find anyone entirely unoccupied, whether they be taking their leisure (telling stories, eating, playing games or just talking) or engaged with the task of living, such as cooking or attending a profession such as weaving or the like. People don't, generally, just sit around doing nothing, waiting for something eventful to happen. It's likely that such folk would also be unarmed; weapons beyond anything improvised (such as a utility knife) are cumbersome, no matter how militaristic your society, so weapons (and armour) are likely to be in a dedicated place in the room rather than immediately to hand (with the exception of tools that are also improvised weapons suchas a felling axe or kitchen knife).

Anyone found outside of their activity room (whatever their activity) is likely to be alone, moving from one activity to another or moving as part of that activity (e.g. getting meat from a larder to take it to the kitchens). Occasionally, you might find pairs or threes if the activities of the day are group or team focused, but outside of military patrols, caravans/convoys or large scale industrial concerns, it's unlikely to see more than those two or three at a time. As a rule, people tend to stay put unless they need to move, to the extent of people eating and relaxing where they work.

Is that really true? I mean depending on the kind of creature it may be out half of the day looking for its next lunch, ogres, trolls, manticores, bears for instance would be just as likely to be out as in, and may return as the players leave.
Undead may stay put, or wander randomly, a zombie may get trapped by a closed door but a ghost can wander the dungeon freely without caring about silly things like walls and doors.
Constructs are likely to be on automated patrol or just stay put.

I'm not sure I agree that patroling guards in a military encampment wouldn't be armed though. AFAIK human soldiers are armed while on active patrol duty, the same should hold true for goblins, and hobgoblins would probably feel naked without their weapons- bringing them everywhere just cuz. Those are the ones you're likely to run into, but sneaking past the guards and entering a recreational room I agree you're likely to find unarmed creatures. (it's not impossible to imagine there may be shields and spears on the walls, both as decoration and as emergency weapons).

[Pex]

I find them a waste of time. I want to play the adventure, not a table of contents. I accept not every encounter is a combat. I accept not every encounter needs to be related to the current plot. However, there's no real point to them other than filler that don't add anything to the game, more so if it is a combat just for the sake of a combat.

If the DM has an interesting social interaction idea with a quirky NPC, let the party meet the NPC naturally. If the DM found this cool monster he wants to try out in combat put it in the dungeon or as the guardian of the Mcguffin.

As a DM I don't use Random Encounters. The players know this, but that doesn't mean they can rest all they want in the dungeon. There are still consequences for actions. I've had denizens of dungeons take the treasure they could have had when they rest at the wrong time. Bad guys regroup or an environmental hazard takes place if they take too long at something due to an over exertion of caution.

[Lord Torath]

Thanks for the responses. This is giving me a much better understanding on the issue.

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.

The actual event in game that prompted this discussion wasn't about a monster generated from a table, rather a monster that patrolled its territory and came up behind the PCs while they were exploring, blocking them off from the exit while they were already beat up and not in a good position to actually fight it.


Excellent as long as they're foreshadowed. If you give players foreknowledge of 'it looks like this enemy has been wandering the area' at the start of the dungeon, and occasionally refrain it as they enter new wandering monster territories, you can give them pause on burning everything they have in the 'final' fight because they need to deal with their exit strategy. Or they go in with the idea of 'find the wandering monster before the boss fight to decide we're in shape for the boss fight'. Or 'have an exit strategy prepared if it's blocking the exit.' If it's an obstacle to plan around, it's generally in a good place.Just going to second what Fable Wright said here. As long as you telegraph it well, no problem.

Did you mention things the party would notice that would clue them in? If not, it may feel like more of a 'gotcha!' to them.

[BRC]

Do you mean "What is the purpose of the random encounter table" or "What is the purpose of encounters that don't directly tie into the plot"


The former exists as a quick guide for GMs, either to make something on the fly, or serve as a list of inspirations that happens to have numbers next to it for them to roll on.



For the latter? Random Encounters are often the way to tell the story of the setting, outside the immediate plot the PC's are pursuing. Serving that function, they should be chosen carefully.

If the party travels the roads and is attacked by Bandits, that tells the story that this world is dangerous and unstable, such that gangs of bandits patrol the roads. What's more, these bandits are large and bold enough to go after visibly armed groups of adventurers, rather than waiting for easier prey.

Or, the danger of the roads is well known enough that anybody carrying anything valuable is going to have armed guards, as such these bandits are specifically targeting armed groups, rather than being opportunistic highwaymen. Maybe the Bandits are deserters from a defeated army? Maybe they're self-styled revolutionaries supposedly raising money for a war against an oppressive government.


If the party is traveling through dangerous wilderness, encountering wolves or spiders or what have you tells the story about WHY the wilderness is dangerous.

A "Random" pack of Zombies may indicate something, perhaps a nearby village was wiped out by a supernatural plague, or a local wizard's reckless experiments with necromancy have caused the dead to rise?


Random Encounters can also tie into the main plot, even if they're not strictly part of it. If the Party is on their way to the Storm Wizard's Keep, the "Random Encounter" May be soldiers in the Storm Wizard's Employ, they may be wild elementals spawned by the Storm Wizard's magic, they may be bounty hunters or desperate locals who believe they can win the Storm Wizard's favor by slaying the adventurers, they may be wild beasts displaced by the Storm Wizards burning the local forest to drive out the Elves.



The worst approach to take is to think of Random Encounters in an RPG like ones in an old JRPG (I havn't played enough new JRPGs to comment), "You walk around and then are attacked by Gunfrogs". Those games are not WRONG for doing Random Encounters the way they do, they're trying to fill a lot of gametime, and random encounters take a few minutes at most, they need a lot of them. In a TTRPG, where random encounters take a while, and you'll only have a few of them in a short period, they should feel like they have a place in the world, not just spontaneously appear so that An Encounter can happen.

[JellyPooga]

Is that really true? I mean depending on the kind of creature it may be out half of the day looking for its next lunch, ogres, trolls, manticores, bears for instance would be just as likely to be out as in, and may return as the players leave.
Undead may stay put, or wander randomly, a zombie may get trapped by a closed door but a ghost can wander the dungeon freely without caring about silly things like walls and doors.
Constructs are likely to be on automated patrol or just stay put.

I'm not sure I agree that patroling guards in a military encampment wouldn't be armed though. AFAIK human soldiers are armed while on active patrol duty, the same should hold true for goblins, and hobgoblins would probably feel naked without their weapons- bringing them everywhere just cuz. Those are the ones you're likely to run into, but sneaking past the guards and entering a recreational room I agree you're likely to find unarmed creatures. (it's not impossible to imagine there may be shields and spears on the walls, both as decoration and as emergency weapons).

Oh don't get me wrong; patrols of guards or within areas that have an active military aspect, going armed would be the norm, even while pursuing many "civilian" duties. Such is the nature of a militaristic lifestyle. In addition, it's worth noting that most places PCs are likely to be adventuring in are going to have some kind of military aspect, whether it be a bandit or raiding camp, an actual fortification.

However, all I was noting in my previous post was that outside of that active military aspect, even within a military culture or "off-duty", so to speak, most folk will find arms to be a cumbersome inconvenience, particularly if performing day-to-day "life" activities. An ogre hauling lumber or a gnoll setting up their yurt is likely going to set aside their greatclub or axe while they perform that physical task and the orc shaman probably isn't wearing a sword or holding their totem staff whilst their stirring the tribal stewpot, for example.

[Mr Blobby]

I think a good argument against random encounters is that players can at times be distracted by them. I've seen it myself where an GM has given the party a [non-violent] random encounter with an NPC and they were convinced it was a plot hook and spent some RL time and GM ad-libbing effort to basically, convince them that 'Bob the Farmer' was truly in fact Bob the Farmer and the only quest he was involved in was readying for the harvest.

[Trask]

There are lots of reasons, but some of the best literature on the subject can be found at the Alexandrian here https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/xandering-the-dungeon

Basically, random encounters are useful in Exploration based design and not as useful in Encounter based design. In the former, the GM creates a location, typically but not necessarily a dungeon, and creates a random encounter table to create dynamic encounters within the location as it is explored at certain time intervals in-between set piece encounters located within the place being explored. That's all, really. A well designed random encounter table can be a huge asset in such a game, and the more care that is taken in creating it the better it will be.

[The Insanity]

I use them for most of the reasons that were already mentioned, but sometimes the session goes too long without a fight and a plot fights doesn't fit the time and place, so I roll something appropriate.

[Fable Wright]

The worst approach to take is to think of Random Encounters in an RPG like ones in an old JRPG (I havn't played enough new JRPGs to comment), "You walk around and then are attacked by Gunfrogs". Those games are not WRONG for doing Random Encounters the way they do, they're trying to fill a lot of gametime, and random encounters take a few minutes at most, they need a lot of them. In a TTRPG, where random encounters take a while, and you'll only have a few of them in a short period, they should feel like they have a place in the world, not just spontaneously appear so that An Encounter can happen.

...Okay, I know it was a made up example, but I am suddenly filled with a burning desire to know what a gunfrog is and I'm about to spend several fruitless hours thinking about how to bring a gunfrog-based encounter into a game. Is this a gang of three Kermits with bandanas and pistols? Metallic frogs with a gun barrel protruding from their forehead as a wizard's middle finger to the concept of evolution? Are they a normal frog that just developed the magical ability to create a bullet-like projectile through evolution in a high magic environment? Are they a notorious gang of Awakened, thumb-sized tree frogs that got their hands on assault rifles and operate these rifles in groups from ambush like amphibian siege equipment? Are they a species of frog that's naturally really rubbery, and bereft of humans would swallow a large rock that would then protrude from their forehead like a unicorn horn, but this aggressive strand swallows handguns instead? Any answer immediately tells a story that I want in my life.

[Eldan]

I think a good argument against random encounters is that players can at times be distracted by them. I've seen it myself where an GM has given the party a [non-violent] random encounter with an NPC and they were convinced it was a plot hook and spent some RL time and GM ad-libbing effort to basically, convince them that 'Bob the Farmer' was truly in fact Bob the Farmer and the only quest he was involved in was readying for the harvest.

That's when you improvise as a DM.

Always run with it if the players suspect a good plot hook. Also, if they solve a mystery and it's not the solution you thought of, but a better one.

[gbaji]

Just going to second what Fable Wright said here. As long as you telegraph it well, no problem.

Did you mention things the party would notice that would clue them in? If not, it may feel like more of a 'gotcha!' to them.

And I think this is what prompted the thread. Talakeal did have the party scout see a room where they saw a wizard casting a ritual (control spell I think) on a big monster. They decided not to engage with it. Then, later, after exploring a bit more through the dungeon, the same big monster wandered up behind them and they encountered it. I haven't been able to get details as to what degree of "avoid the encounter" was allowed to the party at that point in time, but my understanding is that since this monster was literally just summoned/dominated and sent out to wander the dungeon, there were no signs of it in the area the party was traveling in. It was not a "normal" wandering monster. It was summoned and sent out to patrol the area, and had only just started doing this.

I'm not sure if we consider that sufficient foreshadowing for the party though. In the other thread, I recommended allowing the party to hear the monster coming from some distance away, so that they could choose to head in another direction, or send their scout to check it out, etc. Again though, I'm not clear on the exact details of how the encounter itself was structured.

[Vahnavoi]

I think a good argument against random encounters is that players can at times be distracted by them.

Distracted from what?

Here's the thing: random encounters being filler, "not related to the plot", unplanned, unimportant, etc.., have nothing to do with them being random. If a random encounter has those traits, it's because the game master has preferential non-random content.

But you can just let or design the random encounters to be the game. In that regard, the advice "don't treat a tabletop game like a computer game, blah blah" is actually bad. There are plenty of computer games where entire levels are procedurally generated. The boss you're fighting? Selected from a table by a pseudorandom function. And the kicker? Ur-examples of many such games were based on procedural generation rules in old D&D rules.

[Satinavian]

Thanks for the responses. This is giving me a much better understanding on the issue.

On a related topic, what do people think about literal wandering monsters? Ones that have a concrete existence, but move around.Those provide more versimilitude as they don't tend to pop up in situations where they don't make sense and you might encounter trails or other indicators of them without meeting them.

But they are, of course, more work for the GM.


Classical trade-off.

[Mr Blobby]

That's when you improvise as a DM.

Always run with it if the players suspect a good plot hook. Also, if they solve a mystery and it's not the solution you thought of, but a better one.

Agreed; that's what I do on the rare event I DM. However, some people run premade stories [which normally doesn't have many 'backpaths' written in] and others either don't like or have the capabilities to successfully pull off what I mentally call the 'guiding freewheel' DM style.


Distracted from what?

Here's the thing: random encounters being filler, "not related to the plot", unplanned, unimportant, etc.., have nothing to do with them being random. If a random encounter has those traits, it's because the game master has preferential non-random content.

But you can just let or design the random encounters to be the game. In that regard, the advice "don't treat a tabletop game like a computer game, blah blah" is actually bad. There are plenty of computer games where entire levels are procedurally generated. The boss you're fighting? Selected from a table by a pseudorandom function. And the kicker? Ur-examples of many such games were based on procedural generation rules in old D&D rules.

There's a difference between having 'random encounters' and using 'randomised tables'. I personally have used the latter even in games which didn't have them; for enemies, weapons and loot. Generally speaking, the player won't know you're using the latter unless the DM either is blatant or mentions it.

[Vahnavoi]

There's a difference between having 'random encounters' and using 'randomised tables'.

If there is, it's not "random" part that's causing it, because the (pseudo)random function is just the method for picking an encounter of the table.

[Satinavian]

That's when you improvise as a DM.

Always run with it if the players suspect a good plot hook. Also, if they solve a mystery and it's not the solution you thought of, but a better one.
That might be a valid style of play, but personally i am not a fan, sorry. It's the preference of drama vs. versimilitude again. I prefer if the GM tries to craft a believable setting and lets it ecolve under player interaction as would be most reasonable over a world that morphs or is added to spontaniously based on what people find interesting.

However the players exploring other parts of the setting than what the GM thought relevant and that leading to improvisation as in the example you responded to is fine. I just oppose thespontanous rewriting of setting parts that already are fleshed out or the nothion that you can forgoe fleshing out anything and just wing it when it comes up.

[Eldan]

Yeah, not for me. If the players decide to focus on some side NPC, I'd rather make that NPC interesting and tied to the plot than have nothing going on.

[KorvinStarmast]

There are lots of reasons, but some of the best literature on the subject can be found at the Alexandrian here https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/xandering-the-dungeon

Basically, random encounters are useful in Exploration based design and not as useful in Encounter based design. In the former, the GM creates a location, typically but not necessarily a dungeon, and creates a random encounter table to create dynamic encounters within the location as it is explored at certain time intervals in-between set piece encounters located within the place being explored. That's all, really. A well designed random encounter table can be a huge asset in such a game, and the more care that is taken in creating it the better it will be. It's a good article.

Beyond that:

The obsession with "the plot" seems to be a recurring theme/problem here, in terms of not seeing how a random encounter, as a DM tool, fit into a fictional world. I agree with those who suggest making a small table of beings/creatures that make up potential random encounters, so that they fit organically into the area, above ground or under it, or on a different plane.

Alexandrian suggests that a GM create situations, not plots.
I find that to be good advice for most cases even when there's an overarching conflict/tension with a BBEG (Acererak in Tomb of Annihilation as but one example) as a central theme to an adventure arc.

[Eldan]

I often don't even necessarily have a plot like that. Most of my DM prep is setting up a situation. Some characters, they have some general goals, some clues the players can find and locations they can go, and then just see what happens.

[Darth Credence]

That's when you improvise as a DM.

Always run with it if the players suspect a good plot hook. Also, if they solve a mystery and it's not the solution you thought of, but a better one.


That might be a valid style of play, but personally i am not a fan, sorry. It's the preference of drama vs. versimilitude again. I prefer if the GM tries to craft a believable setting and lets it ecolve under player interaction as would be most reasonable over a world that morphs or is added to spontaniously based on what people find interesting.

However the players exploring other parts of the setting than what the GM thought relevant and that leading to improvisation as in the example you responded to is fine. I just oppose thespontanous rewriting of setting parts that already are fleshed out or the nothion that you can forgoe fleshing out anything and just wing it when it comes up.

100% with Satinavian here.

There are farmers in the world. If I'm describing a farming community, and I am including a number of people who look like farmers setting up a farmers' market on the village green, those people are actually farmers doing what farmers do. If the PCs want to speak to one of them, I am perfectly happy to have them talk to a farmer. But just because a player chooses an NPC to talk to, it doesn't suddenly make them not a farmer. That would make the world silly to me and to several of my players.

Plus, players can change what grabs their interest at a whim. So, the players meet a tax collector and decide that this guy is really interesting, and they want to work with him. The DM begins to improvise, taking someone who they designed to answer questions about the city as the players entered and instead making them into an important NPC, one who has access to the coffers of the city if they are looking for a heist, or to high ranking government officials if they want that, or whatever. Then, half an hour of real time later, and a different player becomes obsessed with a woman picking flowers near a temple, wondering what her story is, and wanting to go meet her and help her out. Thanks, tax man, but we're going this way, and tax man goes away. And then something else shiny comes along, and you improvise for that as the flower woman goes away. And then, ten sessions later, they say, where's the tax man, we're ready to break into the vault.

Yes, players should be able to do pretty much whatever they want to do. If the players want to talk to the tax man, or flower woman, or anyone else, great. But that doesn't mean that the tax man or the flower woman have to be anything more than what they appeared to be when the players decided to engage. Making everyone exactly as important as the players decide they are is a good way to have the world seem completely artificial to me. It makes video gamey, where the vast majority of characters on the screen are just "citizen" or "villager", but the ones with an actual name are important. The players are just deciding who the DM is forced to give a name to, and are therefore important.

[GloatingSwine]

100% with Satinavian here.

There are farmers in the world. If I'm describing a farming community, and I am including a number of people who look like farmers setting up a farmers' market on the village green, those people are actually farmers doing what farmers do. If the PCs want to speak to one of them, I am perfectly happy to have them talk to a farmer. But just because a player chooses an NPC to talk to, it doesn't suddenly make them not a farmer. That would make the world silly to me and to several of my players.


It doesn't make them not a farmer, but this is a farmer's market which is a time when they all meet each other from a relatively wide area around here and gossip moves quickly so maybe this farmer knows something about the thing the players need to know about.

[Darth Credence]

It doesn't make them not a farmer, but this is a farmer's market which is a time when they all meet each other from a relatively wide area around here and gossip moves quickly so maybe this farmer knows something about the thing the players need to know about.

But what if they don't? What if there is nothing that the farmers would know about that the players would care about, because this is a safe little region a week's travel from the frontier and the players are only passing through and resupplying on the way to the frontier? Do you make up something that they know and have a new plot thread that the players may or may not chase down? Do you make them know something about the quest they are working on even though there is no rational reason they would, just to reward players for talking to a random NPC?

Even if they are close enough, not every farmer is going to have that information, and not every farmer is going to be willing to talk to a random group of travelers. But the advice of always make everything into a plot hook means that yes, they all have to be willing to talk if persuaded properly and they all have to have information that they may have no business knowing.

[Trask]

Another note on the usefulness of random encounters is during world exploration. I'm playing in an Epic Level PBP Faerun campaign for almost 3 years now, romping around Faerun and beyond. The DM uses random encounters extensively for the setting, which is massively useful because all of us are magic-users with the ability to say "I want to find a picture of Ordulin and try to teleport there" and then maybe we mishap and end up in another fishing village nearby. And we traverse the countryside on horseback, before getting a sending from our Planetar friend who begs us to go to The House of Nature for some urgent mission, and now were wandering around Fury's Heart looking for Malar. It would be insane for a DM to try and plot all that out, because its based on personal character hooks, rumors, and some set pieces but random encounters "fill in the blanks" so to speak, and act as connective tissue and are fun to run.

Sometimes they actually spin off into their own entire plot threads. My character was traveling across the Troll Moors and came across a warband of orcs, hundreds of them, and after some parley I decided I wanted to meet their leader who was some mysterious being not appointed by Gruumsh. It ended up being a Mind Flayer cabal. My DM told me later that he spun that up inbetween posts after I rolled the Orc warband on the table.

[gbaji]

However the players exploring other parts of the setting than what the GM thought relevant and that leading to improvisation as in the example you responded to is fine. I just oppose thespontanous rewriting of setting parts that already are fleshed out or the nothion that you can forgoe fleshing out anything and just wing it when it comes up.

/agree. If I've written stuff about what is there, and what's going on, then that's what's there and what's going on. But yeah, if a PC decides to do something unexpected, or they go somewhere I haven't detailed, I have no issues with going with it. And I suppose "random" encounters could spawn such things. However, as I wrote above, I'm one of those GMs who tends to determine what sorts of people/critters are in an area, and put in encounters that match that set. So it's unlikely to spin folks off on too much of a tangent. They aren't going to find some random creature type and then decide to launch off on a mision to deal with something involving that type of creature. It's going to be something relevant to the area already.

Honesty? Most of the times, when my players go off on some unexpected side journey, it's not due to an encounter *I* put in there, but some idea or objective they came up with themselves (often kinda out of the blue). And I'll totally roll with that when it happens. Heck. I created an entirely made up on the spot (yet oddly specific) criminal organization, with an ongoing feud and intrigue (and assassination plot with different factions supporting/opposing) based solely on one rogue PC deciding he was going to try using his pick pocket skill (He failed. Hilarity ensued. Then things just kinda acquired a mind of their own).


The obsession with "the plot" seems to be a recurring theme/problem here, in terms of not seeing how a random encounter, as a DM tool, fit into a fictional world. I agree with those who suggest making a small table of beings/creatures that make up potential random encounters, so that they fit organically into the area, above ground or under it, or on a different plane.

I tend to think that if you don't have occasional "outside elements" in your game, then it will seem like the entire world exists solely to propel the PCs through the adventure at hand. That doesn't mean those elements have to be "totally outside" (in terms of applicability to the location), but they should be "outside" of the current adventure being run. Not everything has to be "something", if you know what I mean.


Alexandrian suggests that a GM create situations, not plots.
I find that to be good advice for most cases even when there's an overarching conflict/tension with a BBEG (Acererak in Tomb of Annihilation as but one example) as a central theme to an adventure arc.

Yeah. I agree with his opinions, more or less. I don't necessarily agree with his terminology though. IMO, you should create "plots" (as in NPC plots, being "plans/ploys/objectives that the NPCS have and are doing, which may be bad, and the PCs may want/need to stop"). What I don't think you should do is write "scripts".

"What" is happening should be something you, as the GM, write ahead of time. That's literally what the players are going to interact with. And this absolutely should include "plots" going on.

"How" the adventurers deal with those things is up to the players. That's the "script", and it's the part that the players get to write. I write what the antagonists are doing, the players decide what their characters/protagonists are doing in response, and together we are writing (hopefully) a fun and exciting story.


He regularly uses the word "plot" in a broader meaning that I normally would. A plot is "bad guys are trying to steal <whatever> to use with <some other thing> so they can achive <some evil goal>". That's a plot. The script is "the PCs go here, talk to X, decide to do Y, fight minions <here> and learn <some info>, then run to <somewhere else> where they find the <other thing>, and then have a climatic battle with the BBEG to stop the plan". That's not to say that I might not have an idea of how they will navigate the adventure, but every step along the way should be entirely up to the players. The trick is balancing "lead them by the nose" and "they have no clue how to stop the bad guys". Too much leading, and it'll feel like a railroad. Not enough breadcrumbs to follow, and the players will be lost and frustrated.

And sometimes, your players will totally surprise you and come up with some idea that you never even considered. So yeah. Trying to pre-write how they are going to solve the problem you created is not a great idea. You should always have an idea of how it *could* be solved though (just to make sure it's possible and reasonable). But you should never force the players to follow any specific path.

[kyoryu]

Another good use for random encounters is to provide high-level decision-making, especially overland. Going to Citytopia? Cool. There's two routes - the long, safe route and the dangerous route through the Forest Of Bad. They each get different random encounter tables.

It's not then the GM punishing by fiat, but rather a natural consequence of the layout of the world.

(Yes, this does presume and require that the GM have appropriate random encounter tables for various regions, but I consider that a requirement of using random encounters anyway)


That might be a valid style of play, but personally i am not a fan, sorry. It's the preference of drama vs. versimilitude again. I prefer if the GM tries to craft a believable setting and lets it ecolve under player interaction as would be most reasonable over a world that morphs or is added to spontaniously based on what people find interesting.

However the players exploring other parts of the setting than what the GM thought relevant and that leading to improvisation as in the example you responded to is fine. I just oppose thespontanous rewriting of setting parts that already are fleshed out or the nothion that you can forgoe fleshing out anything and just wing it when it comes up.

Either is fine, but it's important to be clear bout which style you're running.

In the "random farmer" case if you're going the verisimilitude route, that's a good time to drop OOC and set expectations appropriately.

I'm a big fan of the verisimilitude approach myself, but I also recognize a lot of players have different expectations.

Expectation alignment is critical.

[Jay R]

The purpose of random encounters -- like the purpose of any other encounters -- is to provide more encounters, so the players can have suspense and excitement, and the PCs can earn experience points and loot.

[gbaji]

The purpose of random encounters -- like the purpose of any other encounters -- is to provide more encounters, so the players can have suspense and excitement, and the PCs can earn experience points and loot.

That's certainly the mechanical game answer. And there is certainly value in keeping players on their toes in terms of "an encounter could occur at any time". But they can also fill a role in terms of increasing buy-in to the setting itself, by "filling in the gaps" that will otherwise be left by an adventure with specific encounters only at specific locations. When I think of random encounters, the "random" part is about where/when they may happen, but not really about what those encounters might actually be. I would avoid just rolling on a published table to see what shows up. The GM should already know what sorts of things are in the area and may be roaming around. So not "random" in that sense at all.

That's just how I approach these. Obviously, some variations on hex crawls may utilize the concept of "roll for what's where" differently, so there are certainly exceptions.

[Trask]

Curating a random encounter list can absolutely be a great way to build setting. I think this is already internalized by most of us, if not always thought about explicitly. The random encounter tables for a jungle will be different for a desert, will be different for the arctic, etc. But it can also be unique for regions, cities, dungeons etc. And random encounters don't need to always be combat either, but can be social encounters, merchants encountered on the road, a party of traveling bards, a family of halfling gypsies, other adventuring parties whatever. Its easy to scribble in the margins what an encounters goals are or what they are doing.

If a table reads "27: 2d8 orcs" that's different than if it read "27: 2d8 Orcs laden with loot from their recent plunder (roll on treasure table), drunk on stolen dwarven beer and loudly singing war songs (disadvantage on perception checks).

[Pex]

And I think this is what prompted the thread. Talakeal did have the party scout see a room where they saw a wizard casting a ritual (control spell I think) on a big monster. They decided not to engage with it. Then, later, after exploring a bit more through the dungeon, the same big monster wandered up behind them and they encountered it. I haven't been able to get details as to what degree of "avoid the encounter" was allowed to the party at that point in time, but my understanding is that since this monster was literally just summoned/dominated and sent out to wander the dungeon, there were no signs of it in the area the party was traveling in. It was not a "normal" wandering monster. It was summoned and sent out to patrol the area, and had only just started doing this.

I'm not sure if we consider that sufficient foreshadowing for the party though. In the other thread, I recommended allowing the party to hear the monster coming from some distance away, so that they could choose to head in another direction, or send their scout to check it out, etc. Again though, I'm not clear on the exact details of how the encounter itself was structured.

To me that wouldn't even be a random encounter but a consequence of player actions of previously doing nothing to stop the wizard from summoning the creature if indeed summoning the creature was a Bad Thing. As a DM I'm more likely to fiat they encounter the summoned creature later at an appropriate location because they didn't stop the earlier summons, but I have no issue if a DM chose to use random chance at various places until such time the encounter is rolled to happen. It's still a consequence.

[MrZJunior]

One use that I don't believe has been mentioned is as an aide to improvisation. I enjoy coming up with things on the fly and a random encounter table can provide a nice base.

[gatorized]

Shouldn't all monsters wander? Like obviously they'll spend time at their lairs or nests, but most creatures that aren't like aberrations or whatever are going to need to eat at some point. And the intelligent ones may have a society to maintain, which presumably involves work of some kind.

[Witty Username]

Distracted from what?

Here's the thing: random encounters being filler, "not related to the plot", unplanned, unimportant, etc.., have nothing to do with them being random. If a random encounter has those traits, it's because the game master has preferential non-random content.

But you can just let or design the random encounters to be the game. In that regard, the advice "don't treat a tabletop game like a computer game, blah blah" is actually bad. There are plenty of computer games where entire levels are procedurally generated. The boss you're fighting? Selected from a table by a pseudorandom function. And the kicker? Ur-examples of many such games were based on procedural generation rules in old D&D rules.


A concrete example of this, the original Castle Ravenloft module, had random tables for inside the castle, on of the entries was Sraid himself, him showing up randomly to fight for short periods was part of the intention, you were meant to feel like you were in the home of a vampire that he lived it, he would wander, hunt, and antagonize the party.

A random encounter, can be part of the larger plot when handled well.

--
I personally like putting one entry on my encounter tables that is much stronger then everything else, and have hints to it before the area if the party asks questions that feel correct for it to come up. And if they kill it, I take it off the table. The idea is that this isn't a random threat, but a specific monster that has taken to the area, and will make the area less dangerous if you kill it.

In an area of Gnolls say, maybe there is one Flynd, semi organizing the warband, if they encounter the party the may try to force them to flee or hide, but if they succeed in killing it, the whole band breaks, and gnolls give way to other things.

Wandering tracking can do the same thing, but it can be alot of bookkeeping, especially over long periods. I tend to use Wandering monsters for small areas in short timeframes, and Random monsters in large areas over long periods of time.

[Mastikator]

Shouldn't all monsters wander? Like obviously they'll spend time at their lairs or nests, but most creatures that aren't like aberrations or whatever are going to need to eat at some point. And the intelligent ones may have a society to maintain, which presumably involves work of some kind.

Not really. A couple of ghouls may be unable to wander if the doors are locked. Robots and constructs may be stationary and just stand in place indefinitely. A guard might be told to stand in a specific spot for hours and only move when relieved by another guard. A sphinx might sit on a pedestal for a hundred years waiting for the players to arrive, pose them a riddle and refuse to elaborate. An elemental or fiend might be locked into a position by some magic. A celestial might be guarding a tomb, awaiting a worthy mortal.

It really depends on the kind of monster.

[Gnoman]

I personally like putting one entry on my encounter tables that is much stronger then everything else, and have hints to it before the area if the party asks questions that feel correct for it to come up. And if they kill it, I take it off the table. The idea is that this isn't a random threat, but a specific monster that has taken to the area, and will make the area less dangerous if you kill it.


My random encounter tables tend to be almost entirely this - each one is a specific enemy group, and if you kill one it is out of the game. This allows the party to win by slow attrition on clear-out-the-location quests (which could also be solved in other ways depending on the exact quest), or just open up more room to maneuver while advancing on their actual goals.

Random encounters that don't connect to anything at all (the proverbial "1d3 Dire Camels in a swamp") generally aren't the best ideas even in mostly-plotless beer and pretzels dungeon crawling, because they're often not greatly suited for the environment and thus won't give a fight that's worth having. With only a little work in planning the tables, however, you can produce a ludicrously useful tool.

[Telok]

In my current game random encounters are time sinks and ammo drains that the players feel really good about curb stomping (except the occasional unique max dangerous predatory animal of a given zone, just because those aren't curb stomps). Which also means they alert nearby intelligent inhabitants and possibly rival adventuring groups. It could also provide clues about the nature of the area when the corpse filled, blood splattered hallway they left turns up reverted to its pristine pre-slaughter no-bullet-holes condition within 48 hours.

It kind of helps that they approach the random encounters with a careless "full auto splatterpunk" attitude and zero attempts at any sort of stealth. They're finally getting to the first areas with actually organized & competent npcs, and it's gonna be a nasty surprise when they've attracted a dozen necro midget casters and thirty blade zombies, or rival adventurers who have figured out these are the guys talking all the first run loot and acting like deciphering ancient writings isn't important.

[Fiery Diamond]

If there is, it's not "random" part that's causing it, because the (pseudo)random function is just the method for picking an encounter of the table.

I'm too lazy to go back and see which poster said what, but did you happen to notice earlier in the thread the concept of different meanings of the term "random encounter" existing? I find it incredibly annoying when people act like only one meaning (or subset of meanings) of a word or term is the one true valid meaning. The word "random" has more than just the mathematical meaning, and doesn't necessarily mean "randomly generated" in the context of "random encounter." "Random encounter" can also refer to an encounter which appears to be "lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern" to borrow directly from the first definition of the word random on Merriam Webster's website. That is, it has no connection to the current plot thread, quest, or what-have-you: it's just "and then you encountered a thing." That's a perfectly valid use of the term "random encounter," and using those is quite distinct from using a random encounter table.

[Vahnavoi]

@Fiery Diamond: oh, I'm well aware of the multiple meanings people can give to a word. My entire point is that people should stop loading multiple meanings into a word. When talking about random encounters, only the mathematical sense of "random" is a well-defined trait for a game mechanic, where you can have reasoned discussion on whaf purpose it could serve.

By contrast, if you ask "what is the purpose of a random encounter?" when thinking the word "random" means "lacking definite plan, purpose or pattern", you have just asked a stupid question - oxymoron by way of equivocation. This kind of loading the term is exactly what obscures the genuine answers.

[Lacco]

One use that I don't believe has been mentioned is as an aide to improvisation. I enjoy coming up with things on the fly and a random encounter table can provide a nice base.

I'd only expand this: random encounters can also be viewed as the part of the RPG experience that is 'game' for the 'GM' side of the table.

[Vahnavoi]

Continuing another thought from Fiery Diamond's post, whenever using a word to suggest something appears to be this or that, remember that appearances can be deceiving. Namely, when player call an encounter "random" because it appears to be so to them due to incomplete information, that's a claim that is either true or false, and where it is false (such as in the case of a non-random encounter they failed to predict), it may have nothing to do with how a game master actually set that encounter up. In any such case, the way forward obviously is not to debate what is the function or purpose of a "random" encounter.

[KorvinStarmast]

In any such case, the way forward obviously is not to debate what is the function or purpose of a "random" encounter. Which takes us back to the question in the title having the fruits of the poisoned tree as an attachment: T's table.
(There was a response, perhaps yours, that pointed to random encounters being used to emulate/simulate of "a world in motion" and it's as good of an answer as any in the generic sense).

[kyoryu]

An interesting way of rephrasing this might be to a few questions:

1. What problems can random encounters solve?
2. In what styles of game are those problems relevant?
3. What are the best ways to use random encounters to help solve those problems?

For the first one, I've seen a number of problems suggested that random encounters can solve:

1. Providing time pressure in a situation
2. Provide imagination prompts
3. Simulate a living world
4. (Implied) Move some items from GM fiat to system
5. Create interesting decisions for travel by creating different risk/reward options
6. Give additional encounters to grant xp
... and maybe a few more.

The second and third questions probably have different answers for each of the above!

[Jay R]

Random encounters have been a part of the hobby for fifty years, and I am still not sure if I see the point of them.

Then don't use them. It has never been true that all games run the same. I sometimes use them and sometimes don't. I try to make the best game I can for my players. It's different from anybody else's game, and there's nothing wrong with that.


I sometimes include them, and they seem to always piss the players off.

Don't confuse the real reason for their annoyance with the immediate example. I've never had a complaint about random monsters, or wandering monsters. I rarely get complaints at all.

You get complaints from your players fairly often. I suspect that there is an underlying issue behind most of these complaints, separate from the specific example this time.

I recommend that you try to find out what the real issue is -- one that affects lots of specific moments in your game.


Furthermore, many random encounter tables include a few things that are wildly out of line with the rest in terms of difficulty. For example, most D&D encounter tables have an adult dragon as the maximum result, despite the fact that the vast majority of PCs will have no chance against one in a fight.

That would be unacceptable for a random fight table. Fortunately, it appears in a random encounter table, instead.


So what actual purpose do random encounters, particularly powerful ones, serve on either a mechanical or narrative level?

Well, for one thing, they are great opportunities for actual narration -- negotiating, trading, helping each other, dropping clues, foreshadowing for later developments, etc.

By contrast, a mere series of encounters where you have to fight and you always win serves no narrative purpose. It's just bullying.

But the only person who can create a narrative purpose is the GM. The dragon is too powerful for the party to fight? OK, then he needs something from town, and knows that his presence will cause a panic. He wants to hire the party to go get 2 pounds of tarragon.

Or she's quietly eating the owlbears she just killed. She is on guard against the party wanting to steal her dinner.

Or he's about to eat a family of humans he just caught. He will not give up dinner, but if the party brings him a dead girallon, he will trade.

Or he just killed a paladin. He has no use for her armor, and might trade it for gold or some other item.

Maybe the brass dragon would like to know about the blue dragon the party just ran away from.

Maybe she has the clue the players need -- perhaps she is annoyed because a lich has moved in nearby, when the lich is who the players are trying to find and destroy.

Maybe he's hunting the thief that stole an item from his hoard, and the players have to prove it's not them, and may even know where the thief is.

Maybe she mentions a wizard who will become important three sessions later.

The narrative purpose can only come from the narrator, that is, the GM.

The problem appears to be the automatic assumption that encounters cannot be peaceful. I can't know if that assumption comes from the players, or the GM, or is tacitly assumed by all, or is an assumption each side makes after a belligerent move by the other side, or maybe something else.

They primary fact you can't avoid is this:

If encounters can be peaceful, then power differential isn't automatically a problem.
If all encounters will be fights, then they must be fights that are reasonable within the game.

Note: I didn't say "if the GM turns all encounters into fights" or "if the players turn all encounters into fights." Motive and method are not at issue.

If in fact every encounter becomes a fight, for whatever reason, then it must be treated like a fight while being set up.

[kyoryu]

Jay R's points get into one of the things I mentioned - "random encounter as imagination prompt".

You shouldn't necessarily read them too literally, and especially not as fights. Even old school ones had a reaction roll, not all encounters became fights. But, really, the point is that encounters don't mean turn off your brain. "Okay, there's a dragon here. Cool. Why? What's it doing? What does this imply?"

GMs are still expected to use their creativity.

[gbaji]

I also suspect that the reason the players in this case were so upset about this encounter was twofold:

1. It was automatically a "you must fight this" encounter

2. It was "random" and attacked them at a time/place when their own resources were woefully inadequate for the fight.


I'll also point out, as a general thing, not specific to this example, that if the sole reason random encounters are in the game is to enforce some kind of cautious resource management, then that's how the players will react to them. If they are also likely to be encounters with no tangible gain (ie: no loot), then the players will tend to not like them. If X% of our resources are "spent" fighting things that gain us nothing, then every single one of them is a waste of our time. If the encounters have other purposes (or are used for others, such as narrative imagination), then the players will see some value to them.

In this particular example, the monster wasn't so much random, as something they could have dealt with earlier, but choose not to. There's some aspect of them being punished for that earlier choice here. But there are some particulars to that earlier encounter that make this problematic IMO.

As a general rule though, you should not have random encounters that are too powerful for the party to handle. Or, if you do, they should not be forced to fight them. And no, running away after the fight starts is not the same as "give them the opportunity to avoid the fight in the first place". IME, there is a fair amount of "in for a penny" mentality in TTRPG groups. It's very very very hard to get them to retreat out of a fight once engaged. So it's usually a good idea to not construct an encounter in that way in the first place.

[Mr Blobby]

I also have to ask 'where is the party's scout/ranger/rogue?'; spotting lurking enemies or whatever before you walk into them and thus, giving the party the opportunity to choose whether they evade/attack/parlay is kinda their thing. Even more importantly, a kind of 'enforced stupidity' to make the party engage can really hack off the player of said scout/rogue/whatever.

[Easy e]

Potentially a controversial but simple take ahead....

Random encounters serve no purpose. Anything they do, the GM could just do.

They do not even make the GMs job easier as they throw off the adventure pacing, game timing, split the party, and create rabbit holes for the PCs to crawl down that are not needed.

They are a simple hold-over legacy from "That's the way it has always been done" and should be abolished.

[gbaji]

I also have to ask 'where is the party's scout/ranger/rogue?'; spotting lurking enemies or whatever before you walk into them and thus, giving the party the opportunity to choose whether they evade/attack/parlay is kinda their thing. Even more importantly, a kind of 'enforced stupidity' to make the party engage can really hack off the player of said scout/rogue/whatever.

And that's the crux of this particular encounter sequence. The did use a scout initially, and encountered a room with a scripted encounter where a wizard was using some kind of ritual to control a big monster to send it out to patrol the dungeon. They chose not to fight them at that time. Later, the monster came up on the party and attacked them.

IMO, it was a double negative experience in terms of scouting, because the act of scouting the initial room "triggered" the script (so basically created a monster they now had to deal with then, or would likely run into later, though they didn't know this at the time). In the later encounter, it's unclear if they had any means to avoid this before running into it. They basically ran into it at an intersection later in the dungeon. So in this case, scouting ahead actually hurt the party.


Personally, I would not have had the scout of the first room trigger the event, and instead shown them the room itself, perhaps prepped for the ritual, and basically given them a reward for scouting (you know someone's preping a ritual here, you can mess up the prep stuff and delay it maybe, or wait in ambush for the wizard, or whatever). As it was, since they scouted, they had the option to not encounter the room, which meant that the scripted encounter really didn't work as intended. I'm also just not a fan of this kind of scripted encounter in the first place, but that's a whole nother topic.

[Mr Blobby]

Yeah that does seem to be a bit wonky - if you successfully do something 'optional', there should be a reward for it. That is unless the scout's attempt failed and that caused the scripted 'I sic this monster on you!' to fire. Which in this case, I would a) try to OOC indicate it was a fail and b) allow your magic-user/scholar PC a try to work out that the monster-siccing has been done.

[GloatingSwine]

And that's the crux of this particular encounter sequence. The did use a scout initially, and encountered a room with a scripted encounter where a wizard was using some kind of ritual to control a big monster to send it out to patrol the dungeon. They chose not to fight them at that time. Later, the monster came up on the party and attacked them.

IMO, it was a double negative experience in terms of scouting, because the act of scouting the initial room "triggered" the script (so basically created a monster they now had to deal with then, or would likely run into later, though they didn't know this at the time). In the later encounter, it's unclear if they had any means to avoid this before running into it. They basically ran into it at an intersection later in the dungeon. So in this case, scouting ahead actually hurt the party.


This is also the Classic Talakeal Player Experience where the conception of what's going on is completely different in everyone's heads.

The assumption was that seeing the ritual the players would attack, disrupt it, and there wouldn't be a monster.

The players' assumption was almost certainly that they would have to fight the wizard and the monster (and some minions IIRC) at the same time and chose not to attack.

[gbaji]

I think the point of the encounter was that the party would have an opportunity to disrupt the wizard's ritual, resulting in the monster breaking free of control, perhaps resulting in a big fight (but the monster maybe attacking the party *and* the wizard), making the fight somewhat easier if done right then.

It kinda highlights a broader (but a bit off topic) GMing concept though: The players and the GM do not share a brain.

Things that may seem "obvious" to the GM when writing an encounter will not be remotely so to the players. What the GM expects the players to do when encountering something will both not be apparent to the players, and if there is a possible choice they can make that is the exact opposite of what the GM expected and planed for, and that the encounter requires in order to be successful? That's what the players will do. Every. Single. Time.

The answer for a GM is "don't do this". Don't create encounters with some sort of mental script in mind as to how it's going to play out and be resolved. You will eternally be disappointed. In both the initial encounter and the later one with the now roaming monster, Talakeal had an assumption in his mind about how the players would react, but they didn't react that way, causing greater and greater problems, leading to a more or less party wipe result.

If an encounter is informational, then it needs to provide useful information and not force some action on the part of the players right then (the value of scouting). If the encounter requires defeating something, then that "something" should be balanced to the party and something they can actually defeat. If the encounter is with something too powerful for the party, then they must be given ample means to avoid directly fighting that thing (and said information could be gained via scouting ahead, so kinda loops us back to the first type of encounter). In this case, the party had an informational encouner, but it triggered an NPC action that the party needed to deal with then, or it would become a bigger problem later. They later had an encounter with that "bigger problem", but seemed to be given no way to avoid it at the time.

And yeah, if an encounter requires specific action by the PCs to resolve, then the GM needs to absolutely beat the players over the head with the information needed to do so. Sometimes, players will noodle things out correct, but I have seen some absolutely amazing examples of "Players landing on some really insane conclusion and course of action" in my time GMing. Never ever put them in a "do the right thing or die" situation unless you are absolutely certain before the encounter begins that the players know what the "right thing" is. There is pretty much nothing more frustrating for a player then getting into some tough fight/danger situation, trying all sorts of things, nothing works, PCs die, maybe the whole party wipes, and when it's all done the GM says something like "well, if you'd just done <some set of actions no one thought of> you would have trivially beaten the encounter".

Seriously. That's not fun at all. In Films and TV shows, the heros come up with some clever/unexpected way out of the horrible situation they are in and escape by the skin of their teeth all the time. And it works great cause it's all scripted. Do *not* try to simulate this in a TTRPG. It will not work. Ever.

[Talakeal]

Well, this kind of took off.

To clarify, these are actually two separate incidents, not the same one. Also, they are both examples of "wandering" monsters, not of "random encounters".

In the first incident:

The rogue scouts out a room, and sees a wizard in the middle in a ritual, attempting to charm a large monster. The rogue returns, and the party declines to intervene, and goes about exploring the dungeon. Some time later, the ritual completes, and the monster begins clearing the dungeon of intruders at the wizard's behest. It comes upon the party, and it is killed without too much trouble. The PCs get treasure and XP. But, what they take away from the encounter OOC is that simply opening the door to a monster's room "aggros them" and the monsters will then make a bee-line for the party, and therefore they shouldn't ever scout as it might force them into an encounter they aren't ready for.


The second incident:

We are playing a sandbox game, and the players decide to explore a dungeon that is a bit above their level; not a lot above their level, but enough that they have to be careful. One of the tougher inhabitants of the dungeon patrols it rather than remaining stationary, moving randomly around the dungeon based on dice rolls. They know it is here, but haven't engaged it yet. In one instance, the encounter it at a three-way intersection.

Behind the players is a dead end. The monster is between them and the dungeon entrance. The third passage leads to the back door of the dungeon, but the players don't know this yet. They fight the monster, but they are already fairly low on resources and don't have any prep or plans to deal with it, and they are losing. One of the players says out loud "I don't think we can win this fight," and I say "I believe that is correct."

The party rogue volunteers to break away down the third corridor and scout out an escape route, but the other players shout him down and tell him that its not worth the risk of opening up a fight on two fronts. Instead, they bully him into sacrificing himself to distract the monster and hold it off while they run past it and make their way back to town.



I think the point of the encounter was that the party would have an opportunity to disrupt the wizard's ritual, resulting in the monster breaking free of control, perhaps resulting in a big fight (but the monster maybe attacking the party *and* the wizard), making the fight somewhat easier if done right then.

It kinda highlights a broader (but a bit off topic) GMing concept though: The players and the GM do not share a brain.

Things that may seem "obvious" to the GM when writing an encounter will not be remotely so to the players. What the GM expects the players to do when encountering something will both not be apparent to the players, and if there is a possible choice they can make that is the exact opposite of what the GM expected and planed for, and that the encounter requires in order to be successful? That's what the players will do. Every. Single. Time.

The answer for a GM is "don't do this". Don't create encounters with some sort of mental script in mind as to how it's going to play out and be resolved. You will eternally be disappointed. In both the initial encounter and the later one with the now roaming monster, Talakeal had an assumption in his mind about how the players would react, but they didn't react that way, causing greater and greater problems, leading to a more or less party wipe result.

If an encounter is informational, then it needs to provide useful information and not force some action on the part of the players right then (the value of scouting). If the encounter requires defeating something, then that "something" should be balanced to the party and something they can actually defeat. If the encounter is with something too powerful for the party, then they must be given ample means to avoid directly fighting that thing (and said information could be gained via scouting ahead, so kinda loops us back to the first type of encounter). In this case, the party had an informational encouner, but it triggered an NPC action that the party needed to deal with then, or it would become a bigger problem later. They later had an encounter with that "bigger problem", but seemed to be given no way to avoid it at the time.

And yeah, if an encounter requires specific action by the PCs to resolve, then the GM needs to absolutely beat the players over the head with the information needed to do so. Sometimes, players will noodle things out correct, but I have seen some absolutely amazing examples of "Players landing on some really insane conclusion and course of action" in my time GMing. Never ever put them in a "do the right thing or die" situation unless you are absolutely certain before the encounter begins that the players know what the "right thing" is. There is pretty much nothing more frustrating for a player then getting into some tough fight/danger situation, trying all sorts of things, nothing works, PCs die, maybe the whole party wipes, and when it's all done the GM says something like "well, if you'd just done <some set of actions no one thought of> you would have trivially beaten the encounter".

Seriously. That's not fun at all. In Films and TV shows, the heros come up with some clever/unexpected way out of the horrible situation they are in and escape by the skin of their teeth all the time. And it works great cause it's all scripted. Do *not* try to simulate this in a TTRPG. It will not work. Ever.

I don't disagree with you.

But you are conflating two very different things.

1: Encounters where the enemies are doing something besides standing around in a room waiting to be killed.

2: Encounters where the players are expected to do a very specific thing to triumph / survive.


The incidents you are talking about are examples of the former, but your post seems mostly targeted at the latter.



Potentially a controversial but simple take ahead....

Random encounters serve no purpose. Anything they do, the GM could just do.

They do not even make the GMs job easier as they throw off the adventure pacing, game timing, split the party, and create rabbit holes for the PCs to crawl down that are not needed.

They are a simple hold-over legacy from "That's the way it has always been done" and should be abolished.

Honestly... this kind of seems right.

In the old days, back when campaigns ran on real time with a rotating troupe of players, it made sense to stop PCs from wasting time (or resting!) in the dungeon, but I feel like outside of those campaigns, this is just a holdover of the old days.

[KorvinStarmast]

Potentially a controversial but simple take ahead....

Random encounters serve no purpose. Anything they do, the GM could just do.

They do not even make the GMs job easier as they throw off the adventure pacing, game timing, split the party, and create rabbit holes for the PCs to crawl down that are not needed.

They are a simple hold-over legacy from "That's the way it has always been done" and should be abolished.
Nope, not even close to the mark.

[kyoryu]

Potentially a controversial but simple take ahead....

Random encounters serve no purpose. Anything they do, the GM could just do.

They do not even make the GMs job easier as they throw off the adventure pacing, game timing, split the party, and create rabbit holes for the PCs to crawl down that are not needed.

They are a simple hold-over legacy from "That's the way it has always been done" and should be abolished.

Why randomize attacks? The GM could just as well decide by fiat what the result is.

A lot of the reasons I've given can be done by fiat as well. However, there are two things that don't get covered by the GM "just deciding".

1. Disclaiming responsibility
2. Prompting GM imagination

IOW, there's a big difference between "we know there's a 1 in 6 chance of getting an encounter if we do this again" vs. "if we do this again, the GM might screw us with an encounter". It starts moving the GM to being an impartial arbitrator of the game, rather than someone that is imposing consequences by their choice.

Now, these things might not matter for your game, but to declare them universally pointless or that they're done without thought is frankly rather insulting.

[gbaji]

To clarify, these are actually two separate incidents, not the same one. Also, they are both examples of "wandering" monsters, not of "random encounters".

Huh. Ok. Maybe I totally misread what you wrote, but I thought they were two parts of the same thing.



I don't disagree with you.

But you are conflating two very different things.

1: Encounters where the enemies are doing something besides standing around in a room waiting to be killed.

2: Encounters where the players are expected to do a very specific thing to triumph / survive.


The incidents you are talking about are examples of the former, but your post seems mostly targeted at the latter.

Because your method of accomplishing number 1, is running afoul of number 2.

I applaud the effort to not just have a dungeon where monsters are sitting around in rooms waiting for the party to arrive and kill them. However, I don't necessarily agree with the premise of encounter 1 (scripted encounter). This suggests that the wizard and monster are suspended in time, waiting for the party to arrive, so that they can enact the scripted event. How is that really any different from the NPCs just standing in the room, also waiting for the PCs to arrive? And in this case, their arrival in the room triggered something that affected them outside the room. So a global encounter only occurs after the party enters that room. It might happen today, or tomorrow, two weeks from now, or never, depending on where the party happens to travel in the dungeon.

If the wizard is keeping an eye on the party and detects them, and then decides to charm this monster to go after them, then that makes sense. But instead of it being triggered as a result of entering a room (where they will see the charming of the monster), it should be a response to something the players do in the dungeon. If they enter a specific area of the dungeon that he's monitoring magically, or if they encounter a specific set of monsters in the dungeon who are in his service, word of the adventuring group exploring the dungeon will get to him, and he'll respond with that action.

I guess I just don't like the random coincidence that the party "just happens" to enter the room right at the point in time when the wizard is charming the monster, and if they don't encounter that room, said wizard never does. The GM should have specific notable NPCs in the dungeon, that have the ability to take actions on larger areas of the dungeon, and then make decisions for those NPCs based on the actions of the PCs within the area the notable NPC is aware of. I find that to be a much more rational and flexible way to handle NPCs doing things that affect larger areas of the dungeon.

It's relevant to number 2, because you had in your mind a specific action the PCs were supposed to do (disrupt the ritual), with the consequence of failure that they would later be attacked by the monster. So when the party choose not to encounter the wizard and monster, they didn't do what you expected, so they suffered a consequence as a result. The problem here is that scouting the room caused the event to trigger. At that point, the players had only two choices: Attack the room now, or be attacked by the monster later. There was no option to "avoid having to fight anything if we choose".

The second encounter is also (somewhat) scripted. I still am missing some details in terms of how exactly you initiated the encounter, but I get the impression that you did not provide clues to the party that this thing was roaming around in the area, nor specifically when it was approaching them (so they could choose to avoid it). Instead, you had it encounter them directly, giving them (once again), only two choices: Fight it directly, or flee down the unexplored hallway. When you posted this, you made a point about how you knew there was a room with a dungeon exit down the unexplored hallway, and envisioned that they would have an exciting run and chase scene and escape the monster. That's absolutely you having an image in your head about how the encounter will go, and how the players will react, but not really allowing for what will happen if the players *don't* do what you thought they would.

You knew there was an escape route down that hallway, so you figured that's where they would go. But you were using your own GM knowledge to make that assessment. The players, not having that knowledge, made a very different decision (or, at the least, were locked in indecision and argument about what to do).

That encounter could have been much more easily managed by simply giving the players some warning that the monster was approaching. Allow them to realize "something big" is coming. Perhaps allow the scout to go up and look, and report back. Let the players choose which of the two other hallways to travel down to try to get away from this thing (if that's what they choose). By having it just encounter them directly right in the intersection, you gave them no real options that appeared to be good ones to them at the time.



In the old days, back when campaigns ran on real time with a rotating troupe of players, it made sense to stop PCs from wasting time (or resting!) in the dungeon, but I feel like outside of those campaigns, this is just a holdover of the old days.

Sure. To simulate that things move around, and to not allow PCs to camp forever. You can certainly still do that sort of thing today though. I mean, there may be some denizens of a dungeon that do roam around. But, again, if they are something that they can defeat (even in a potentially weakened state), then have them show up. Something that's really tough, and they can't defeat, you must provide them some means to avoid the encounter. And "realize two rounds into the fight that it's too tough, so we have to flee" is not the same thing.

[NichG]

Why randomize attacks? The GM could just as well decide by fiat what the result is.

A lot of the reasons I've given can be done by fiat as well. However, there are two things that don't get covered by the GM "just deciding".

1. Disclaiming responsibility
2. Prompting GM imagination

IOW, there's a big difference between "we know there's a 1 in 6 chance of getting an encounter if we do this again" vs. "if we do this again, the GM might screw us with an encounter". It starts moving the GM to being an impartial arbitrator of the game, rather than someone that is imposing consequences by their choice.

Now, these things might not matter for your game, but to declare them universally pointless or that they're done without thought is frankly rather insulting.

Also having ways players can manipulate those probabilities is more productive when those probabilities (and how they would change) are out there in the open rather than being part of the GM's hidden mental model. Simple stuff like 'some rows of this table are individual unique creatures and if you kill them, those rolls turn into no-encounter; things like them are not common enough to migrate in to fill the gaps' for example, or more nuanced stuff like 'rows 2-5 represent things endemic in a jungle environment; if you were to clear a road through the jungle, those rolls become no-encounter' or 'rows 7-9 are opportunistic sentient humanoids with leadership structures; they become no-encounter for heavily guarded caravans, or if they are persuaded to change focus to a different, softer target than this area'. Not to mention being able to have mechanics like 'if you take this Feat, you can reroll a random encounter check and take the better outcome' or 'if you make a DC 25 Survival check, the chance of a hostile encounter is reduced by half'.

I can imagine a sandbox campaign really built with these things existing at the ground floor, mechanically specific, and with hooks whereby the players aren't just able but are expected to manipulate those mechanics in order to be able to push a frontier deeper into an inhospitable area.

[kyoryu]

Also having ways players can manipulate those probabilities

Right. Even something as simple as my commonly used example of "there's a short way throught he Dark Forest of Bad and a long way through the Peaceful Fields" gives players interesting choices and tradeoffs.

Even without that, the pressure can create interesting decisions without GM fiat - "Okay, I'm pretty sure there's a trap here, but we didn't find it.... do I search more, and risk an encounter? Do I just assume there's a trap and leave it alone? Or do I assume that I would have found the trap, and go ahead and open this?" Without the random monsters applying pressure, taking another few attempts at finding the trap is a no-brainer, but wandering monsters introduce a cost to doing so.

[Vahnavoi]

Random encounters serve no purpose. Anything they do, the GM could just do.

Who do you think does random encounters? God?

Like, it's true a game doesn't need random components. You can do away with all die rolls, card draws, pseudorandom functions etc. and just have the game master decide. Or, if that's not sufficient, the game master can just let a player decide.

But that doesn't prove random encounters serve no purpose. The trivial observation that a game master can just decide isn't a counterargument to any of the reasons why a game master would cede that decision to a random function, or another player, for that matter.

---


Well, this kind of took off.

To clarify, these are actually two separate incidents, not the same one. Also, they are both examples of "wandering" monsters, not of "random encounters".

Hold that thought. Let me quote you from a few paragraphs later:


One of the tougher inhabitants of the dungeon patrols it rather than remaining stationary, moving randomly around the dungeon based on dice rolls.

Your second incident is in fact a classic random encounter, as already explained earlier. You somehow failed to realize that a random-walking wandering monster would fall in the category of random encounters. That does not bode well for your analysis of these kind of mechanics. But let's go over the rest of these incidents:


In the first incident:

The rogue scouts out a room, and sees a wizard in the middle in a ritual, attempting to charm a large monster. The rogue returns, and the party declines to intervene, and goes about exploring the dungeon. Some time later, the ritual completes, and the monster begins clearing the dungeon of intruders at the wizard's behest. It comes upon the party, and it is killed without too much trouble. The PCs get treasure and XP. But, what they take away from the encounter OOC is that simply opening the door to a monster's room "aggros them" and the monsters will then make a bee-line for the party, and therefore they shouldn't ever scout as it might force them into an encounter they aren't ready for.

Your players are making a faulty after-the-fact analysis. Specifically, they are clearly presuming your games work like a shoddily-coded 90s videogame, where monsters don't move or even exist before a player trips an event trigger. Now, this may be another case where you need to look in the mirror and ask, "what am I doing that gives them the impression that my games work like a shoddily-coded 90s videogame?". But regardless of how much of the blame you carry on that front, what your players need to figure out is that they're playing the wrong metagame. Because even in some of those shoddily-coded 90s videogames, scouting ahead to trip event triggers while the rest of the party is in relative safety is often a good tactic, allowing the scout to lure the triggered encounter to a location that's more favorable to the players.

Usually, players figure out errors like this on their own, by trial and error if nothing else. I'm not holding my breath for your players to do that, however.


The second incident:

We are playing a sandbox game, and the players decide to explore a dungeon that is a bit above their level; not a lot above their level, but enough that they have to be careful. One of the tougher inhabitants of the dungeon patrols it rather than remaining stationary, moving randomly around the dungeon based on dice rolls. They know it is here, but haven't engaged it yet. In one instance, the encounter it at a three-way intersection.

Behind the players is a dead end. The monster is between them and the dungeon entrance. The third passage leads to the back door of the dungeon, but the players don't know this yet. They fight the monster, but they are already fairly low on resources and don't have any prep or plans to deal with it, and they are losing. One of the players says out loud "I don't think we can win this fight," and I say "I believe that is correct."

The party rogue volunteers to break away down the third corridor and scout out an escape route, but the other players shout him down and tell him that its not worth the risk of opening up a fight on two fronts. Instead, they bully him into sacrificing himself to distract the monster and hold it off while they run past it and make their way back to town.

Here, your players aren't even wrong. Not knowing what is down the third path, there is no obvious benefit to going that way. Only with hindsight or perfect information would sending the rogue down the third path be better choice than the sacrificial play they opted for.

[Mr Blobby]

I think the point of the encounter was that the party would have an opportunity to disrupt the wizard's ritual, resulting in the monster breaking free of control, perhaps resulting in a big fight (but the monster maybe attacking the party *and* the wizard), making the fight somewhat easier if done right then...

If that is correct, then I would not call the monster-meet a 'random encounter'. It is the final leg of the mission [though possibly an optional one].

However, this does raise the more general question of 'safe zones/spaces' in games - as in 'places you know you won't be attacked'. Computer games of the RPG/adventure/horror type normally have these, be it 'soft safe' [say, the towns in Oblivion] or 'hard safe' [the save rooms in Resident Evil]. If the party is complaining they get ambushed while travelling, it could simply be the fact the players think travelling is 'safe' while the GM does not.

[Easy e]

Now, these things might not matter for your game, but to declare them universally pointless or that they're done without thought is frankly rather insulting.

Not trying to be insulting and I assure you brevity does not mean lack of thought. Yes, it is probably how I "view" RPGs compared to how they started and have been evolving.

What I find most "confusing" about random encounters is that there is even a need to show players that you are an impartial judge. A GMs job is to help facilitate fun and make the game move forward. The GM is a fellow player. There is a social contract and trust between the players and GMs that we all have the best interests and intentions of fun in the game. They are not there to be impartial at all, they have an agenda and are a player at the table too. They have an active role.

Impartial Judges are not players in a game they are observers and mechanisms for a game. This is not an experiment or an exercise. This is a game that is suppose to be fun, and arbitrating is a job. Impartial Judges only act out the mechanics and the "will of the game" and do not exist as players of the game. A referee is not a player, they are the rules in action.

Due to a host of reasons, D&D does not seem to have this player and GM contract that everyone is there to drive fun. To me that is a detriment to the game. Random Encounters are just a way to try and bridge this legacy (and possibly structural) element of D&D. To me, Random Encounters are the symptoms of the problem. Random encounters allow the GM to say, "It wasn't me who made your life hard, it was this random dice table that did!" This feeds into the idea that GM and players are adversaries instead of fellow players/partners to fun.

This approach to GM as Adversary vs Partner seems to be an element of D&D more than other RPGs I have played. I can not think of other non-OSR or D&D Clones that use a similar "Random Encounter" mechanic but my knowledge of RPGs is not all encompassing. Perhaps I self-select away from those games?

********************************************

I think part of Talakeal's issues at the table is a direct result of the adversarial relationship built up between GM and player. The players do not see the GM as a fellow player, they see them as the "true" foe to be overcome. The game is to best the GM through any means necessary, and that includes any means outside of the game as well as inside the game. They perceive that to the GM the game is to "beat" the players.

This is not the type of game I want to play. I want my players to recognize that I am just another player, that I want to have a fun game too, and that I do not want to see them fail. I do want to challenge them, make them think, feel risk and/or tension, and most importantly I want them to have a good time!

[Xervous]

Given that there is no universal definition of what leads to fun, it’s simple enough to see that random encounters just don’t align with your desires. The vegan disliking the menu doesn’t make the steakhouse wrong.

[gbaji]

Your players are making a faulty after-the-fact analysis. Specifically, they are clearly presuming your games work like a shoddily-coded 90s videogame, where monsters don't move or even exist before a player trips an event trigger. Now, this may be another case where you need to look in the mirror and ask, "what am I doing that gives them the impression that my games work like a shoddily-coded 90s videogame?".

Because, that's exactly how he ran the encounter:

Initial description:


The scenario was, there is a wizard who is attempting to mind-control a large monster, which he was planning to use the force the invaders from the dungeon. The players arrive mid-ritual. The most likely outcome was that the players would disrupt the ritual, and the monster would go berserk and the wizard would likely flee, but I don't script my encounters so it could have played out plenty of ways.

The rogue slipped in, completely undetected, observed, slipped out, and reported the situation to the other PCs. They decided they didn't want to get involved, and opted to go a different direction.

So then, off screen, the wizard completed his ritual, and was using the mind-controlled monster to sweep the dungeon. And eventually, it found the PCs, and they fought and killed it.

Part of my response:


Did you decide that the wizard was going to dominate a powerful monster and send it looking for the party before the party decided to scout that area? Or did you decide, after the party sent their scout up ahead, to have them spot the wizard casting his domination ritual on the monster (so they could stop it "in the nick of time")? Because if it was the later, then they are basically correct. If they had not sent their scout ahead, you would not have created the encounter, and they would not have been attacked by the monster.

I don't know which is true, but I can totally see how the players might think this. If every single time they send someone out to scout, something like this happens, then they're going to get the impression that they should stop sending scouts up ahead of them.

Later clarification of the encounter:


Before the game began or an of the PCs had even been created, I drew the map. Then I went about populating the map and brainstorming. For this room, I came up with the idea of a wizard trying to awaken a slumbering subterranean monster and using it to crush his enemies, likely inspired by Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. I decided that when the PCs would enter the room, the wizard would be in the middle of said ritual, as it would give the PCs the maximum number of ways to interact with it.

So yes. Entering the room triggered an event that created the monster. The wizard, casting the ritutual, is more or less in suspended animation until the party walks into the room. I commented several times in the thread this first appeared that this was very "video gamey" to me, and isn't how I would have run that encounter. It's one thing to see a room, and see things going on in that room, but it's another for the act of seeing into the room to trigger something else that dramatically affects things outside that room itself. It's a technique. I'm not a fan of it. But it can be used, I suppose.

Point being that the players were not wrong at all in their analysis of this. Had they not scouted that room, the monster would not have attacked them later.


But regardless of how much of the blame you carry on that front, what your players need to figure out is that they're playing the wrong metagame. Because even in some of those shoddily-coded 90s videogames, scouting ahead to trip event triggers while the rest of the party is in relative safety is often a good tactic, allowing the scout to lure the triggered encounter to a location that's more favorable to the players.

This is true. The players could absolutely have used the information and made a choice to act on it. I do think that part of the problem here may be players that are expecting a more "real" environment, in which they would reasonably conclude that the odds of a monster being summoned/controlled and sent out into the dungeon and later attack them should be completely unchanged by whether they looked into that room or not. It's also unclear whether they knew what spell was being cast in this case, and certainly could not have known that "the wizard is going to send this thing out to patrol the dungeon, and the party may run into the monster later". If this is just something the wizard does periodically, then there should just be wandering monsters of this type in the dungeon already (so no great rush to stop this daily spell casting versus any other, right?). If this is not something the wizard does all the time, then what are the odds that he just happens to be right in the middle of said ritual right at the moment the party arrives (very close to zero)?

So it's reasonable for a group of players using common sense to conclude that this is unlikely to represent any greater threat to them in the dungeon if they leave it alone than if they don't.

I agree that they *could* have decided to do something about it. But at the moment, the monster wasn't something they could lure out. It was still hanging out having a spell cast on it. It's quite possible the party just decided they didn't want to deal with a wizard and a monster right at that moment. The whole point of scouting is to have the ability to make that choice. If every time you scout ahead, you get drawn into something that you must deal with right then and there, the value of scouting becomes kinda questionable IMO (which was somewhat the point I was making in that thread).


I do totally agree that perhaps Talakeal's players should really adjust their expectations a bit. Seems like there is a fair amount of disconnect in terms of how the players expect the world to work, and how it actually does. And at the end of the day, the GM does create the world, and decides how things work in it. As a player you either have to accept and adjust to that (I've played in some really strangely run games), or you choose not to play.


Here, your players aren't even wrong. Not knowing what is down the third path, there is no obvious benefit to going that way. Only with hindsight or perfect information would sending the rogue down the third path be better choice than the sacrificial play they opted for.

That was somewhat my interpretation as well. It's actually very diffcult as a GM to separate what you know about the environment or an encounter, and what the players actually know. This can lead to the GM assuming players will do one thing, then being surprised when they do something entirely different. Talakeal has a habit of "predicting" how he thinks the players will react. He says above: "The most likely outcome was that the players would disrupt the ritual, and the monster would go berserk and the wizard would likely flee, but I don't script my encounters so it could have played out plenty of ways.". Despite the trailing comment about not scripting encounters, he is basically doing just that. He expects a specific response, plans for it, balances the encounter for it, and while he allows for them to do other things, doesn't really seem to do any sort of balancing or planning for those other possible choices. He made a similar comment about the powerful wandering monster:


So, it moves randomly, and at one point, it come up behind them. I figured this was actually pretty luck for the party, as they were in an area where the next room contained a "backdoor" to the dungeon, a shortcut back to town. I figured we could do a dramatic chase, and the party would both get an easy escape and a tense scene.

Those bolded bits are examples of the GM making assumptions (in both cases based on knowledge he had, but the players did not), about how the players would handle the encounter. In both cases, he was wrong.

There's no really good way to fix that, since, somewhat by definition, it's a problem with the GMs own perception (and we all can have that blind spot sometimes). The only way to deal with this is to actively try to avoid creating "do this or die" conditions into encounters (which I think I spoke about earlier).


Some very broad and basic "rules for encounters" (especially wandering/random encounters):

1. If it's something the party can defeat in a straight up fight, then have a straight up fight (you should really restrict wandering monsters almost entirely to this category)

2. If it's something super tough and they are unlikely to be able to straight up defeat it, then you need to make absolutely certain that they can avoid having to fight it. And no, "flee into an unknown direction after engaging in a fight" is not the same. I mean, allow the PCs to detect the monsters approach, and give them the ability to avoid it (or see the monster up ahead, realize they are heading towards its lair, or whatever).

3. If there is an encounter which requires a very specific object/spell/action/whatever to succeed, you need to make absolutely certain that the players know exactly what that object/spell/action/whatever is before the encounter occurs.


Following these rules wont elimiinate the blind spots, or occassional problems, but it will prevent TPWs from resulting from them.

[Telok]

Why are people talking about "balanced fights" in games that aren't running a combat-as-sport d&d fight-to-the-death style paradigm? And is a "balanced fight" supposed to get nerfed down because the characters are wounded & low on spells?

I personally don't even think that the concept of "balanced encounter" equals "balanced fight". I frequently have encounters in DtD40k7e that aren't appropriate to just fight by trading punches untill one side falls down. 30,000 ligh-absorbing gibberlings went down just fine. Modron/necron monoliths the party didn't have the weapons to damage were cool. Unlimited numbers of cyber-zombies got handled without any issues. Encountering a lance of police mecha capable of one-shotting PCs went off without a hitch. The daemon of Khorn that ripped folks limbs off and that the melee PCs couldn't hardly even hit was funny and we were all laughing.

Heck, work through even Tak's random encounter from a story perspective. The party is low on resources after a day of dungeon crawling fights, a nasty thing comes up behind them, one person sacrifices so the others can escape. Its practically the Lord of the Rings Moria Balrog. Great classic story beat generated by a random roll after players made choices. The only reason Tak had any issues is the interpersonal player conflicts their group is prone to.

[kyoryu]

What I find most "confusing" about random encounters is that there is even a need to show players that you are an impartial judge.

So, I'd say that there's two reasons we reach for the dice.

1. To get an impartial result
2. To alleviate some creative requirements from the GM.

This is not for random encounters. This is for anything.

Your argument seems to come down to "why is impartiality important? Any random result is one that the GM could have come up with, so why does it matter if it's impartial?"

So, why does it matter if whether or not you hit the orc, and how much damage you did, need to be rolled? The GM can just as easily decide. We roll, I think, because in those scenarios impartiality is important, and it's really the players challenging the system, not the whim of the GM, right? The player has some (possibly incomplete) information, decides on a strategy, weighing the risks and rewards of various options, and then sees what happens. Making the result impartial given the situation makes the choices interesting and meaningful.

I think part of the disconnect here might be a basic disconnect in assumptions.... I'm hypothesizing here, so please don't take offense if I'm wrong. I feel like a lot of people divide RPGs into two parts - the "game" part is what happens when "roll for initiative" is called, and the "story" part is what's in between those bits.

If that's your view, then what you're saying makes sense. Impartiality

However, from an old school perspective (and a style which I think is still valid, though clearly we shouldn't be stuck in the past), that's not necessarily true - the game part extends to where you go, what you do, and what you encounter. So, in that case, "do we stay and search for traps?" is an interesting question, and one that's just as "game-facing" as "what do I do against the orc i'm facing?" Making it at least semi-transparent makes it a decision much like combat... "okay, I can search more, but I might get another encounter. Or I can open the door and hope it's not trapped. Or, I can walk away and look for another path".

That might not be the game that you play, and that type of gameplay/decision-making may not be valid. And for a lot of tables I accept that it's not... encounters are the "game chunks" that the GM serves to them to have fun, and they should be planned out and serving the "story". I get that. And in those cases I'd agree that they're not a useful technique. But, that's not how everyone plays, and so I do think that there are purposes that they serve in some games.

I always say that RPGs aren't a single game (not even system) in the way that "soccer" is. They're more like "sports" - a large overarching category covering lots of things that, in many cases, have little relationship to one another.

[Talakeal]

But, again, if they are something that they can defeat (even in a potentially weakened state), then have them show up. Something that's really tough, and they can't defeat, you must provide them some means to avoid the encounter. And "realize two rounds into the fight that it's too tough, so we have to flee" is not the same thing.

Two problems with this:

1: Doesn't that kind of hurt verisimilitude? Like, if a group of level 1 PCs can just wander around the Evil Overlord's Dark Tower of Ultimate Doomtm, a dungeon meant for level 20 PCs, without risk of death or defeat, doesn't that kind of ruin any sense of threat and immersion?

2: As you have pointed out above, the PCs aren't going to take any means to avoid the encounter you might provide them. Much like a chihuahua, a PCs first response to any threat is to attack it, regardless of the apparent size differance.


However, I don't necessarily agree with the premise of encounter 1 (scripted encounter).

Could you please clearly define "scripted encounter"? AFAICT you are using that term for a broad variety of things that are only tangentially created, and it is causing confusion.


This suggests that the wizard and monster are suspended in time, waiting for the party to arrive, so that they can enact the scripted event. How is that really any different from the NPCs just standing in the room, also waiting for the PCs to arrive? And in this case, their arrival in the room triggered something that affected them outside the room. So a global encounter only occurs after the party enters that room. It might happen today, or tomorrow, two weeks from now, or never, depending on where the party happens to travel in the dungeon.

Every monster is going to be doing *something* when it is encountered. And every monster is going to spend at least some of its time doing something *dramatic*. The odds that those two are one in the same for any given encounter is pretty small, but when you are encountering hundreds of monsters over the course of the mission, the odds that some of them are doing something dramatic when encountered is pretty good.

What exactly are those odds? Impossible to say. But, coincidence is the essence of adventure, and I have never heard a player complain about their being too much adventure in a game (and trust me, my PCs complain about a lot!). And heck, in a fantasy world with fate, destiny, and chess-master gods I would imagine that such coincidences are probably a lot more likely than they are in the real world.

So, you can handle this in several ways:

You can preplan what the monsters are doing in advance. You can come up with detailed schedules for every monster. You can roll randomly. You can make it up on the spot. All are valid techniques, and all have downsides and upsides, but from the players PoV, they should all be more or less seamless, as this all happens behind the scenes.


It's relevant to number 2, because you had in your mind a specific action the PCs were supposed to do (disrupt the ritual), with the consequence of failure that they would later be attacked by the monster. So when the party choose not to encounter the wizard and monster, they didn't do what you expected, so they suffered a consequence as a result. The problem here is that scouting the room caused the event to trigger. At that point, the players had only two choices: Attack the room now, or be attacked by the monster later. There was no option to "avoid having to fight anything if we choose".

That's so broad it is basically meaningless though. "Do nothing and hope it goes away" isn't really a viable option in most cases, and I would hardly consider that to be a railroad or a puzzle.

Scouting gave the PCs the options to prep or come up with a plan, they declined to do so, so they head a straight fight, exactly like what would have happened if they had just kicked in the door without any plan.


That encounter could have been much more easily managed by simply giving the players some warning that the monster was approaching. Allow them to realize "something big" is coming. Perhaps allow the scout to go up and look, and report back. Let the players choose which of the two other hallways to travel down to try to get away from this thing (if that's what they choose). By having it just encounter them directly right in the intersection, you gave them no real options that appeared to be good ones to them at the time.

There was no in character reason for the monster to telegraph its approach. But ok, let's say I pulled a deus ex machina and invented some telegraph, what would that actually accomplish?

The players have some warning now. They are still in the same situation though; at a three-way intersection, one dead end, one unknown, and one monster. How is this any different?

I suppose maybe they could go back the way they came and try hiding? That's the only thing I can think of, and if they had done that then they could potentially be in a far worse situation as now there is literally nowhere to run.


The second encounter is also (somewhat) scripted. I still am missing some details in terms of how exactly you initiated the encounter, but I get the impression that you did not provide clues to the party that this thing was roaming around in the area, nor specifically when it was approaching them (so they could choose to avoid it).

They were aware it was wandering the area.

They could have taken actions to track, survey, waylay, or trap it, but did not attempt to.


When you posted this, you made a point about how you knew there was a room with a dungeon exit down the unexplored hallway, and envisioned that they would have an exciting run and chase scene and escape the monster. That's absolutely you having an image in your head about how the encounter will go, and how the players will react, but not really allowing for what will happen if the players *don't* do what you thought they would.

You knew there was an escape route down that hallway, so you figured that's where they would go. But you were using your own GM knowledge to make that assessment. The players, not having that knowledge, made a very different decision (or, at the least, were locked in indecision and argument about what to do).

I have never been able to pull off the "empty-mind" that is apparently a requirement for good GMing. I am just too analytical. When I see a situation, whether it is in a game, a work of fiction, or real life, I can't help but imagining all sorts of ways it might play out. As a GM, I do this when I am designing an adventure, reading a prefab adventure, playing an adventure, or running an adventure, it is a constant process.

Furthermore, I am not sure why this is considered such a bad thing. Like, I get how a GM designing a scenario with only one outcome in mind leads to frustration, but what is the harm in merely thinking about possible ways the fight could go or knowing which strategies are most optimal?


Your second incident is in fact a classic random encounter, as already explained earlier. You somehow failed to realize that a random-walking wandering monster would fall in the category of random encounters. That does not bode well for your analysis of these kind of mechanics. But let's go over the rest of these incidents:

A consider it a random encounter, hence why I brought it up in this thread about random encounters.

It's not a "classic" random encounter because it has a defined presence and location at all times rather than being generated out of the ether on the spot when rolled off of a table of potential encounters.

I made the distinction to head off pedantry.


Here, your players aren't even wrong. Not knowing what is down the third path, there is no obvious benefit to going that way. Only with hindsight or perfect information would sending the rogue down the third path be better choice than the sacrificial play they opted for.

IMO it is tactically wrong to choose certain death over an unknown and morally wrong to bully a new player into sacrificing their character for you.


Your players are making a faulty after-the-fact analysis. Specifically, they are clearly presuming your games work like a shoddily-coded 90s videogame, where monsters don't move or even exist before a player trips an event trigger. Now, this may be another case where you need to look in the mirror and ask, "what am I doing that gives them the impression that my games work like a shoddily-coded 90s videogame?". But regardless of how much of the blame you carry on that front, what your players need to figure out is that they're playing the wrong metagame. Because even in some of those shoddily-coded 90s videogames, scouting ahead to trip event triggers while the rest of the party is in relative safety is often a good tactic, allowing the scout to lure the triggered encounter to a location that's more favorable to the players.

Usually, players figure out errors like this on their own, by trial and error if nothing else. I'm not holding my breath for your players to do that, however.


I figure its because they don't pay attention to my descriptions and play a lot of shoddily coded video games.

They do, however, have a point. Once I have established the existence of an NPC, they have to account for the existence of that NPC. The same can't be said for a blank spot on the map.



This is true. The players could absolutely have used the information and made a choice to act on it. I do think that part of the problem here may be players that are expecting a more "real" environment, in which they would reasonably conclude that the odds of a monster being summoned/controlled and sent out into the dungeon and later attack them should be completely unchanged by whether they looked into that room or not. It's also unclear whether they knew what spell was being cast in this case, and certainly could not have known that "the wizard is going to send this thing out to patrol the dungeon, and the party may run into the monster later". If this is just something the wizard does periodically, then there should just be wandering monsters of this type in the dungeon already (so no great rush to stop this daily spell casting versus any other, right?). If this is not something the wizard does all the time, then what are the odds that he just happens to be right in the middle of said ritual right at the moment the party arrives (very close to zero)?

I think you are using "Real" in a strange way here.

Just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Like, if I go downstairs tomorrow and find a tiger in my living room, that's an extremely strange and unlikely event. But that doesn't mean that I am somehow justified in ignoring it and assuming it will just go away on its own without causing any trouble.

Once I have established that there is a monster and a wizard in the room, why on Earth would the players assume they wouldn't leave the room at some point?

I honestly think the players are expecting a less real environment, where the monsters just sit in place guarding treasure waiting to be killed.


I do totally agree that perhaps Talakeal's players should really adjust their expectations a bit. Seems like there is a fair amount of disconnect in terms of how the players expect the world to work, and how it actually does. And at the end of the day, the GM does create the world, and decides how things work in it. As a player you either have to accept and adjust to that (I've played in some really strangely run games), or you choose not to play.



That was somewhat my interpretation as well. It's actually very diffcult as a GM to separate what you know about the environment or an encounter, and what the players actually know. This can lead to the GM assuming players will do one thing, then being surprised when they do something entirely different. Talakeal has a habit of "predicting" how he thinks the players will react. He says above: "The most likely outcome was that the players would disrupt the ritual, and the monster would go berserk and the wizard would likely flee, but I don't script my encounters so it could have played out plenty of ways.". Despite the trailing comment about not scripting encounters, he is basically doing just that. He expects a specific response, plans for it, balances the encounter for it, and while he allows for them to do other things, doesn't really seem to do any sort of balancing or planning for those other possible choices. He made a similar comment about the powerful wandering monster:



Those bolded bits are examples of the GM making assumptions (in both cases based on knowledge he had, but the players did not), about how the players would handle the encounter. In both cases, he was wrong.

There's no really good way to fix that, since, somewhat by definition, it's a problem with the GMs own perception (and we all can have that blind spot sometimes). The only way to deal with this is to actively try to avoid creating "do this or die" conditions into encounters (which I think I spoke about earlier).


Some very broad and basic "rules for encounters" (especially wandering/random encounters):

1. If it's something the party can defeat in a straight up fight, then have a straight up fight (you should really restrict wandering monsters almost entirely to this category)

2. If it's something super tough and they are unlikely to be able to straight up defeat it, then you need to make absolutely certain that they can avoid having to fight it. And no, "flee into an unknown direction after engaging in a fight" is not the same. I mean, allow the PCs to detect the monsters approach, and give them the ability to avoid it (or see the monster up ahead, realize they are heading towards its lair, or whatever).

3. If there is an encounter which requires a very specific object/spell/action/whatever to succeed, you need to make absolutely certain that the players know exactly what that object/spell/action/whatever is before the encounter occurs.


Following these rules wont eliminate the blind spots, or occasional problems, but it will prevent TPWs from resulting from them.

You keep saying you are against scripted encounters and contrived situations, but it seems like you are asking me to implement far more of them.

I am not balancing encounters at all in this campaign. This is a sandbox. Some regions are more dangerous than others, and each region has a range of power levels for the beings that inhabit it. Likewise, I have decided where each inhabitant will first be encountered (and some of them move) and what they will be doing when first encountered. There actual specifics of the encounter and the tactics used are totally up to the players and not factored into the balance even slightly. Heck, I am not even taking party composition into account, just naked CR.

That doesn't mean that I am incapable of analyzing how a fight is likely to go or the odds of success of various strategies; but those analyses don't factor one whit into the difficulty.

[Easy e]

Yeah, Xervous and Kyoryu- You guys are probably right.


So, Random Encounters create an impartial method for encounters to happen, specifically to create time or resource pressure on players.

[Gnoman]

Much like a chihuahua, a PCs first response to any threat is to attack it, regardless of the apparent size differance.



Having been playing for years, I've never once encountered players with this mentality.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, Xervous and Kyoryu- You guys are probably right.


So, Random Encounters create an impartial method for encounters to happen, specifically to create time or resource pressure on players.


Not necessarily.

There are a lot of ways that random encounters could be used which are within the dominion of GM or players. Time pools, risk acceptance, and so on.

The consistent (and most significant) feature of them actually is that the particulars of what will be encountered at any given time is unknown in advance by anyone at the table. Meaning that even the GM can feel like they're not running a purely deterministic world but one which has its own opinions of what might happen.

[gbaji]

Two problems with this:

1: Doesn't that kind of hurt verisimilitude? Like, if a group of level 1 PCs can just wander around the Evil Overlord's Dark Tower of Ultimate Doomtm, a dungeon meant for level 20 PCs, without risk of death or defeat, doesn't that kind of ruin any sense of threat and immersion?

2: As you have pointed out above, the PCs aren't going to take any means to avoid the encounter you might provide them. Much like a chihuahua, a PCs first response to any threat is to attack it, regardless of the apparent size differance.

Presumably, the players had plenty of opportunity to *not* wander around the Evil Overlords Tower of Ultimate Doom, right? I'm pointing out the difference between a group of PCs seeing a powerful opponent, knowing it's a powerful opponent that they can't possibly defeat, and then choosing to go over and attack that opponent, and the GM having that powerful opponent "show up" where the PCs are, and give them no opportunity to avoid fighting it in the first place.

And yes. There is a slight violation of verisimilitude going on with all TTRPGs. The players do somewhat expect that the GM is not going to throw them into encounters they can't possibly win. The players know that the GM has 100% power and control over what they encounter, and that the GM can always have them run into the Evil Overlord while they are searching Farmer John's barn for clues to his missing cow, Bessie, but trust that the GM wont actually do this. Because... No amount of the GM saying "well, the Evil Overlord just happened to be there, so that's just bad luck for you" will ever make the players enjoy that encounter.

At the end of the day, this is a game, and it's supposed to be fun. Randomly running into things that kill your characters with no warning or ability to avoid those things is not fun.



Could you please clearly define "scripted encounter"? AFAICT you are using that term for a broad variety of things that are only tangentially created, and it is causing confusion.

I think the confusion is that the word "script" can be used in multiple ways.

A "scripted encounter" is any time that some event is happening when the players encounter it. So, you walk into the room, and the mad scientist is right at the point of pulling the big giant "switch of doom", and the you must stop him. Sometimes these are fine to use. The PCs are wandering around town, and see a riot occur between two different groups of citizens in the town. The PCs are sitting in the bar, and overhear a conversation between two NPCs at a nearby table. The PCs are travelling along a trail, and someone comes running down the trail towards them, being chased by bandits. Those are scripted encounters, but are often used as hooks for the players to learn information or to engage with some new thing, and represent hapenstance occurances. These fall into the category you spoke of that some things do happen randomly in the world, and the PCs will sometimes witness them.

Where scripted encounters become problematic is in otherwise "static" settings. They aren't wandering around in the whole big wide world, and this thing happens to occur near them. They are exploring a specific dungeon, with different areas and rooms in it, in which a much smaller microcosm of the world exists. In a city, while wandering around, we can assume there are a ton of NPCs, also wandering around, and doing different things. At any given time, some of them may be doing or saying something of interest or note to the PCs. But, in that one room, in that one dungeon, there exists just the creatures that are in that room. The odds that that one very small set of NPCs "just happen" to be doing something incredibly significant right at the moment the PCs arrive is very very small. You should avoid scripted encounters in a setting like that, and use timed or planned or (preferrably) reactive encounters instead. If the wizard decides to summon/charm a monster to go out into the dungeon in response to learning about the PCs exploring it, then this makes perfect sense. Again though, the odds that the PCs would happen to arrive in the room the wizard is doing this is very very small. Just decide that the wizard learns about the party at time point X, spends time Y deciding what to do about it, then summons/charm's the monster at time Z, and after that point it's wandering the dungeon looking for the PCs.

Of course, if you decided it would take 12 hours from the time the PCs encountered "room A" for the wizard to decide to summon/charm the monster, and the party actually does arrive in the room right after that 12 hour mark is reached (but in the time needed for the spell casting), then you can have them encounter the wizard casting spells on the monster. I suspect that if you actually start tracking things like this, you'll find that this really never ever actually happens though. Which should reinforce to you why you shouldn't write the scripted encounters in the first place.


There's also "scripting" in the sense of "deciding how the encounter itself should run". This is where the GM thinks "the PCs will see <something> and will do <something else> in response, so I'll have this <other thing> happen to make that more interesting". And yes, you can spend some time imagining possible choices the players may make, but you need to be really really careful not to assume that's what they will do, and make sure that the encounter itself becomes dependent on that assumption.


Every monster is going to be doing *something* when it is encountered. And every monster is going to spend at least some of its time doing something *dramatic*. The odds that those two are one in the same for any given encounter is pretty small, but when you are encountering hundreds of monsters over the course of the mission, the odds that some of them are doing something dramatic when encountered is pretty good.

If the "something dramatic" is what makes the encounter an encounter, sure. If there isn't a riot going on, then there was no encounter. If there is no conversation to overhear, then there is no encounter. If there is no one running from bandits, then there is no encounter. See the pattern there? If I walk into a room in a dungeon that has Orcs in it, I'm going to encounter the Orcs regardless of what they happen to be doing at the time. Having those Orcs just happen to be right in the middle of sacrificing some innocent NPCs becomes less believable (unless this is like a normal daily thing that the Orcs do in that room, of course). Same deal with the wizard and the monster. If the wizard summons a monster and sends it out to patrol every day, then the odds of encountering the wizard while doing this are pretty reasonable (still not high, but in the range of "it could happen"). The point is that these now become "normal occurances", not "once in the time you are in the dungeon" occurances. If the Orcs have never sacrified anyone for the entire time the PCs have been exploring the dungeon, and the PCs haven't been previously told "Hey. The Orcs just captured a bunc of our friends, and we think they're going to sacrifice them to their evil god! Can you please rescue them for us?", then there's no rational reason why they would just happen to be doing that right at the moment the PCs arrive. And if the PCs have not been encountering a number of patrolling monsters previously sent out by that wizard, there's no reason why the wizards would "just happen" to be doing that right when they arrive.

What should be happening when the PCs encounter a room like that is whatever normally happens every day that the PCs don't encounter the room. What would that wizard have been doing if the PCs didn't show up? Or if they showed up yesterday? Or they don't show up until tomorrow? Or next week? Unless there has been some previous hook or action that justifies why the wizard in the room is doing something different than what he does every other day, then you should have the encounter be just whatever he'd be doing on those other days.


What exactly are those odds? Impossible to say. But, coincidence is the essence of adventure, and I have never heard a player complain about their being too much adventure in a game (and trust me, my PCs complain about a lot!). And heck, in a fantasy world with fate, destiny, and chess-master gods I would imagine that such coincidences are probably a lot more likely than they are in the real world.

Your players are complaining about this encounter (and others). If they weren't, we wouldn't be talking about it here.



You can preplan what the monsters are doing in advance. You can come up with detailed schedules for every monster. You can roll randomly. You can make it up on the spot. All are valid techniques, and all have downsides and upsides, but from the players PoV, they should all be more or less seamless, as this all happens behind the scenes.

Sure. But "this monster only patrols the dungeon because we went into room12a and saw the wizard casting spells on it first" is not a great way of doing it.



That's so broad it is basically meaningless though. "Do nothing and hope it goes away" isn't really a viable option in most cases, and I would hardly consider that to be a railroad or a puzzle.

How is "send scout and look into the room" any different from "not looking into the room at all"? My point is that they should have identical outcomes, except that in the first case, the party has gained some additional information about what is in the room. The resulting effects should be absolutely identical if the party scouts out the room and chooses not to engage with it (and is not detected doing this), as if they had never even gone near the room in the first place. "Do nothing and hope it goes away" should have exactly the same results as "never even looked into the room in the first place".

If the orcs were going to sacrifice NPCs, then they do it without the PCs ever knowing about it. If the wizard is going to summon/charm a monster and send it to patrol the dungeon, then this should happen without the PCs knowing about it. They should just encounter a monster, under a charm spell, patrolling in the dungeon.


Scouting gave the PCs the options to prep or come up with a plan, they declined to do so, so they head a straight fight, exactly like what would have happened if they had just kicked in the door without any plan.

No. Scouting in this case, created a problem that they had to solve, which would not have existed if they had not scouted in the first place. If they reach an intersection and decide to scout both directions (left and right). Let's say that the right hand path leads to the wizard/monster room, and the left hand path leads to some other encounter. The scout reports back what he sees, and they decide to go left. But because the scout saw what was in the room down the right path, now the monster is active and will patrol and likely encounter them later on. If, instead of scouting, they had simply chosen to go left without ever looking down the right hand direction, the script would not run, the wizard would not summon/charm the monster, and it would not patrol and likely encounter them later.

In this case, scouting actually causes them more problems than not scouting. I think the problem is that you are assuming the only choice is "look to see what's ahead before going there" and "just go there without looking first". You are forgetting that there exists a third (and frankly more likely choice): "Decide whether to go in that direction in the first place". Scouting is not just to see what's ahead of you in a direction you are already committed to going. It's often used to pick a direction to go in the first place. Your analysis and methodology are completely ignoring this aspect of scouting.


There was no in character reason for the monster to telegraph its approach. But ok, let's say I pulled a deus ex machina and invented some telegraph, what would that actually accomplish?

The players have some warning now. They are still in the same situation though; at a three-way intersection, one dead end, one unknown, and one monster. How is this any different?

I suppose maybe they could go back the way they came and try hiding? That's the only thing I can think of, and if they had done that then they could potentially be in a far worse situation as now there is literally nowhere to run.

Yes. All of those are additional options. And they are outside of the one "script" you had written in your own head about how the encounter would go. They could go back the way they just came, and find someplace to hide. If the monster is really randomly choosing its path, they have a 50/50 chance of evading it by doing this. If the area they just came from has any additional branches (or better yet, loops) in it, then they can evade this thing, lead it around i a circle, and escape out through the main hallway that they know they can get to saftey through. Alternatively, they can go down the unknown hallway. But this time, they aren't running for their lives, but can travel at a more normal rate (because they are not fleeing from an enraged monster). And again, they have a 50/50 chance that the big nasty thing wont randomly choose to go down that path in the first place (giving them more time to explore). And that's before considering what sort of magic means they may have had to conceal themselves, or misidirect the monster, or any of a number of other things.

There are always more options before a face to face encounter begins than there are afterwards. By just dropping them into the encounter, you eliminated those options for the players. Once the monster is aware of them, it's now chasing them. They have limited time and limited options. You rushed to that condition because you previously assumed/expected a specific reaction (the dramatic chase scene) which could only happen after the monster sees them and they run away from it. I'm simply saying "don't do that". Let the players make their own choices. If they choose to attack this thing, and then realize it's too tough to handle, and then decide they need to run away, then they may just happen to do exactly what you expected. But, you need to allow the player choices to lead to that point, not force them into it.



They were aware it was wandering the area.

They could have taken actions to track, survey, waylay, or trap it, but did not attempt to.

How were they supposed to track it? That's only going to work if it's moving slower and making more noise than the party, such that they know when it's nearby and can send their scout to take a closer look, and then make decisions about how to move to avoid/attack it. If this thing is constantly moving, and you give them no ability to detect when it's approaching, how exactly are they supposed to do this?

I asked this a couple times in the other thread. I'll ask again:

When you realized that the monster was coming up the hallway towards the intersection that the party was heading back to, did you give the party some indication before the monster arrived that it was coming in their direction? Did you allow them to reach the intersection and hear this thing coming, and give them the opportunity to make a decision (fight in the intersection, retreat down the hall we just came from, explore the unknown hallway, set up an ambush, scout towards the monster a bit to see what it is and then make a decision?). Did you do *any* of those things?

Or did you just draw out a map of the intersection, place the minis, and then have them roll for initiative?

I've assumed the latter (given your stated intention to have the dramatic chase scene). But I don't know for certain. If you actually did give them an opportunity to avoid the encounter itself, then we're fine. You did everything right. They choose to encounter this thing, and they have to suffer the results of that poor decision. But if you didn't, then this is me providing you with some tools to avoid having a similarly poor encounter outcome in the future.


I have never been able to pull off the "empty-mind" that is apparently a requirement for good GMing. I am just too analytical. When I see a situation, whether it is in a game, a work of fiction, or real life, I can't help but imagining all sorts of ways it might play out. As a GM, I do this when I am designing an adventure, reading a prefab adventure, playing an adventure, or running an adventure, it is a constant process.

Furthermore, I am not sure why this is considered such a bad thing. Like, I get how a GM designing a scenario with only one outcome in mind leads to frustration, but what is the harm in merely thinking about possible ways the fight could go or knowing which strategies are most optimal?

Considering these possible outcomes is fine. Zeroing in on one and then manipulating the encounter specifics to make that happen is not. Again, I don't know for certain how you handled the set up for the encounter, but if you did just draw the map, place the minis, and roll initiative, then you were doing just that. You thought of a exciting chase scene in your mind, and you manipulated the encounter to make that happen. You removed all other options for them except to fight the monster, realize they could not defeat it, and then flee. You just miscalculated how much they would weigh "run into unknown hallway" versus "sacrifice a character so the rest can escape down a known hallway".



IMO it is tactically wrong to choose certain death over an unknown and morally wrong to bully a new player into sacrificing their character for you.

Certain death for one (maybe two) characters, while the rest escape is tactically preferrable to "run into unknown danger with the same known thing that we can't defeat chasing us". The odds are very very high that everyone will die in that second option. You may certainly disagree, but it's not really worth arguing, and it doesn't matter "who is right". The fact is that your players made this decision. This is not about what we think versus what you think. This is about what you think versus what your players think, and that these are clearly not the same thing.

Which is why you should not be assuming what the players will do. Clearly, in this case, you were incorrect. The takeaway from that is to not put them into "do or die" situations and assume that you know what they will do to avoid dying. You may insist all day long that the players made a tactically poor decision, but that's irrelevant. That was the decision they made. And this also loops back to the "subconscious GM bias about decisions based on GM knowledge" concept. You knew that the hallway was safe, and that it contained an exit. Since that is knowledge you have in your own brain, you cannot be unbiased in your assessment of the tactics of the choice in this case. And you cannot even be sure how much your bias is in play. Every GM has this potential blind spot. This is why the safer bet is to always give the players additional information and choices along the way. When you narrow their choices down to just X or Y, and assume that "of course they'll know to do X because X is objectively better than Y", you are setting yourself up for a disaster.


I think you are using "Real" in a strange way here.

Just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Like, if I go downstairs tomorrow and find a tiger in my living room, that's an extremely strange and unlikely event. But that doesn't mean that I am somehow justified in ignoring it and assuming it will just go away on its own without causing any trouble.

Sure. But if there is a tiger downstairs, that tiger should be there even if I never go downstairs in the first place, right? That is how "reality" works. The tiger will decide to wander upstairs and attack me at some point regardless of whether I went down the stairs and saw it or not (assuming the tiger doesn't see me do this and chase me immediately). There should be zero difference in terms of "tiger wanders into my bedroom" whether I know there's a tiger downstairs or not. What you are doing is having the act of looking downstairs create the tiger. If I don't look downstairs, the tiger doesn't exist, and I can sit in my bedroom in absolute safety for as long as I want. But the moment I look downstairs and see the tiger, it now exists. If I don't deal with it now, it will decide to wander upstairs and attack me.

That is *not* how reality works. Cause and effect doesn't work that way. Players expect cause and effect in a game world to work similarly to how it works in the real world (obviously with some additional causes and effects).


Once I have established that there is a monster and a wizard in the room, why on Earth would the players assume they wouldn't leave the room at some point?

Again. Because you didn't esablish that. The monster and the wizard aren't in the room, performing the ritutal, until a member of the party looks into the room. There was zero chance of the monster leaving the room and encountering the party until after a member of the party looked into the room. That's not you establishing that something exists and behaves in a specific way, that's reality ceasing to exist somewhere until the party discovers it, and then suddenly it starts doing things it wasn't doing before.


I honestly think the players are expecting a less real environment, where the monsters just sit in place guarding treasure waiting to be killed.

There's a fair range of better modeled environment between those two extremes though.


You keep saying you are against scripted encounters and contrived situations, but it seems like you are asking me to implement far more of them.

Nothing in what I just wrote suggests using scripted encounters. I was purely speaking of game balance issues. I talked about that earlier in this post, so I'm not going to repeat it.


I am not balancing encounters at all in this campaign. This is a sandbox. Some regions are more dangerous than others, and each region has a range of power levels for the beings that inhabit it. Likewise, I have decided where each inhabitant will first be encountered (and some of them move) and what they will be doing when first encountered. There actual specifics of the encounter and the tactics used are totally up to the players and not factored into the balance even slightly. Heck, I am not even taking party composition into account, just naked CR.

There are two issues here. The first is balance. You do not have to balance the entire game setting to the PCs (and you shouldn't in fact). But things that are outside their capability should be reasonably obvious to them that they are so. Otherwise, they will constantly be splatting into things (and that's not fun). There's nothing wrong, as a GM, about telegraphing to the players when they are entering an area that is highly dangerous to them. That's all I'm really saying in that regard. If players feel like they have no means to know if the encounter they're about to have will be easy or will wipe them, they're going to consantly feel off balance and are likely not going to enjoy the game. Is that a bit of GM contrivance? Sure. But it's one that is worth doing to make the game more enjoyable for everyone.

The second bit is the concept of dynamic environments. I applaud at least trying to do this, so don't think I'm just poo pooing the whole thing here. But, as I commented on above, when you have the PCs encounter folks "doing something", the things they are doing should almost always be whatever things those NPCs normally do each and every day. If there's a group of kobolds working a mine for an evil overlord, then the PCs should encounter them working in the mines, or carrying mining equipment with them. If there's a wizard who regularly summons monsters to patrol his domain in the dungeon, then have them encounter these patrolling monsters periodically. Then later, when they see the wizard summoning a monster of the same type, they know what's going on, and that this is where those patrolling monsters have been coming from. The dynamic nature of the environment works much better when seen in that direction rather than the other way around.

If there is something that is "going on" in the dungeon, then the effects of that thing should be seen before encountering the thing that is causing it. That dynamic environment existed before the PCs arrived, so make it feel like that is the case. And it's entirely possible that you are doing this for most things in the dungeons (we're only hearing about the ones that go wrong). I'm just trying to make observations about why I think those encounters went wrong, so you can make adjustments to avoid doing the same thing in the future.

[Duff]

*facedesk*

Random encounters were designed in no small part because of the initial skirmish game design of Dungeons and Dragons.


Fable Wright gave us a really good summary or the history and way they functioned.
I'll add: They could disrupt a caster's sleep and prevent spell recovery.
They add some combat to a session that otherwise consists of roleplay to get the quest, accounting and logistics for the journey, and then searching the area for a hidden back door to the dungeon (and that that would often have been considered a bad thing)

A wise GM has always known not all random encounters are up close and personal, hostile and unavoidable. A 1st level party encountering a big old dragon is might see it fly over (Emergent narrative will turn that into foreshadowing,) or they crest the hill and see it wrecking a village to remind them that the world is big, or it's polymorphed into a human who's looking for a certain type of bard (because in some groups that's fun. Or funny). Or it becomes a chase scene through the ravines to get into a safe cave.

Even now, they can still serve some of those roles:
Time pressure in the dungeon - If every hour or so you risk encountering a patrol and every patrol risks the fight snowballing as the alarm is spread throughout the area, then you know you need to keep it moving

It allows emergent narrative - Some GMs are good at the spontaneous stuff and can use the random monsters to reduce their decision load.

It can help square the circle of some players players not accepting encounters that are not level appropriate for them, but a world where every encounter is the right level for them feels unrealistic. If the encounter come off the official table, then it's not the GM trying to kill them, it's just the rules/table


But also:
Too often they include far too much risk of dangerous monsters. If a party that's got some experience under their belt can't travel from one town to another without being attacked by , how in the world is there a road? How does the hermit in the placed encounter survive?
What do all those apex predators eat?
If there's Ogres in the area, why is that not news?

[rel]

Random encounters, like spell slots and other resources recovering with time, equipment lists with the exact cost and weight of each item listed, and specific duration's for buffs and the burn time of torches, were all once part of larger resource management minigames that formed the bulk of minute to minute gameplay in early roleplaying games.

Most systems using those elements today have dropped the underlying minigames, resulting in a collection of unconnected mechanics that serve little purpose and usually cause problems as they limit the timescales over which the game can effectively take place, and slow down play with largely irrelevant book keeping and busywork.

[Vahnavoi]

It's not a "classic" random encounter because it has a defined presence and location at all times rather than being generated out of the ether on the spot when rolled off of a table of potential encounters.

Classic random encounters emulate motion of wandering monsters through a location, as explained earlier.

An enemy random walking through a location gives a probability spread for its possible locations that is always equivalent to some table. So these things that you think set them apart don't make much of a difference, the largest difference is rolling a small number of times against the overall probability (when using a table) versus rolling a whole lot of times.


I figure its because they don't pay attention to my descriptions and play a lot of shoddily coded video games.

They do, however, have a point. Once I have established the existence of an NPC, they have to account for the existence of that NPC. The same can't be said for a blank spot on the map.

They're still drawing a faulty conclusion from their own point. In any case, if they can't figure out your game is not like other games they play, they will continue to suck. You can't do much about it, since they are bad at taking advice from you, and they will likely complain until you cave in and make your game more like other games they play.


IMO it is tactically wrong to choose certain death over an unknown and morally wrong to bully a new player into sacrificing their character for you.

Your opinion is just wrong, then. Death wasn't certain, because a number of characters survived, and this had to be reasonably transparent for your players since they were angling for that sacrifice. So in order for the unknown third path to be appealing, it didn't have to beat "certain death", it had to beat "only one person dies". But nothing you've told of the situation gives us that, since the value for an unknown path includes estimated possibility of more opponents (as your players observed) or another dead end.

Which leads us to a reoccurring topic: your players might not be great tacticians, but odds are decent neither are you. You've expressed desire to see more "rational self-interest" from your players, but it's possible your idea of how that would even look like is skewed, so it's dubious if you'd even recognize it on sight.

[Fiery Diamond]

Why randomize attacks? The GM could just as well decide by fiat what the result is.

A lot of the reasons I've given can be done by fiat as well. However, there are two things that don't get covered by the GM "just deciding".

1. Disclaiming responsibility
2. Prompting GM imagination

IOW, there's a big difference between "we know there's a 1 in 6 chance of getting an encounter if we do this again" vs. "if we do this again, the GM might screw us with an encounter". It starts moving the GM to being an impartial arbitrator of the game, rather than someone that is imposing consequences by their choice.

Now, these things might not matter for your game, but to declare them universally pointless or that they're done without thought is frankly rather insulting.

I agree that the person you're responding to shouldn't make blanket statements about things being universally pointless for everyone, but I do think that, generally, they're right about randomized encounters being unnecessary, or even a bad thing. In my opinion, disclaiming responsibility for encounter design is actually a negative, not a positive... but then I also am largely opposed to the entire concept of published adventure paths, so I'm a bit biased like that. I feel that, at least in games like D&D (other systems can and do vary considerably), creating and customizing the experience to the players is part of the DM's job, even more so than serving as an arbiter. In fact, I can easily envision a game where those two roles were separate and the latter could easily be covered by a computer program - the former is what's actually important. Randomizing encounters is offloading part of the DM's essential responsibilities onto the randomizer. This isn't comparable to your example of using fiat to decide attack rolls at all, that's the part of the game that's supposed to rely on the randomizer.

Also, as mentioned, I don't think, at least in a game like D&D, that DMs should be impartial arbiters. They are creators and managers, not simply judges handing down the law that someone else created. Your example of 1 in 6 chance versus DM decision? I'm flatly opposed to the 1 in 6 chance choice. That, in my opinion, is bad DMing. The way the world responds to player action should never be randomized. Ever. Randomization is for success/failure. The rest relies on human input. If you don't trust your DM to use that power fairly, then get a different one. If you don't trust ANY DM to use that power fairly, play a game system that inherently is designed so that it doesn't rely on GM input for the scenario at all. Don't mix and match, with the DM having some input but still relying on randomization for part of it.

Using randomization to prompt GM imagination, though, I can see as valid, but only if you allow for the GM to see a result and say, "I don't like that result. I'll roll again."

[Vahnavoi]

The idea that it's somehow wrong to randomize world responses to player actions, but somehow right to randomize success and failure, is an oxymoron. Success and failure rather obviously fall in the catecory of world responses, a game design that disowns randomness logically disowns all manners of it. That means no die rolls, no drawing cards etc., just deterministic rules and human decisions. Non-random games are just fine, but this train of thought leading there, trying to selectively disown some forms of randomness while embracing others, is full of holes.

So is the whole train of thought based on disclaiming responsibility. Look. If I design a random encounter for my game, I'm obviously just as responsible for its inclusion as I would be for any non-random encounter. The only shifting of responsibility possible is from game master to game designer, if these are separate people, but randomness has nothing to do with it, because randomness is put into games by people.

There's a tangible difference in play, though. If I'm transparently rolling a balanced die for 1-in-6 chance, any player with half a wit can realize there's a difference there compared to simply deciding by fiat or arriving at a conclusion through deterministic logic. Namely, there is a now a thing in the game that I, as a game master, don't and didn't know beforehand, because being a game master doesn't make me prescient. I can't tell which side a balanced die will land on, so there is a moment of genuine uncertainty.

And that is the basic thing all forms of randomness exist to contribute: genuine, transparent, uncertainty. They put a little bit of chaos, in the mathematical sense, into a game. That's the point. It may or may not be what you personally desire, but it has obvious utility.

[Witty Username]

My strongest opinion here is bullying is always bad, and that doesn't have much to do with random encounters.

[KorvinStarmast]

Given that there is no universal definition of what leads to fun, it’s simple enough to see that random encounters just don’t align with your desires. The vegan disliking the menu doesn’t make the steakhouse wrong. +10

Impartial Judges are not players in a game they are observers and mechanisms for a game. This is not an experiment or an exercise. This is a game that is suppose to be fun, and arbitrating is a job. Impartial Judges only act out the mechanics and the "will of the game" and do not exist as players of the game. A referee is not a player, they are the rules in action. Just plain wrong, as a collection of statements. In a GMless game, and there are some, you would have a point but the topic under discussion is not a GM-less game. The role of referee/judge is voluntarily undertaken by one of the players. That's the game form that has been under discussion since poss 1 of this thread.

Due to a host of reasons, D&D does not seem to have this player and GM contract that everyone is there to drive fun.
Still incorrect. I don't know how you arrived at this.

To me that is a detriment to the game.
You made a good choice to stop playing D&D, it seems to me. +1 :smallsmile:

Random Encounters are just a way to try and bridge this legacy (and possibly structural) element of D&D. To me, Random Encounters are the symptoms of the problem. Random encounters allow the GM to say, "It wasn't me who made your life hard, it was this random dice table that did!" This feeds into the idea that GM and players are adversaries instead of fellow players/partners to fun.
Good call on your part to stop playing D&D. If that's your understanding (which is like seeing a single slice and thinking that you are talking about an entire pizzeria) then I can see, somewhat, how you got there.
Any reductionist assessment, however, is open to challenge. Yours is an overly reductionist statement.

This approach to GM as Adversary vs Partner seems to be an element of D&D more than other RPGs I have played.
It is one of the ways that D&D can be played but it isn't the only one. The current edition even (1) addresses this and (2) recommends against it.

Perhaps I self-select away from those games? Yeah. I think so. And it seems to work for you.

I think part of Talakeal's issues at the table is a direct result of the adversarial relationship built up between GM and player. Concur. And that has nothing to do with random encounters.
==============

Heck, work through even Tak's random encounter from a story perspective. The party is low on resources after a day of dungeon crawling fights, a nasty thing comes up behind them, one person sacrifices so the others can escape. Its practically the Lord of the Rings Moria Balrog. Great classic story beat generated by a random roll after players made choices. The only reason Tak had any issues is the interpersonal player conflicts their group is prone to. Yep.

So, Random Encounters create an impartial method for encounters to happen, specifically to create time or resource pressure on players. Again, an overly reductionist statement and thus deeply flawed, and far from the mark.

I'll add: They could disrupt a caster's sleep and prevent spell recovery.
Tell me about it.

A wise GM has always known not all random encounters are up close and personal, hostile and unavoidable. A 1st level party encountering a big old dragon is might see it fly over (Emergent narrative will turn that into foreshadowing,) or they crest the hill and see it wrecking a village to remind them that the world is big, or it's polymorphed into a human who's looking for a certain type of bard (because in some groups that's fun. Or funny). Or it becomes a chase scene through the ravines to get into a safe cave.
We did that in a game I run last year. The players were totally stoked / energized by the time the session ended. They barely got to that cave, which wasn't all that safe, but it was safer than dragon breath. It could have turned out differently.

If there's Ogres in the area, why is that not news? They may have just arrived in the area, and it can become an adventure hook. (Scare off the ogres or otherwise remove their threat...) DM can exploit it that way, or treat them as a band of migrating ogres who stumble across a settled area at the edge of the wilderness ...

and slow down play with largely irrelevant book keeping and busywork. Eh, no, not as an absolute assessment of the many ways that a random encounter can be used.
Your decision to include encumbrance (which isn't a hard and fast rule, has variants, and only gets as much attention as a table allows it) strikes me as off-topic for this thread (if we go back to post number 1).
Our Mothership game and our Blades in the Dark game also use an encumbrance / weight system (load in BitD) and it Does NOT slow down game play.

I agree that the person you're responding to shouldn't make blanket statements about things being universally pointless for everyone, but I do think that, generally, they're right about randomized encounters being unnecessary, or even a bad thing. A hammer is a bad thing if you use it on the fine china, it's a good thing when you use it on a nail. It appears that this needs to be repeated again and again: random encounters serve multiple purposes.

Also, as mentioned, I don't think, at least in a game like D&D, that DMs should be impartial arbiters. They are creators and managers, not simply judges handing down the law that someone else created. They are both. It's not an either/or proposition.

The idea that it's somehow wrong to randomize world responses to player actions, but somehow right to randomize success and failure, is an oxymoron. He shoot, he scores!

There's a tangible difference in play, though. If I'm transparently rolling a balanced die for 1-in-6 chance, any player with half a wit can realize there's a difference there compared to simply deciding by fiat or arriving at a conclusion through deterministic logic. Namely, there is a now a thing in the game that I, as a game master, don't and didn't know beforehand, because being a game master doesn't make me prescient. I can't tell which side a balanced die will land on, so there is a moment of genuine uncertainty.

And that is the basic thing all forms of randomness exist to contribute: genuine, transparent, uncertainty. They put a little bit of chaos, in the mathematical sense, into a game. That's the point. It may or may not be what you personally desire, but it has obvious utility. In a nutshell, yes, the bottom line: uncertainty leads to a lot of fun (at most tables where I have played).

[kyoryu]

A hammer is a bad thing if you use it on the fine china, it's a good thing when you use it on a nail. It appears that this needs to be repeated again and again: random encounters serve multiple purposes.

Repeated for emphasis.

I don't think that those purposes are relevant to every game. If I'm running Fate, I do not use random encounters (though, to be fair, some things that random encounters are used for get rolled into "fail forward" situations in more narrative games). I do use them in some games. They're a tool for some purposes. If those purposes aren't relevant to your game, don't use them.. That does not mean that they are not relevant to other games, or that those games are bad. They're just different. Sometimes, very different. And they may not be to your taste (though I suspect most modern players haven't really been in a well-done old-school game).

[Talakeal]

snip

Yes, interesting things happen more often to the PCs than is statistically likely. This is because we are playing a game about adventures and people who lead extraordinary lives. I generally don't go in for the more cinematic games, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with doing so.


The issue here is you are attaching special significance to the magical ritual vs. encountering the monster at all which just doesn't exist.

Likewise, you are not comparing scouting vs. not scouting, you are comparing scouting vs. never going in the room at all.


Pretend the wizard doesn't exist. The scout opens the door, sees a large angry monster in there, with no other exits and no source of food. Ok. Cool. No "scripted event". Is it now safe to assume the monster will just quietly sit in the room for all time and will never leave or cause anyone trouble?

Now, let's say they don't ever open the door. They just leave a blank spot on their map. They miss out on any treasure, XP, lore, or connecting routes that might be down that way. Should they feel *safer* having an unexplored room behind them, containing who knows what and leading who knows where?




That is *not* how reality works. Cause and effect doesn't work that way. Players expect cause and effect in a game world to work similarly to how it works in the real world (obviously with some additional causes and effects).

Then they are absolute fools.

No GM can model an entire world and everyone in it while off-screen. They have to know the GM is using some sort of sleight of hand to decide what they encounter. But that is irrelevant to their actions.

Once something is known, they need to account for it in their plans.


Nothing in what I just wrote suggests using scripted encounters. I was purely speaking of game balance issues. I talked about that earlier in this post, so I'm not going to repeat it.

You specifically said that if the players, by chance, encounter something too strong for them, then it is the GM's duty to put in an escape route for them. This is absolutely what you are getting mad at me for doing (even though in my game it happened by random chance rather than a deliberate GM decision).


Classic random encounters emulate motion of wandering monsters through a location, as explained earlier.

An enemy random walking through a location gives a probability spread for its possible locations that is always equivalent to some table. So these things that you think set them apart don't make much of a difference, the largest difference is rolling a small number of times against the overall probability (when using a table) versus rolling a whole lot of times.

Again, I didn't say it was my assessment, I was just pointing out the possible distinction to head off pedantry.

I will say though, that there is one pivotal difference; the random encounter table also serves to randomly generate the population of the area as well as their positions, as there is no way your average dungeon can possibly fit, let alone support, every possible result on the random encounter table at the same time, especially if you allow for the possibility of rolling the same encounter multiple times.


Certain death for one (maybe two) characters, while the rest escape is tactically preferrable to "run into unknown danger with the same known thing that we can't defeat chasing us". The odds are very very high that everyone will die in that second option. You may certainly disagree, but it's not really worth arguing, and it doesn't matter "who is right". The fact is that your players made this decision. This is not about what we think versus what you think. This is about what you think versus what your players think, and that these are clearly not the same thing.

I don't know how you (or I, or other forum goers) can possibly make an of the objectively correct risk assessment of a case with this many unknowns. I don't know how you can calculate the odds of death at all without knowledge of what was down the other corridors, let alone determine they are "very-very-high". With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you the odds were actually zero, but without that, anything else is a complete asspull.

And also, you are assuming the party just ran blindly into the dark. You are totally ignoring the fact that the rogue offered to scout out the passage alone to make sure it was safe, and was shouted down. In this case, the odds of death are extremely low, especially for people who aren't the rogue. I know you think stealth is useless if it doesn't provide a surprise round, but even if there had been a second enemy behind them, the odds of it actually spotting him are miniscule.



From a moral perspective, I would rather risk an unknown than allow someone to sacrifice their life for me.

And, as a GM, I am not going to allow one player to sacrifice another person's character against their will. So the question shouldn't be "am I willing to sacrifice someone else to I survive," the question is "Does my sacrificing MYSELF increase the rest of the party's odds of survival over taking the unknown path by enough to justify my own death."


I've assumed the latter (given your stated intention to have the dramatic chase scene). But I don't know for certain. If you actually did give them an opportunity to avoid the encounter itself, then we're fine. You did everything right. They choose to encounter this thing, and they have to suffer the results of that poor decision. But if you didn't, then this is me providing you with some tools to avoid having a similarly poor encounter outcome in the future.

This is so frustrating. I have said over and over and over again that this encounter was purely decided by the dice. There was no intention. It was completely random.

During the encounter, I failed my Zen test and imagined how the fight was likely to go, realized they couldn't beat it in a straight fight, and would have to flee, which would be really scary at the time, but would ultimately be safe and allow them to discover the back door to the dungeon.

But this was absolutely not planned in advance.


How were they supposed to track it? That's only going to work if it's moving slower and making more noise than the party, such that they know when it's nearby and can send their scout to take a closer look, and then make decisions about how to move to avoid/attack it. If this thing is constantly moving, and you give them no ability to detect when it's approaching, how exactly are they supposed to do this?

Dozens of ways. This party is almost perfectly made for this task.

Scry on it. Have the rogue occasionally scout their back trail. Set up trip-wire alarms. Lay down flour periodically. Scry it. Have a spirit follow it. Etc.

Heck, the illusionist even has a spell that let's him see through a monster's eyes to always know exactly where it is and what it is doing.


When you realized that the monster was coming up the hallway towards the intersection that the party was heading back to, did you give the party some indication before the monster arrived that it was coming in their direction? Did you allow them to reach the intersection and hear this thing coming, and give them the opportunity to make a decision (fight in the intersection, retreat down the hall we just came from, explore the unknown hallway, set up an ambush, scout towards the monster a bit to see what it is and then make a decision?). Did you do *any* of those things?

Or did you just draw out a map of the intersection, place the minis, and then have them roll for initiative?

The map was already drawn and the minis were already down. The chamber was large enough that there was no realistic chance of the party hearing the monster coming (and vice versa) and they both entered it at roughly the same time. This was determined by the dice, not by me. They could have set up a trap or explored the far hallway earlier (they actually had explored the hallway earlier, they just didn't realize it, but that's another story), but there was not time to do so in this moment. They could have retreated back down the way they came, but that could have easily put them in an even worse situation.

Also, did you mean to list a bunch of things the players could have done and then ask me if I did any of them? Because it seems like you are just asking "Did they hear the monster coming in advance?" and trying to make it sound like a whole bunch of things rather than just one thing.


Considering these possible outcomes is fine. Zeroing in on one and then manipulating the encounter specifics to make that happen is not.

I agree. Which makes it really weird that everyone just jumps to that conclusion and then sticks to it despite being told over and over again that it isn't the case.


You thought of a exciting chase scene in your mind, and you manipulated the encounter to make that happen. You removed all other options for them except to fight the monster, realize they could not defeat it, and then flee.

This a lie. And as I have said that wasn't the case maybe half a dozen times now, it's starting to get really upsetting.


You just miscalculated how much they would weigh "run into unknown hallway" versus "sacrifice a character so the rest can escape down a known hallway".

This was never their decision to make, so it shouldn't factor into it.

If someone wants to sacrifice their own character, that is on them, and that is fine.

[Easy e]

Of course, the answer is do what you want and works for your game.

That is the answer to everything in this hobby. Since that is the ultimate answer, almost all our discussions on this board could be ended in post #2 and should never get to page 2. We are really just challenging each others preferences around the edges just to create a discussion.




Back to Random Encounters. Can some one explain how they make a GMs job easier, because I am not sure I see it. Can folks tell me more about how Random Encounters make things easier for a GM?

As a GM, I tend to lean towards things that off load my effort so I can focus on the players at the table instead. How do Random Encounters help me do this?

[Fable Wright]

Back to Random Encounters. Can some one explain how they make a GMs job easier, because I am not sure I see it. Can folks tell me more about how Random Encounters make things easier for a GM?

As a GM, I tend to lean towards things that off load my effort so I can focus on the players at the table instead. How do Random Encounters help me do this?

Can't really say without knowing what system you're playing. Vampire the Masquerade? Having a couple tables of what random humans are doing while players are feeding can give ambience to the city, helping you offload the task of fleshing out the city and updating players on current events without needing to work in NPCs as information tubes to the PCs. Lancer? No real point to them; that game's about a series of setpiece encounters. D&D 3.5e? Don't bother. You can add wandering merchants or descriptions of the wildlife they kill, but the fact that they don't consume long-term resources make random combat encounters pointless. D&D 5e? If you're playing where long rests are a week off in town and short rests are 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night, random encounters at night can randomly deprive players of short rests, and tax them on their way to adventure sites to encourage adventurers to stay local and up the risk factor of remote or dangerous-wildlife dungeons. If it's default short/long rests, it only really matters for wandering monsters rather than wilderness encounters for the same purpose. The fact that they're made ahead of time, irrespective of player composition, and that players know this, means that they can feel that their preparations matter because the GM isn't going to tailor for their gear or lack thereof. Exalted? You can treat random encounters as a set of plot hooks for if the players are wandering. Creation is big and the world moves on outside the PCs. You are unlikely to actually seriously threaten PCs, but they're strategic plot hooks for different areas of the world that get across local circumstances.

[NichG]

Of course, the answer is do what you want and works for your game.

That is the answer to everything in this hobby. Since that is the ultimate answer, almost all our discussions on this board could be ended in post #2 and should never get to page 2. We are really just challenging each others preferences around the edges just to create a discussion.


Not my favorite way to create a discussion. Better to ask questions and detail lines of thought that reveal new possibilities than attack/defend static positions. 'How could this be used?' and 'what changes about a game when this is in play?' are more interesting discussions than 'is this good or bad?' or 'should you do this?'.



Back to Random Encounters. Can some one explain how they make a GMs job easier, because I am not sure I see it. Can folks tell me more about how Random Encounters make things easier for a GM?

As a GM, I tend to lean towards things that off load my effort so I can focus on the players at the table instead. How do Random Encounters help me do this?

I'll use random things like luck rolls or tarot draws when there are really wide open decisions like 'who is at this party?' or 'out of ten factions who all have reactions to what the PCs just did, who does something about it first?' or 'a PC just opened a literal random warp portal and I need to come up with whats on the other side'. It's a lot easier to come up with stuff if you have a prompt or angle to it than if its 'just decide'. In the end, its still me deciding, but having reasonable sources of entropy to push that decision in possibly interesting ways is useful because each decision (especially decisions in the absence of any sort of information that would guide them) is a moment of thought.

If for example I wanted to make a TTRPG with lots of environmental things that players and enemies could make use of (like aspects of a scene in FATE say, but something where its really important that those things are always there and sufficiently rich because the rules assume it), I'd want to make a deck of random aspects an environment could have so if I don't have any specific ideas I could just draw three or four cards and pick the two that made the most sense for example. Because that way I can ensure those sorts of things are there without spending a few minutes thinking 'okay, what kind of environmental thing might be around, what should it do, etc'.

[Telok]

Can some one explain how they make a GMs job easier, because I am not sure I see it. Can folks tell me more about how Random Encounters make things easier for a GM?

So I've got sets of rival adventuring groups going through a multilevel dungeon. I came out with this list covering hours 60 to 112
NPCS
LEVEL-1: slow, methodical, one lookout behind, one scout forward, scan/search all walls & furnishings
LEVEL-3: party leaves spray-paint markers at head height, arrows pointing back the way they came, quick surface scan/search habits

t=60 LEVEL-3: shooting, rm #15 cleared & looted, rm #14 & #16 undisturbed but mapped
t=61 LEVEL-3: rm #13 looted, rm #12 discharged (recharge in 170 hours @t=231)
t=62 LEVEL-3: rm #11 & #1 searched, taunting machine reset to party
t=63 LEVEL-3: rm #2 message in abyssal, secret door propped open
t=64 LEVEL-3: rm #3 looted but only took manacles, map, scrolls, and money. South secret door propped open
t=65 LEVEL-3: rm #4 & #5 corpses & fungus disturbed but intact
t=66 LEVEL-3: shooting, rm #6 gunfire can be heard up the pit, oozes destroyed
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
t=66 LEVEL-1: LEVEL-1 npc party arrives at original entrance
t=67 LEVEL-3: rm #7 trap disarmed by jamming a chunk of rock in it, ring looted & hand outside of chest
t=67 LEVEL-1: entry through #9 hatch
t=68 LEVEL-3: party returns #7->#1->#13->#15->#20
t=68 LEVEL-1: orange healing goop taken, rm #100
t=69 LEVEL-1: Mona Lisa & Starry Night paintings taken, David recorded in detail, rm #78
t=70 LEVEL-1: shooting #74, random vagabond mushrooms
t=71 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & begin high level mapping of rm #140
t=72 LEVEL-1: shooting, sasquatron released & defeated, rm #81
t=73 LEVEL-1: return #81->#74->#93->#100->#99
t=75 LEVEL-3: rm #28, shift change, moktar guys back from mapping (#140 D plastic yellow buoy over cylinder refined metal mass) & recharging air-raft
t=77 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & begin high level mapping of rm #140
t=78 LEVEL-3: party re-enters #20->#15->#13->#1
t=79 LEVEL-3: shooting, rm #84 door examined, door opened, looked in, fireball & chokepoint
t=80 LEVEL-3: rm #81 in the process of being looted & misc. medical attention
t=81 LEVEL-3: north exits from rm #81 are spiked shut from the inside (silverware), rm #82 & #83 checked
t=82 LEVEL-1: enter via stairs to rm #1, faces room opened & silver skeleton taken, rm #3
t=82 LEVEL-3: rm #28, shift change, moktar guys back from mapping (#137 waterfall & winches & metal canoe) & recharging air-raft
t=82 LEVEL-3: rm #81 all entrances but rm #84 jammed shut with broken stuff in door jams & hinges
t=83 LEVEL-1: silver skeleton removed, rm #15
t=83 LEVEL-2: npcs from LEVEL-3 arrive in rm #1
t=84 LEVEL-1: shooting, rm #16, random giant pill-bugs
t=84 LEVEL-2: npcs from LEVEL-3 wander around rm #8 sideshows getting creeped out
t=85 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & begin high level mapping of rm #140
t=85 LEVEL-1: secret conference room opened & looted, rm #48
crystal decanter & goblets, magic bottle & healing potion, scroll, mithril main gauche
bottle note: "thaumaturgical preservation bottle, contents; orange water from fountain, level 3"
t=85 LEVEL-2: npcs from LEVEL-3 wander around rm #8 sideshows getting creeped out
t=86 LEVEL-2: shooting, npcs from LEVEL-3 flee LEVEL-2 rm #8 and go back downstairs
t=87 LEVEL-1: shooting, rm #37, random jawheads
t=87 LEVEL-2: painted men haul off & cut up dead for lunch, fresh BBQ
t=88 LEVEL-1: goblin spawn sacks destroyed, rm #43
t=89 LEVEL-3: npcs convinced nothing coming after them, return to rm #6
t=90 LEVEL-3: shooting, rm #10, npcs vs flying piranha, exit to rm #85
t=90 LEVEL-3: rm #28, shift change, moktar mining guys return from mapping (#140 A pillars & detected gold) & recharging air-raft
t=90 LEVEL-1: screeching metal, trap jammed & blades broken, rm #49, pitcher taken from rm #51
t=91 LEVEL-1: shooting, rm #57, screech men
t=91 LEVEL-3: rm #85 necklace looted
t=92 LEVEL-1: magic mirror taken, rm #57
t=92 LEVEL-3: rm #86, corpse investigated
t=93 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & begin high level mapping of rm #140
t=93 LEVEL-1: return #57->#55->#93->#100->#99
t=93 LEVEL-3: rm #87 hypno-moss burned off
t=94 LEVEL-3: rm #81 doors un-jammed by dungeon elementals
t=94 LEVEL-3: npcs investigate rm #97 A, rig a floor from scrounged stuff, rest for 6 hours
t=98 LEVEL-3: rm #28, shift change, moktar mining guys return from mapping (#136 bronze doors & metal canoes) & recharging air-raft
t=100 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & begin high level mapping of rm #140
t=100 LEVEL-3: npcs in rm #97 A finish rest, enter rm #104 & eat all the food
t=101 LEVEL-1: re-entry #99->#21->#29
t=102 LEVEL-1: necklace dug up & removed, rm #29
t=103 LEVEL-3: npcs proceed rm #104 to #90, engage with wires
t=104 LEVEL-3: rm #28, shift change, moktar mining guys return from mapping (#140 B empty underwater cave) & recharging air-raft
t=105 LEVEL-3: npcs
t=106 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & begin high level mapping of rm #140
t=106 LEVEL-3: rm #81 trashed by cod-men & 6-cod guard posted
t=107 LEVEL-3: npcs
t=108 LEVEL-3: L3 npcs
t=109 LEVEL-1: shooting, rm #31, random blade zombies climbing up
t=110 LEVEL-1: party descends to LEVEL-2, rm #1, via stairs past the pit
t=110 LEVEL-3: rm #28, shift change, moktar mining guys return from mapping (#140 C giant flesh blob blocking drain) & recharging air-raft
t=111 LEVEL-2: L1 npcs???
t=111 LEVEL-3: L3 npcs???
t=112 LEVEL-3: rm #28, moktar mining guys ready air-raft & checking out rm #138 & #139
t=112 TOPSIDE: rejection of application for exclusive archeological exploitation rights received by shuttle
t=112 LEVEL-3: L3 npcs???
t=112 LEVEL-2: L1 npcs???

Now, I can make a similar list for the dungeon inhabitant patrols, the apex predators, and other critters. But these things get invalidated as soon as someone, pc or npc, hears gunfire & explosions and deviates to check it out. So while it makes sense to time-place track three other neutral parties in the dungeon, it'd be wasted effort doing it with larget numbers of stuff. So the local patrols, predators, assorted animals, etc., are on a random list that gets checked every couple rooms and when the pcs make a lot of noise. My personal touch is having 4-5 things each random is doing. So there's a (small) chance the party gets a sleeping allosaurus, a chance its chasing prey that'll run into the pcs first, and a rather larger chance its in a nearby room and I need to roll perception + random walk to see if they surprise it or it tries to surprise them.

I could of course just story/fiat who turns up where and when. But I wouldn't have thought to drop three carrion crawlers on them while theu were casting post combat healing spells, and then have their machine gun fire (they like full-auto and don't do stealth) alert a killer clown hunting party to their presence. I find this stuff gives a better feeling of 'living world' than relying 100% on my personal skills & imagination during play.

Which gets to another thing, gms have habits they fall into. Like my d&d gm will have two encounters "typical" to a region the first time we travel long distances through it, then one every following time. One encounter will be natural, an apex predator(s) or "wandering bandits/lesser demons/generic undead", and the other will be the local organized humanoids chosen to illustrate the primary civ/power center of the region. The natural one will be perception-> surprise/not-> fight. The humanoid one will either attempt ambush or make demands like tolls, taxes, magic items, etc., in an insulting manner.

Now I'm not saying the guy does every trip exactly the same, but more than half adhere to that pattern and almost all the rest aren't very far off. That's just his habitual method of d&d long distance travel and I've been gaming with him long enough to notice it. We never see a dragon off in the distance. Never meet random peaceful pilgrims, friendly merchants, or helpful guard patrols. Never get a weird weather event, wounded bear, or natural wonder. He's just a average* skill gm who doesn't do random tables and hasn't noticed his own patterns.

* solid, decent, no huge world building logic failures, no npcs having to hold idiot balls for the adventure to work, reasonably entertaining, no deus ex machina required, ok on improvising when we go off script, provides an npc cleric for the party if we ask for one. Decently average. Not the best I've seen the past 30 years, nowhere near the worst, does not make rookie mistakes.

[Gnoman]

Back to Random Encounters. Can some one explain how they make a GMs job easier, because I am not sure I see it. Can folks tell me more about how Random Encounters make things easier for a GM?

As a GM, I tend to lean towards things that off load my effort so I can focus on the players at the table instead. How do Random Encounters help me do this?

Here's a concrete example of a situation that's happened in two separate games.

The PCs are trying to break into a hill fort to rescue some prisoners. Not only is the fort guarded by fixed sentries on the walls, but there are groups patrolling the inside for intruders.

As a GM, I could set patrol routes for every such guard group, keep meticulous track of what the PCs are doing and how long it takes, and spend five to ten minutes constantly moving things around off screen to see what they might run into. An encounter with a patrol does not automatically mean a fight, it jut means that you're in the same place as a patrol. If the party is standing out in the open talking it will be an immediate alarm and fight, but if they're being careful they can observe, hide (against the guard's skills, of course), and decide what to do. This is what I did the first time, and it was a straight-up nightmare - play bogged down heavily, and the adventure took six hours to run.

Or, I can just spend five minutes listing every patrol group on an encounter table, then roll whenever the PCs are in a position where they might encounter a foe. An encounter with a patrol does not automatically mean a fight, it jut means that you're in the same place as a patrol. If the party is standing out in the open talking it will be an immediate alarm and fight, but if they're being careful they can observe, hide (against the guard's skills, of course), and decide what to do. This is what I did the second time, play flowed very smoothly, we were done in an hour and a half including three fights.

[Pex]

Here's a concrete example of a situation that's happened in two separate games.

The PCs are trying to break into a hill fort to rescue some prisoners. Not only is the fort guarded by fixed sentries on the walls, but there are groups patrolling the inside for intruders.

As a GM, I could set patrol routes for every such guard group, keep meticulous track of what the PCs are doing and how long it takes, and spend five to ten minutes constantly moving things around off screen to see what they might run into. An encounter with a patrol does not automatically mean a fight, it jut means that you're in the same place as a patrol. If the party is standing out in the open talking it will be an immediate alarm and fight, but if they're being careful they can observe, hide (against the guard's skills, of course), and decide what to do. This is what I did the first time, and it was a straight-up nightmare - play bogged down heavily, and the adventure took six hours to run.

Or, I can just spend five minutes listing every patrol group on an encounter table, then roll whenever the PCs are in a position where they might encounter a foe. An encounter with a patrol does not automatically mean a fight, it jut means that you're in the same place as a patrol. If the party is standing out in the open talking it will be an immediate alarm and fight, but if they're being careful they can observe, hide (against the guard's skills, of course), and decide what to do. This is what I did the second time, play flowed very smoothly, we were done in an hour and a half including three fights.

That's not a random encounter. That's a percentage chance the party runs into a patrol. You declared beforehand patrols exists. You're choosing not to fiat the party encounters a patrol at a particular location at a particular time. A random encounter is not preplanned. You're rolling a die to see if anything happens then rolling a die to determine what that something is, and depending on what that something is rolling dice to determine how many or initial attitude/motivation or anything else. You are letting the dice determine the adventure.

[Talakeal]

That's not a random encounter. That's a percentage chance the party runs into a patrol. You declared beforehand patrols exists. You're choosing not to fiat the party encounters a patrol at a particular location at a particular time. A random encounter is not preplanned. You're rolling a die to see if anything happens then rolling a die to determine what that something is, and depending on what that something is rolling dice to determine how many or initial attitude/motivation or anything else. You are letting the dice determine the adventure.

This is exactly the sort of argument I was trying to head off by distinguishing between wandering monsters and traditional random encounters.

[GloatingSwine]

That's not a random encounter. That's a percentage chance the party runs into a patrol. You declared beforehand patrols exists. You're choosing not to fiat the party encounters a patrol at a particular location at a particular time. A random encounter is not preplanned. You're rolling a die to see if anything happens then rolling a die to determine what that something is, and depending on what that something is rolling dice to determine how many or initial attitude/motivation or anything else. You are letting the dice determine the adventure.

What if the patrols are of randomly varying sizes, and there are things in the list that aren't just patrols but other location-appropriate encounters? Maybe it's not a "patrol" but a pair of drunk guards stumbling through to their quarters. A prisoner being escorted. A noncombatant who might still raise an alarm.

How random does random have to be to count?

[Vahnavoi]

Patrols modeled by a rolled chance to meet the players, are rather obviously random encounters and one the classic examples of wandering monsters.

This asinine tangent exist yet again due to the idea that random encounters aren't planned, which is lunacy. The truth is that a classic encounter table has quite a lot of planning behind it, somebody has to think of and write down what the numbers on the die mean. If you look at old school modules, it's fairly common for the entries on the table to correspond to actual population in a location, with place of living noted for each possible encounter and instructions given for what should happen if the encounter has already been met or eliminated.

F.ex.:

"Random encounter result 1: this is a dragon from hex A1. If players eliminate it, remove this encounter from the table."

Followed by:

"Hex A1: The dragon from random encounter 1 makes its lair here. If it has been previously met, it will remember player characters. If it has been eliminated, the lair will be found empty."

Or:

"Wandering monsters: 1-in-6 chance per hour that players will meet a goblin patrol of 1d6 goblins. Each eliminated goblin reduces the amount that can be encountered next time. Once six goblins have been killed, no more can be encountered."

Followed by:

"Room 26: this room has six beds. It's sleeping quarters for the goblin patrol men. 1d6 goblins will be found sleeping here, others will be on patrol. Reduced eliminated patrollers from the total that can be met. If all six patrollers have been eliminated, the room has no-one in it."

Context-free open-ended encounter tables have never been the be-all-end-all of random encounters, nor were they even meant to be.

[Pex]

What if the patrols are of randomly varying sizes, and there are things in the list that aren't just patrols but other location-appropriate encounters? Maybe it's not a "patrol" but a pair of drunk guards stumbling through to their quarters. A prisoner being escorted. A noncombatant who might still raise an alarm.

How random does random have to be to count?

When only the dice decide what the encounter is, and the encounter has nothing to do with the adventure plot.

[KorvinStarmast]

When only the dice decide what the encounter is, and the encounter has nothing to do with the adventure plot. That's a very narrow point of view. Emergent play is a thing.

[Kish]

When only the dice decide what the encounter is, and the encounter has nothing to do with the adventure plot.
That's a tautology. It amounts to saying random encounters are bad design, because if it's not bad design it's not a random encounter.

[GloatingSwine]

When only the dice decide what the encounter is, and the encounter has nothing to do with the adventure plot.

The dice can't decide what the encounter is without a table to roll on. Unless you come up with a scheme for rolling out of the entire monster manual.

And y'know, what is the "adventure plot" anyway?

[Duff]

One other job random encounters can do is to tell the players there's activity in the area.

For example, they're trying to scout out an army. They encounter a patrol and beat it handily.

Now, every time the GM rolls and "nothing happens" the players are reminded that there's activity in the area. So it makes the area feel "alive" without tripping over a fight every 5 minutes

[rel]

Random encounters, like spell slots and other resources recovering with time, equipment lists with the exact cost and weight of each item listed, and specific duration's for buffs and the burn time of torches, were all once part of larger resource management minigames that formed the bulk of minute to minute gameplay in early roleplaying games.

Most systems using those elements today have dropped the underlying minigames, resulting in a collection of unconnected mechanics that serve little purpose and usually cause problems as they limit the timescales over which the game can effectively take place, and slow down play with largely irrelevant book keeping and busywork.



Eh, no, not as an absolute assessment of the many ways that a random encounter can be used.
Your decision to include encumbrance (which isn't a hard and fast rule, has variants, and only gets as much attention as a table allows it) strikes me as off-topic for this thread (if we go back to post number 1).

I'm not sure I follow.

Random encounters were, when first introduced, absolutely part of larger minigames of resource management alongside daily resources, limited supplies and consistent danger.

likewise, I think its reasonable to say that a lot of systems now include those traditional design elements without considering their original purpose or what they might bring to the game but simply because they are common in other games and have a long history.

And when originally quite specific mechanics are blindly included in a game because of tradition, you will often run into problems, because said mechanics are unlikely to be a good fit for the system, and might be incomplete.

The OP asks what random encounters are actually for, given that they seem to actively reduce their fun at the table.
My answer is, that these days such mechanics often serve no purpose, vestigial elements of more complex gameplay loops that no longer exist.

Now you can certainly mod those old systems back into a game that doesn't have them, or adjust the existing mechanics or your gameplay until they fit one another, but a built for purpose mechanic will do a better job.

[Vahnavoi]

That's a tautology. It amounts to saying random encounters are bad design, because if it's not bad design it's not a random encounter.

It's closer to a No True Scotsman in context: randomly encountered patrollers don't count as random encounters because Telok spent some effort figuring out who those random patrollers are and why they'd be in the area.

See also the odd logical knot Talakeal tied himself into, where he considers his random-walking enemy to be a random encounter (hence why he is asking about random encounters and wandering monsters to begin with) but then elsewhere stresses how his random-walking enemy is NOT a random encounter, to "ward off pedantry".

---


The dice can't decide what the encounter is without a table to roll on. Unless you come up with a scheme for rolling out of the entire monster manual.

The irony there being that monster manuals usually include details on where a monster is likely to be encountered and provide encounter tables to match. So obviously somebody made a lot of decisions of when and where meeting those monsters would be appropriate before a single die is rolled in actual play.

[Fiery Diamond]

The idea that it's somehow wrong to randomize world responses to player actions, but somehow right to randomize success and failure, is an oxymoron. Success and failure rather obviously fall in the catecory of world responses, a game design that disowns randomness logically disowns all manners of it. That means no die rolls, no drawing cards etc., just deterministic rules and human decisions. Non-random games are just fine, but this train of thought leading there, trying to selectively disown some forms of randomness while embracing others, is full of holes.

So is the whole train of thought based on disclaiming responsibility. Look. If I design a random encounter for my game, I'm obviously just as responsible for its inclusion as I would be for any non-random encounter. The only shifting of responsibility possible is from game master to game designer, if these are separate people, but randomness has nothing to do with it, because randomness is put into games by people.

There's a tangible difference in play, though. If I'm transparently rolling a balanced die for 1-in-6 chance, any player with half a wit can realize there's a difference there compared to simply deciding by fiat or arriving at a conclusion through deterministic logic. Namely, there is a now a thing in the game that I, as a game master, don't and didn't know beforehand, because being a game master doesn't make me prescient. I can't tell which side a balanced die will land on, so there is a moment of genuine uncertainty.

And that is the basic thing all forms of randomness exist to contribute: genuine, transparent, uncertainty. They put a little bit of chaos, in the mathematical sense, into a game. That's the point. It may or may not be what you personally desire, but it has obvious utility.

Paragraph by paragraph....

1) No. You're either deliberately misinterpreting or making a category error, and I'm not sure which. "The blacksmith responds negatively to you insulting his parentage" and "You succeed in climbing the cliff" are CATEGORICALLY different things, and not because one is social and the other is a physical task. "Does this attack hit?" and "Does this tactic of trying to bait the orcs into acting in a tactically unsound way have the desired results?" are both combat, and only one is a world response - the latter. You can argue that the latter is ALSO success/failure, but not that the former is a world response. In any case, my personal preferences say that it is a bad thing to randomize the latter, and that randomization is only for the former.

2) More or less correct; the "scenario designer" and the "GM" being different people is, in a game where that isn't baked into the core of how the rules function (and in a game like D&D, it's not), is (again, in my personal preference), a BAD thing. Randomness isn't really the issue here; it's the delegation of the creative and responsive aspects to something other than the person sitting in the DM's seat. Recall how I said I have a hatred for published adventure paths as a concept.

3) Of course there's a difference in play. There's also a difference in optics. In both cases, I don't want the system to be determining how the world responds. You keep holding up "genuine uncertainty" as though this is somehow something positive that we must strive for. There are only a small category of things I want uncertainty for in my games, both as a player and as a DM, and adding "Oh, the DM has no idea how things are going to go and is leaving it up to random chance" to things outside that category is a pure negative (again, in my personal preference, I can't emphasize that enough).

4. If it's contrary to my personal desire, it has no utility in games in which I participate. There's no such thing as objective utility.



They are both. It's not an either/or proposition.

This was in response to my statement about DMs being creators/managers not judges handing down impartial rulings based on laws somebody else made.

MAJOR correction to your statement: They can be both. It's an "and/or," not "either/or." It's most definitely not just "and," like you stated. And my personal preference is that they should be only the first, just like it's your preference that they be both.

[KorvinStarmast]

vestigial elements of more complex gameplay loops that no longer exist. For you, perhaps. As I pointed out, a formal encumbrance system is also in Blades in the Dark. (And it's a bit less fiddly than D&D's).

[Vahnavoi]

@Fiery Diamond:

Chanting "it's my personal preference!" over and over doesn't paper over holes in explanations for why you have said preferences. The line in the sand you're drawing is irrelevant - success and failure exist entirely in the category of world responses. None of your sample cases support the distinction you're trying to make.

The non-fallacious version of your argument would be "randomized world responses are bad except for success and failure", but that just raises the question of "why?". Saying you prefer it that way only returns the same question, because nobody here has a reason to believe that is a terminal preference you desire for its own sake.

[KorvinStarmast]

And my personal preference is that they should be only the first, just like it's your preference that they be both. Not just my preference, how the role was built in the first place.
It is not hard at all to be both.
I don't understand your preference to constrain the flexibility of the GM/DM, but I guess the fact that I DM'd and GM'd more than I played for a lot of years - and I didn't run into the amazing stories of toxic GMs/DMs like so many lamenters of the game princes {1} do on this set of forums -leaves me feeling 'put a GM in a box' points of view to be alien to RPGs.

When we had bad DMs/GMs it was simple: we didn't play their games.

({1} Aside: But I still luv ya, Pex! :smallbiggrin:) )

[Pex]

That's a tautology. It amounts to saying random encounters are bad design, because if it's not bad design it's not a random encounter.

You say that as if I'm wrong.

Randomness is randomness. Party needs to travel from Point A to Point B. Each day of traveling is roleplayed out. The DM rolls dice to determine if something happens. If something happens roll dice again to determine what that something is. Same thing with watches at night.

[kyoryu]

When only the dice decide what the encounter is, and the encounter has nothing to do with the adventure plot.

As others have pointed out, that's a very narrow view, though a not-uncommon one.

Secondly, the dice are never the sole determinant of the encounter - the tables are written by someone. They should reflect the world, the situation, etc. Also, even if the encounter isn't "directly" related to the plot, the consequences of the encounter can absolutely impact the "plot" - by reducing resources, costing time, alerting enemies, etc.

However, to be fair, random encounters generally aren't of use in games where the game really is going from one set-piece encounter to another one. I don't think anybody is advocating their inclusion in every game - I don't use them in most games I run.

[Easy e]

Pex and I are definitely on opposite sides of the fence on this. Which is fine!

He wants all random encounters while traveling, and I want none!

We all have our preferences.

[Kish]

You say that as if I'm wrong.

You noticed! Now try not bolding half my sentence and ignoring the other half.


Randomness is randomness. Party needs to travel from Point A to Point B. Each day of traveling is roleplayed out. The DM rolls dice to determine if something happens. If something happens roll dice again to determine what that something is. Same thing with watches at night.

"Random encounter table" is a technical term in Dungeons and Dragons. Focusing on one definition of the term "random" and expanding it into sweeping assertions no sourcebook supports is as accurate and as useful as it would be to insist that "alignment" refers to a car's wheels.

If you desire to understand what other people are doing with random encounter tables, rather than simply to tell them they are badwrong for using them at all, there are multiple examples in this thread, none of which resembles your assertions.

[gbaji]

Well, first off, I think there's a lot of disagreement on exactly what constitutes a "random encounter", which means a lot of people talking past each other.

Personally, I think there is a range between "no randomness at all" and "everything is random". And I suspect that most people tend to agree that too far to either of those ends of the spectrum is probably less preferrable than somewhere in the middle. If every single thing in the game world is pre-written, where it is, when it is, what it's doing, etc, then this is going to a) be a nightmare for the GM to actually run, and b) feel static to the players. On the flip side, if all the players do is walk around the game world while the GM rolls dice to see what they run into during this time period, then it's going to feel very arbitrary and... well... random. Most players will not enjoy either of those extremes much.

Random encounters can absolutely mean "Someone decided what could be wandering around in this area, and the GM rolls to determine if an encounter with such a thing occurs, and which in the list of things is actually encountered". IMO, that's often the most common method of doing this. It's what you are doing when you roll for wandering monsters in a dungeon (there's always a list of "what can be wandering, often also based on where in the dungeon the party is). It's what you are doing when you roll on an encounter table based on the type of terrain you are traveling through (old D&D encounter tables). It's also what you do when you are running some in-town module and determining what events/people the party encounters while walking around various parts of said town. They all follow a very similar pattern, and have a very similar purpose: To make the environment seem dynamic to the players.

These sorts of tools almost always come with some caveats about their use though. You do not have to use them. You are not required to accept the results. The GM can absolutely look at the result and say "nope". And yes, these tools tend to work best when they are spinkled around within an otherwise more "static" set of things that have been predefined by the GM. And they *really* work well when the static and random portions are linked. Several people have talked about the simple idea of having a "lair" for something, but then chances of that something (or portions of that something) appearing in other areas in the area around where that lair is. That's often a very good way to implement "random encounters", while also actually re-inforcing the "non-random" components of the game world. You are near the orc village. Obviously, if you go to where the village is, you will encounter orcs (and the village!). But there will be odds of encountering random groups of orcs in the area around the village. That's certainly a case where the "random encounter" makes sense.

And yes, the other extreme bears mentioning. It may not make as much sense to have a random monster generator that literally has every monster in the game setting in it, and just roll randomly for whether and what the party encounters every X hours of the day. You *can* do this, but then the players will start to wonder why they ran into a pack of were wolfs two hours ago, and a group of pilgrims traveling along now, and two hours from now will encounter a dragon. Totally random encounters can lead to a game world experience for the players that makes zero sense.

So yeah. Somewhere in between tends to work. But any time you are rolling dice to determine what the players encounter, you are running a "random encounter". The distinction between "wandering monster" and other types is merely whether the party is moving and something comes upon them, or whether the party is moving and comes upon something else. The only real difference between them is whether the encounter contains an environment factor or not.



Yes, interesting things happen more often to the PCs than is statistically likely. This is because we are playing a game about adventures and people who lead extraordinary lives. I generally don't go in for the more cinematic games, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with doing so.

Sure. But as I've posted a number of times on this forum, I tend to allow for *one* "unlikely event/encounter" in an adventure. And that one encounter is the "hook" that starts up the adventure. The PCs "just happen" to be walking down the trail when they see someone fleeing from bandits. The party "just happens" to be sitting at a table at a tavern when the wounded stranger shows up and hands off some clue to a treasure map to them. These are unlikely things to happen, but if they didn't happen to the PCs, they'd happen to someone else, and those other people would be on the adventure instead. It's assumed for the adventure path to occur in the first place.

But, having set that up, you need to be extremely aware of introducing random and unlikely events after that point. Having too many things "just happen" to occur in ways that lead the players through an adventure will feel a bit too pat to the players, but also feel a lot like railroading. Set up the hook. Let the players choose to follow it where it leads.



The issue here is you are attaching special significance to the magical ritual vs. encountering the monster at all which just doesn't exist.

Likewise, you are not comparing scouting vs. not scouting, you are comparing scouting vs. never going in the room at all.

Except the way you've described the process there is a significance between them. If the party does not witness the magical ritual, then they will never encounter the monster. There is a very direct casual relationship between one and the other.

Also, it's not just "never going in the room at all", it's "never looking into the room at all". In the case you described, the party scout went ahead and looked into the room. He saw the wizard casting spells on the monster. He then reported back. It was the act of him "scouting the room" that created the monster. So yes, it's exactly a question of "scouting versus not scouting". If the party had not sent their scout ahead to look into that room, would the monster have been patroling the dungeon such that they could encounter it? The answer, at least as you've described things, is: No. Thus, the monster only patrolled the dungeon as a result of their scout looking into the room.

That's a problem to me.


Pretend the wizard doesn't exist. The scout opens the door, sees a large angry monster in there, with no other exits and no source of food. Ok. Cool. No "scripted event". Is it now safe to assume the monster will just quietly sit in the room for all time and will never leave or cause anyone trouble?

No. it is not. But it is safe to assume that the odds of the monster leaving the room and causing trouble should be the same whether the scout ever opened the door and looked into the room or not. You are arguing that it's uneasonable to assume that this monster will just always sit in the room and never leave. And you are correct about that. But the problem here is that the monster does just that until the scout looks into the room. What should happen is that you have the room marked as the monster's lair, and the entire region around the dungeon marked as having a random chance of encountering that monster as it's wandering around, looking for food, or otherwise causing trouble.

But that's not what you did in this case. In this case there was no chance of encountering the monster outside the room until *after* the scout looked into the room. Which, in the case of just a monster being in a room, would seem extremely unrealistic, and would make the players think that the monster was created by them scouting (and they would be correct).


Now, let's say they don't ever open the door. They just leave a blank spot on their map. They miss out on any treasure, XP, lore, or connecting routes that might be down that way. Should they feel *safer* having an unexplored room behind them, containing who knows what and leading who knows where?

No. They shouldn't. Because the odds of encountering that monster in a given area in the dungeon should be identical whether they open the door or not. They should be exactly as safe either way.

But the way you ran the encounter, they were safer if they left it unexplored. That's exactly the problem I'm talking about. The monster should be patroling a given section of the dungeon at a given time regardless of whether the party ever came even close to looking into that room. But you made the possibility of encountering the monster entirely about whether a member of the party looked into the room. And, having done that, you absolutely created a "you must encounter this now, or you will encounter it at a random time/place later" scenario. Your players were correct to conclude that scouting into this room caused the monster to encounter them in the dungeon later, becuase that's exactly what did happen. If their scout had not looked into the room, the monster would not wander the dungeon, and they would not encounter it wandering in the dungeon. It's like you are actually making my argument for me.


Then they are absolute fools.

Fools for wanting the game world they are playing in to make sense to them? I don't think that's foolish. I think that's what most players want.


No GM can model an entire world and everyone in it while off-screen. They have to know the GM is using some sort of sleight of hand to decide what they encounter. But that is irrelevant to their actions.

That's a heck of a pivot/strawman from "players should expect that the NPCs actions should not change based purely on being observed". We're not talking about quantum physics here. It's not at all unreasonable for the players to expect that scouting a room should not kick off some script that now creates a new threat in the dungeon that otherwise would not have existed for them to have to deal with. I'm not sure how much more clearly to state this.


Once something is known, they need to account for it in their plans.

But things that are not yet known should also exist and affect the PCs exactly the same as if they knew about it. All knowing about it should do is allow them to plan for the thing they know about. It should not bring it into existence in the first place.


You specifically said that if the players, by chance, encounter something too strong for them, then it is the GM's duty to put in an escape route for them. This is absolutely what you are getting mad at me for doing (even though in my game it happened by random chance rather than a deliberate GM decision).

The GM created the thing that is too strong for them. The GM created the random tables/rules/whatever that determined when/where the PCs might encounter that thing. I think you have the direction of my argument backwards. It's not "if the players, by chance, encounter something too strong for them, ...", it's "If the GM creates a monster that is too strong for the players to fight, he should not have them run into it randomly and with no chance to avoid the encounter".

You're leading with the conditions I specifically said you should not do. Let me repeat again: If you create a monster that is too powerful for the party to defeat if they run into it randomly and without the ability to prep/whatever to defeat it, then you... wait for it... should not put it on a random encounter table and have them encounter it. Or, if you do, then you need to contrive some means to ensure they can avoid the encounter if the wish. Blaming this all on the die rolls after the fact is a cop out.


I don't know how you (or I, or other forum goers) can possibly make an of the objectively correct risk assessment of a case with this many unknowns. I don't know how you can calculate the odds of death at all without knowledge of what was down the other corridors, let alone determine they are "very-very-high". With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you the odds were actually zero, but without that, anything else is a complete asspull.

Irrelevant. Your players at the table you GM made that decision. It's not about what I think, or what any other forum poster thinks. It's the fact that your assessment of the players decision was radically different from what the players actual decision was when presented with the situation. There is no "objectively correct risk assessment". There is only "what the players will decide to do". The danger here is that you seem to think that there *is* one objectively correct risk assessment and that your players will arrive at the exact same answer as the one you think that one is.

That's where you are going wrong.


And also, you are assuming the party just ran blindly into the dark. You are totally ignoring the fact that the rogue offered to scout out the passage alone to make sure it was safe, and was shouted down. In this case, the odds of death are extremely low, especially for people who aren't the rogue.

The option to scout down the other hallway only occurred *after* the party encountered the monster and were losing to it. This was not a situation where the scout could take 15 or 20 minutes to quietly sneak down the hallway, see what is there and come back so the party could make a decision about what to do. The "odds of death" were extremely high for everyone in the party *except* the rogue, since they were the ones left fighting the monster (one person down no less), while the scout is off doing this.


I know you think stealth is useless if it doesn't provide a surprise round, but even if there had been a second enemy behind them, the odds of it actually spotting him are miniscule.

Again. It's not about the rogue's safety. It's about the entire party. Because they were already in combat, and losing, their options and decisions were radically different than they would have been otherwise. It's just weird to me that you are even talking about the rogue when it was the rest of the party actively in combat at the time. The rogue may very well have escaped, but it's unlikely the rest of the party would have survived if they tried to do this. The only way the whole party could survive is if the whole party all ran down the unexplored hallway, at full speed (unless this is a really slow monster), which puts the whole party at risk of running smack into something else dangerous and being crushed between that and the monster chasing them.

You eliminated their options by not allowing them to avoid the encounter.



This is so frustrating. I have said over and over and over again that this encounter was purely decided by the dice. There was no intention. It was completely random.

Your dice determined the exact moment the monster entered the room, down to a 30 second or so granularity? I doubt that strongly. You had a ton of leeway as a GM to have the monster show up even just a minute or so after the party did. You could easily have allowed the party to hear the monster approaching from some distance, and given them time to decide what to do. You didn't do that.


During the encounter, I failed my Zen test and imagined how the fight was likely to go, realized they couldn't beat it in a straight fight, and would have to flee, which would be really scary at the time, but would ultimately be safe and allow them to discover the back door to the dungeon.

But this was absolutely not planned in advance.

You looked at the map and realized that there was a way for them to escape this monster only after they already started fighting it? First off, I don't believe that's actually true, but if it is, then how on earth did you expect them to survive this enounter? This leads right back to 'don't put monsters too powerful for the players to defeat without pre-planning on your random encounter chart, And if you do, then make sure any encounter with said monster is of the "can avoid if they choose" type'.




Dozens of ways. This party is almost perfectly made for this task.

Scry on it. Have the rogue occasionally scout their back trail. Set up trip-wire alarms. Lay down flour periodically. Scry it. Have a spirit follow it. Etc.

Heck, the illusionist even has a spell that let's him see through a monster's eyes to always know exactly where it is and what it is doing.

None of those methods would work if the party is literally entering a room from one side while the monster "just happens" to enter from the other. Any trip wire alarms would sound too far away for the party to detect. They don't need the flour to see the monsters footprints, they can see the monster's feet. How can they scry something if they don't know it's there yet? Did they encounter this thing previously? Did they realistically have a way to sit in a room while a spellcaster sends some sort of wizard's eye or something exploring the dungeon around them (honestly don't know how scrying works in your game)? I'm also assuming that the illusionist has to know where the monster is (and that it exists) before he can cast his "see through the monsters eyes" spell, so not sure how that would help in this situation either.

Again though. All of that is irrelevant. At the moment you rolled the dice and realized the monster was walking up the hallway that lead to the room the party was returning to, you made a decision about how to run that encounter. You knew the party did not know the monster was there, and you knew they could not defeat it in a fight in that room. You also knew that they had not left any scrying eyes or trip wires or flour or whatever behind them, and thus had no way to know not to enter the room when they did. You choose to have it enter the room at an exact time when it was impossible for the party to avoid it becoming aware of them. You knew all of this before drawing the room and placing the minis. Yet, you went forward with the encounter anyway.

What did you expect would happen?


The map was already drawn and the minis were already down. The chamber was large enough that there was no realistic chance of the party hearing the monster coming (and vice versa) and they both entered it at roughly the same time. This was determined by the dice, not by me. They could have set up a trap or explored the far hallway earlier (they actually had explored the hallway earlier, they just didn't realize it, but that's another story), but there was not time to do so in this moment. They could have retreated back down the way they came, but that could have easily put them in an even worse situation.

You drew the map and placed the minis. You rolled the dice. You interpreted what the dice rolls meant. I'm not sure what "roughly the same time" actually means here. What exact time granularity are your dice actually calibrated for? I mean, there's a lot of variation in terms of how quickly people and monsters move when wandering/exploring. Again, it seems like an extremely contrived situation for the monster to "just happen" to enter that room from the other side at the exact time the party did. One minute earlier or later and they could have detected the monster and avoided it.

I'm sorry. I'm calling BS on the whole "it was the dice and not me!" claim.


Also, did you mean to list a bunch of things the players could have done and then ask me if I did any of them? Because it seems like you are just asking "Did they hear the monster coming in advance?" and trying to make it sound like a whole bunch of things rather than just one thing.

Well, a whole bunch of things can be derived from one thing: "allow the party to detect the monster's approach before it aggros on them". And also a whole bunch of different ways you could have allowed for that to happen. You set up the encounter so that none of them were possible. The party was going to have the monster detect them, and all decisions from that point onward were going to have to be made while "in combat" with that monster. That eliminated a boatload of options for the players.


I agree. Which makes it really weird that everyone just jumps to that conclusion and then sticks to it despite being told over and over again that it isn't the case.

This a lie. And as I have said that wasn't the case maybe half a dozen times now, it's starting to get really upsetting.

Both of these responses derive from you insisting that you had no hand in how the encounter occurred. You are the GM. You have all the power to decide how the encounter happens. You saying over and over that "I didn't do this", and "It was the dice" is not really a valid response IMO. You are the GM. There were a long list of things you could have done to avoid this outcome. You did none of them. Meanwhile, your players had basically only either "don't explore this section of the dungeon at all", or "flee down the unexplored hallway after the encounter with the monster".

Those are not great options. And again, you knew they had already made the first choice, but didn't make any account for it when deciding how the encounter occurred. Which left them with only one choice left which could avoid fatalities: "flee down the unexplored hallway after the encounter with the monster". You pinned the entire encounter on them "figuring out" to make that one choice. If you do this often enough as a GM, you will run into situations where the players don't think of or make that one choice, and then you will have pissed off players. Best to avoid it entirely.


Here's how I would have done things. I would have either had the monster show up in the room first, have the players hear the monster rooting around, then allow them to decide what to do about it *or* have the players enter the room first, hear the monster coming down the first hallway towards them and again allow them to decide that to do about it. That trivial matter of a minute or two variation in arrival time in the room makes a *huge* difference in terms of options for the players. That's all that needed to be done differently here to make that encounter work.

And yes. It follows the guidelines I posted earlier about random encounters. Don't ever put a random encounter (or wandering monster, whatever) into an adventure unless it is either something the party can manage when encountered "randomly" *or* ensure that however they encounter it, they always have a means to avoid a direct combat with said monster. And yes, if this means making slight adjustments to the when and where of the encounter itself, then this is what you should do.

[Vahnavoi]

@gbaji: you make a small, but important error, when you think of game where player characters "just walk around and roll to see what happens".

Where did you get the idea that a game being arbitrary and random will lead to players feeling a game is arbitrary and random?

Because it can be empirically shown that humans are primed to see patterns, but bad at detecting randomness - which put together mean humans tend to see patterns even when there are none. Random games are hence perfectly capable of creating the illusion of meaning and purpose in players.

Which goes a long way to explain overall longevity of games of chance. You know, the genre of games that is both older and more popular, taken in total, than tabletop roleplaying games have ever been? The idea that "most players" wouldn't enjoy a random game is ill-established - if anything, tabletop roleplayers are the odd ones out for wanting a pretense of "playing a character" or "living world" or whatever. Most people who play games are perfectly happy rolling dice, flipping cards, dealing tiles or watching blinking lights of a slot machine without such extra baggage.

[Lord Torath]

@gobaji

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I feel you're being way too hard on Talakeal for his Wizard-Sumoning-A-Monster room.

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

If the PCs learn about the wizard back in town, and that he's going to be summoning monsters, then by all means, implement a time limit. "Wizard will complete his summoning in Your Favorite Number of hours." Or if the PCs enter the dungeon, do not encounter the wizard, but kill many of the other inhabitants, the wizard may learn that someone has penetrated the dungeon, and maybe he should summon some extra protection. In that case, sure, have the monster already summoned the next time the PCs enter the dungeon.

But if neither party has any inkling of the presence of the other, then the most interesting time for the PCs to encounter the wizard is when he's in the middle of summoning the monster, and can thus be interrupted should the party so choose.

[Easy e]

Lord Torath- You are making the classic blunder, which is only followed by starting a land war in Asia.

You are looking at the game as a piece of media, a story. It appears a lot of folks do not do this. They think of it purely as either a game or a simulation. They are not interested in the connection to story. This forum has at least taught me this about player preference.

They either prefer a gamist or a simulationist approach rather than a Narrativist approach. Therefore, when you ask which would a player prefer..... the answer varies a lot depending on where they fall on the triangle between gamist, simulationist, and narrativist.

To make it harder, each is a spectrum and everyone falls on a different place on it, so there is no objective "This is the right mix".

[GloatingSwine]

@gobaji

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I feel you're being way to hard on Talakeal for his Wizard-Sumoning-A-Monster room.

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going in is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?


The disconnect comes when you provide that scenario to Talakeal's players, who live in bizarro world and are also paranoid and risk averse.

When they see a summoning in progress they don't assume they're going to be able to interrupt it, they assume it's piling even more risk on top of the risk they'd already be taking fighting the wizard because they can't possibly stop it before the monster appears fight them.

[Morgaln]

The disconnect comes when you provide that scenario to Talakeal's players, who live in bizarro world and are also paranoid and risk averse.

When they see a summoning in progress they don't assume they're going to be able to interrupt it, they assume it's piling even more risk on top of the risk they'd already be taking fighting the wizard because they can't possibly stop it before the monster appears fight them.

I think the issue is a bit different from that, although still related to Talakeal's specific group:

Gbaji's point is that both the wizard and the summon only existed in the first place because the room they were in was opened. If the players had never opened that room, the summoning wouldn't have occurred and the players would never have met that monster. I'm not sure Talakeal has ever confirmed this is how it would have played out (I might have missed that confirmation), but that's the assumption in gbaji's post, and it is a likely one.

What this means is that scouting the room added a threat that would not have been present if the players hadn't scouted and just ignored that room. In other words, on a meta-level i. e. from the viewpoint of the players (but not the characters) scouting was detrimental in this case. Most players would probably realize that and recognize it as a not uncommon GM tactic, but look at it from the character viewpoint of "we ignored that wizard, it came back to bite us." Maybe they'd even decide to go back and take out that wizard now to prevent that from happening again.

Talakeal's players, however, have a very adversarial relationship with their GM and assume he did this to spite them. So their takeaway from this happening even once is that scouting is useless as the GM will make them encounter the monster anyway, even if they try to avoid it. Which of course completely ignores that they encountered the summoned monster but not the wizard, and probably also that scouting did work for them multiple times in the past. It's confirmation bias at its finest.

Note that I have no problem with the wizard being a scripted event. Personally, I might have it being contingent on other factors (Mostly how likely it is the wizard even knows the players are around, since the summoning narratively was supposed to be a reaction to the players' presence), but I am certainly guilty of doing similar things.

[Talakeal]

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going in is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

This is pretty accurate.

But, I don't generally run a cinematic game. I don't begrudge GM's who do, but I tend to fall on the more simulationist side.

I only do things like this when some scene strikes me as cool, probably less than 1% of encounters. But, contrary to what Gbaji thinks, I feel like most players enjoy exciting coincidences and are primed to expect them by consuming single author fiction where the plot is driven along by odd coincidences.

Of course, this doesn't stop the players from bitching about it when they lose, but IMO at this point its that they are looking for any excuse to justify being upset.


Sure. But as I've posted a number of times on this forum, I tend to allow for *one* "unlikely event/encounter" in an adventure. And that one encounter is the "hook" that starts up the adventure. The PCs "just happen" to be walking down the trail when they see someone fleeing from bandits. The party "just happens" to be sitting at a table at a tavern when the wounded stranger shows up and hands off some clue to a treasure map to them. These are unlikely things to happen, but if they didn't happen to the PCs, they'd happen to someone else, and those other people would be on the adventure instead. It's assumed for the adventure path to occur in the first place.

But, having set that up, you need to be extremely aware of introducing random and unlikely events after that point. Having too many things "just happen" to occur in ways that lead the players through an adventure will feel a bit too pat to the players, but also feel a lot like railroading. Set up the hook. Let the players choose to follow it where it leads.

Your game sounds extremely boring and I am glad I am not one of your players.

Just to check, I went through some classic, very highly regarded, adventure modules and most of them have an unlikely coincidence on every single page, presumably because the players expect action and adventure and you don't get action and adventure from ordinary everyday occurrences.


Except the way you've described the process there is a significance between them. If the party does not witness the magical ritual, then they will never encounter the monster. There is a very direct casual relationship between one and the other.

Also, it's not just "never going in the room at all", it's "never looking into the room at all". In the case you described, the party scout went ahead and looked into the room. He saw the wizard casting spells on the monster. He then reported back. It was the act of him "scouting the room" that created the monster. So yes, it's exactly a question of "scouting versus not scouting". If the party had not sent their scout ahead to look into that room, would the monster have been patroling the dungeon such that they could encounter it? The answer, at least as you've described things, is: No. Thus, the monster only patrolled the dungeon as a result of their scout looking into the room.

That's a problem to me.

No. it is not. But it is safe to assume that the odds of the monster leaving the room and causing trouble should be the same whether the scout ever opened the door and looked into the room or not. You are arguing that it's uneasonable to assume that this monster will just always sit in the room and never leave. And you are correct about that. But the problem here is that the monster does just that until the scout looks into the room. What should happen is that you have the room marked as the monster's lair, and the entire region around the dungeon marked as having a random chance of encountering that monster as it's wandering around, looking for food, or otherwise causing trouble.

But that's not what you did in this case. In this case there was no chance of encountering the monster outside the room until *after* the scout looked into the room. Which, in the case of just a monster being in a room, would seem extremely unrealistic, and would make the players think that the monster was created by them scouting (and they would be correct).

This is correct. So let's focus on the actual problem rather than inventing things that never happened and trying to solve those.

This issue isn't really how viable scouting is; the players got information through scouting, could have acted on it, but chose not to. Saying this means scouting is weak is like saying a +5 holy avenger is too weak because the players never took it out of the scabbard.

But the issue that exploring an area of the map "creates" new monsters is an issue. Because once you have established a monster exists, it has to be dealt with.

From a realism perspective, I could track the movements of monsters before the players know where they are. But, this is both a lot more work for me and, more importantly, will make the players more upset, not less. The lack of "realism" isn't what they are upset about, its wandering monsters. If anything, my players would be more happy with a *less* realistic game where the monsters just sat in a 10x10 room guarding a chest and never leaving to eat or use the latrine, even when provoked.

The players do not like the loss of control that comes with a monster being able to attack them on its terms. That is what they are upset about.


What did you expect would happen?

I already said, I expected them to try fighting, realize they were in over their heads, and either retreat down the unknown corridor and escape out the back or dig in their heels and die. What I did not expect was half the party wanting to do one, half the party wanting to do the other, and then being sacrificed by their allies.

But again, that's just an expectation. Things rarely play out that way in practice, and my players are certainly capable of surprising me and pulling off amazing wins / escapes that I never saw coming; they are stubborn, not stupid.


Fools for wanting the game world they are playing in to make sense to them? I don't think that's foolish. I think that's what most players want.

They are fools for demanding something unrealistic.

No GM, except maybe Quertus, is actually going to keep track of where every NPC in the campaign is and what they are doing at all times. They are going to use shortcuts. These shortcuts may be quantum / temporal ogres, random encounter tables, scripting, or just a GM deciding to follow the rule of cool and do whatever seems most interesting at the time. These are all valid approaches, and it is none of the player's business which one the GM is using, their job is to respond to situations as they arrive.

And if you actually look at things complexly, realistic models do not have the NPCs exist in a vacuum. The behavior of one NPC will influence the behavior of every other NPC they interract with, and this includes NPCs who are "off the map". I read an article the other day that was explaining how the fall of the Aztec empire was the direct consequence of a decision made in Imperial China a century earlier, despite the fact that they occurred on opposite sides of the planet and the two civilizations never encountered one another. The same would be true of a realistic model of NPC behavior.

This is, of course, ridiculous. But it is "realistic". We aren't talking about realism, but rather an arbitrary line.


That's a heck of a pivot/strawman from "players should expect that the NPCs actions should not change based purely on being observed". We're not talking about quantum physics here. It's not at all unreasonable for the players to expect that scouting a room should not kick off some script that now creates a new threat in the dungeon that otherwise would not have existed for them to have to deal with. I'm not sure how much more clearly to state this.

Before the players encounter a monster it could be anywhere or doing anything. Once the GM has established a concrete location and activity for it, the players have to deal with it.

What is the alternative?


The GM created the thing that is too strong for them. The GM created the random tables/rules/whatever that determined when/where the PCs might encounter that thing. I think you have the direction of my argument backwards. It's not "if the players, by chance, encounter something too strong for them, ...", it's "If the GM creates a monster that is too strong for the players to fight, he should not have them run into it randomly and with no chance to avoid the encounter".

You're leading with the conditions I specifically said you should not do. Let me repeat again: If you create a monster that is too powerful for the party to defeat if they run into it randomly and without the ability to prep/whatever to defeat it, then you... wait for it... should not put it on a random encounter table and have them encounter it. Or, if you do, then you need to contrive some means to ensure they can avoid the encounter if the wish. Blaming this all on the die rolls after the fact is a cop out.

This is a mega-dungeon. An indoor sandbox.

The players can choose to explore it in any order they like.

The deeper down the players go, the stronger the monsters get.

If they choose to push on into areas that are above their level, they take the risk of death.


I just find it kind of funny that you are complaining about my campaign being "scripted" and "like a railroad" when it appears your real issue is the lack of guard rails and contrived situations keeping them safe. Likewise, you are saying I needed to add in a contrived way to avoid the encounter if they wish, when the whole problem is that they did have an easy out and chose not to take it.


Irrelevant. Your players at the table you GM made that decision. It's not about what I think, or what any other forum poster thinks. It's the fact that your assessment of the players decision was radically different from what the players actual decision was when presented with the situation. There is no "objectively correct risk assessment". There is only "what the players will decide to do". The danger here is that you seem to think that there *is* one objectively correct risk assessment and that your players will arrive at the exact same answer as the one you think that one is.

That's where you are going wrong.

I agree, it is irrelevant. Yet you and Vahnovoi keep bringing it up.

I specifically said that my tactical analysis was merely my opinion, at which point I was told my opinion was objectively wrong.

Now, when I respond to that accusation, you are acting like I was the one who said there was an objectively right answer and attacking me for that.

Its like you guys are playing the forum equivalent of "quit hitting yourself".


Unless of course, you are talking about the benefit of hindsight. With perfect knowledge of the situation, I can confidently say that escaping through the back door would have been objectively the right choice in that situation.


The option to scout down the other hallway only occurred *after* the party encountered the monster and were losing to it. This was not a situation where the scout could take 15 or 20 minutes to quietly sneak down the hallway, see what is there and come back so the party could make a decision about what to do. The "odds of death" were extremely high for everyone in the party *except* the rogue, since they were the ones left fighting the monster (one person down no less), while the scout is off doing this.

Again. It's not about the rogue's safety. It's about the entire party. Because they were already in combat, and losing, their options and decisions were radically different than they would have been otherwise. It's just weird to me that you are even talking about the rogue when it was the rest of the party actively in combat at the time. The rogue may very well have escaped, but it's unlikely the rest of the party would have survived if they tried to do this. The only way the whole party could survive is if the whole party all ran down the unexplored hallway, at full speed (unless this is a really slow monster), which puts the whole party at risk of running smack into something else dangerous and being crushed between that and the monster chasing them.

You eliminated their options by not allowing them to avoid the encounter.

Where are you getting these numbers from? How do you know precisely how long the corridor was and how long it would take the party to transverse it at various speeds and how long they could survive against the monster?

The rogue couldn't hurt the monster without rolling a nat 20. That was a big reason why they had no hope of killing the monster. His presence contributes almost nothing to the fight.

The tank, healer, and illusionist could have easily held off the monster long enough for the rogue to scout out the backdoor and confirm to the party that it was safe.

Half the party realized this, and were shouted down. After the rest of the party demanded they sacrifice themselves for their escape, I stopped the game and did a ret-con, and this was indeed exactly what happened.


You drew the map and placed the minis. You rolled the dice. You interpreted what the dice rolls meant. I'm not sure what "roughly the same time" actually means here. What exact time granularity are your dice actually calibrated for? I mean, there's a lot of variation in terms of how quickly people and monsters move when wandering/exploring. Again, it seems like an extremely contrived situation for the monster to "just happen" to enter that room from the other side at the exact time the party did. One minute earlier or later and they could have detected the monster and avoided it.

For simplicity sake, the monster's movements are tied to the party's. Whenever the party moves from one room to another, so does the patrolling monster. I randomize its start location every time they enter the dungeon, and I randomize its route every time it comes to an intersection.

In this case, the party entered the room with three exits while the monster was in the room to the west of it, and I rolled randomly and the dice indicated the monster moved east. So I ruled that they entered the room at roughly the same time.

But I am really, really, really curious about what you are thinking the party could have done with an extra thirty seconds, or even a couple minutes, of warning.

The only thing I can think of is going back north and hiding in the dead end, which is great if it works, but if it doesn't, the party is in a much worse position as now they actually have no place to go and have no choice but fighting to the death or coming up with a brilliant escape plan (which may involve selling out some of their own).


I'm sorry. I'm calling BS on the whole "it was the dice and not me!" claim.

What's the point of writing a 3000 word post in a thread about random encounters when you don't believe that a random encounter actually happened and are instead talking about some imagined railroad?

And heck, if my goal was to railroad the party into a chase scene, why didn't I just wait until the party had decided to enter the corridor I wanted to chase them down and have the monster appear then? Having it show up at the three way intersection just shows that not only am I dishonest railroader, but I am an incompetent dishonest railroader!


None of those methods would work if the party is literally entering a room from one side while the monster "just happens" to enter from the other. Any trip wire alarms would sound too far away for the party to detect. They don't need the flour to see the monsters footprints, they can see the monster's feet. How can they scry something if they don't know it's there yet? Did they encounter this thing previously? Did they realistically have a way to sit in a room while a spellcaster sends some sort of wizard's eye or something exploring the dungeon around them (honestly don't know how scrying works in your game)? I'm also assuming that the illusionist has to know where the monster is (and that it exists) before he can cast his "see through the monsters eyes" spell, so not sure how that would help in this situation either.

Yes, they knew the monster was patrolling the dungeon and had encountered it before.

Yes, the wizard could have easily scryed for it.

If an extra thirty seconds warning is as vital as you say, placing an alarm in the corridor would have easily given the players that much warning, and should have been a prudent course of action.


Lord Torath- You are making the classic blunder, which is only followed by starting a land war in Asia.

You are looking at the game as a piece of media, a story. It appears a lot of folks do not do this. They think of it purely as either a game or a simulation. They are not interested in the connection to story. This forum has at least taught me this about player preference.

They either prefer a gamist or a simulationist approach rather than a Narrativist approach. Therefore, when you ask which would a player prefer..... the answer varies a lot depending on where they fall on the triangle between gamist, simulationist, and narrativist.

To make it harder, each is a spectrum and everyone falls on a different place on it, so there is no objective "This is the right mix".


I think the issue is a bit different from that, although still related to Talakeal's specific group:

Gbaji's point is that both the wizard and the summon only existed in the first place because the room they were in was opened. If the players had never opened that room, the summoning wouldn't have occurred and the players would never have met that monster. I'm not sure Talakeal has ever confirmed this is how it would have played out (I might have missed that confirmation), but that's the assumption in gbaji's post, and it is a likely one.

What this means is that scouting the room added a threat that would not have been present if the players hadn't scouted and just ignored that room. In other words, on a meta-level i. e. from the viewpoint of the players (but not the characters) scouting was detrimental in this case. Most players would probably realize that and recognize it as a not uncommon GM tactic, but look at it from the character viewpoint of "we ignored that wizard, it came back to bite us." Maybe they'd even decide to go back and take out that wizard now to prevent that from happening again.

Talakeal's players, however, have a very adversarial relationship with their GM and assume he did this to spite them. So their takeaway from this happening even once is that scouting is useless as the GM will make them encounter the monster anyway, even if they try to avoid it. Which of course completely ignores that they encountered the summoned monster but not the wizard, and probably also that scouting did work for them multiple times in the past. It's confirmation bias at its finest.

Note that I have no problem with the wizard being a scripted event. Personally, I might have it being contingent on other factors (Mostly how likely it is the wizard even knows the players are around, since the summoning narratively was supposed to be a reaction to the players' presence), but I am certainly guilty of doing similar things.

This is all correct.

[Xervous]

GNS isn’t a wise choice to bring up as it was formulated with the intention of forcing games into these hard categories; not to mention it carries a lot of baggage. I’ve found it more productive to discuss the specific things that players might enjoy, as generalizations quickly erase the distinctions between topics that end up lumped together.

For example, take three players. The first wants to work with others to develop a narrative. The second wants to experience this fictional life in a fictional world through the lens of their character. The third is showing up for the joys of acting in character.

The first constitutes the entirety of N in GNS. Lumping the second player into N would imply narrative concerns that the player doesn’t necessarily have. Pushing #2 to S would group them among all manner of spreadsheet crunching minutiae. #3 is the most ill served by GNS, as there’s not much in the way of game structure that captures their specific delight.

Some people write it up as 8 types of fun, could possibly be split further if you’re hunting for minutiae to clarify differences in approach and desire.

Acting, story writing, experiencing life in someone else’s shoes, exploring a world and its responses to your actions, playing for a challenge, playing for a power trip, playing as a social activity, playing because it’s that time of the week you set aside where you don’t have to care about anything else in the world.

Games can be structured towards some of these, others are up to the individual or group specifics.


Random encounters...

Only preclude acting and expression so far as the frequency and duration of combat in the system takes up time.

Are disruptive of end to end planning in story writing.

Are simply a lived experience for the character.

End up being a challenge or a nuisance based on the way the rest of the system runs.

Can be an opportunity for power play.

And the rest of the reasons don’t apply here.


The most common failing with random encounters is that of time wasting, typically for combat when the resolution involves no or minimal changes to the game state beyond the encounter having transpired.


Talakeal has players who desire an overlap of power play with conditional hints of exploration. The game he’s serving them appears to be catering towards challenges both in combat and exploration. Random encounters are fine from T’s perspective since probabilistic risk assessment and risk taking is a long way of writing challenge. Random encounters for the players remain fine so long as they, the traumatized paranoid individuals that they are, get enough information to feel like they are making informed decisions.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think the issue is a bit different from that, although still related to Talakeal's specific group:

Gbaji's point is that both the wizard and the summon only existed in the first place because the room they were in was opened. If the players had never opened that room, the summoning wouldn't have occurred and the players would never have met that monster. Are we dealing with a quantum ogre, Schroedinger's dungeon, or what here? Scouting is a necessary aspect of exploration and discovery. A party that just kicks down doors without any recon/scouting ought to now and again pay a price for that level of carelessness.

What this means is that scouting the room added a threat that would not have been present if the players hadn't scouted and just ignored that room.
That's bizarre.
In AD&D 1e there was an Appendix which you could use explore a truly random dungeon. (And I think there was a Dragon Magazine article before that)
It was purely procedurally generated, and that tool was eventually adapted to games like Rogue and many others.

This issue isn't really how viable scouting is; the players got information through scouting, could have acted on it, but chose not to. Saying this means scouting is weak is like saying a +5 holy avenger is too weak because the players never took it out of the scabbard. Fairly stated.

The players do not like the loss of control that comes with a monster being able to attack them on its terms. That is what they are upset about. Time for them to go back to video games. But this is also an expectations issue. What kind of game do they expect to be playing?

This is a mega-dungeon. An indoor sandbox.

The players can choose to explore it in any order they like.

The deeper down the players go, the stronger the monsters get.

If they choose to push on into areas that are above their level, they take the risk of death.
As long as they know this ahead of time, I don't get their complaint.

What's the point of writing a 3000 word post in a thread about random encounters when you don't believe that a random encounter actually happened and are instead talking about some imagined railroad? I confess, I sniggered. :smallcool:

[BRC]

Re: The Wizard


The Players act under the assumption that anything the GM puts in the game is there because the GM thinks it will be interesting.

The Players open a door and see a wizard doing a summoning. From their perspective, this is entirely random.


Now, there are several possible outcomes here

1) "If we attack now, we get an easy fight against this Wizard and don't have to deal with their summon later"

2) "If we attack now, the Wizard finishes their summoning, and we have to fight both the wizard and the summon"

3) "If we DON'T Attack now, the wizard leaves us alone"

4) "If we DON'T Attack now, we might encounter the summon alone later"



Of the first two, what's more interesting. "We stumbled into the Wizard Room and killed a guy and now the GM throws away their statblock for the summon" or "As we attack the wizard finishes their summoning".

Since this was presented as a purely random encounter (They opened the door, there was wizard doing a summoning), the PC's must assume they're following the Most Expected Path for this encounter (Opening the door and stumbling upon it by random), and the Most Expected Path usually leads to fully experiencing the encounter. In this case, that would mean fighting both wizard and summon.
Like it's metagamey, but not THAT metagamey. Usually you don't get to skip part of an encounter by doing the most obvious thing (Rushing the evil wizard).

[Pex]

Pex and I are definitely on opposite sides of the fence on this. Which is fine!

He wants all random encounters while traveling, and I want none!

We all have our preferences.

You misinterpret. I don't want random encounters while traveling. As I said my first posting here I find them a waste of time. When we go from Point A to Point B, I want the DM to say "A week later you arrive at Point B" and we move on to the adventure. I don't want to roleplay every hour of every day listening to the DM monologuing about scenery and rolling dice to see if something happens then make a big deal about who is keeping watch when at night having us make perception checks where nothing happens anyway.

[Lord Torath]

Lord Torath- You are making the classic blunder, which is only followed by starting a land war in Asia. Where'd we leave that Sicilian? Maybe if I combine the blunders they'll cancel out? :smallbiggrin:

[Easy e]

You misinterpret. I don't want random encounters while traveling. As I said my first posting here I find them a waste of time. When we go from Point A to Point B, I want the DM to say "A week later you arrive at Point B" and we move on to the adventure. I don't want to roleplay every hour of every day listening to the DM monologuing about scenery and rolling dice to see if something happens then make a big deal about who is keeping watch when at night having us make perception checks where nothing happens anyway.

Oh, than you and I are aligned completely.

Let's get to the movie and stop watching all the ads before hand!

[gbaji]

@gbaji: you make a small, but important error, when you think of game where player characters "just walk around and roll to see what happens".

Where did you get the idea that a game being arbitrary and random will lead to players feeling a game is arbitrary and random?

Because it can be empirically shown that humans are primed to see patterns, but bad at detecting randomness - which put together mean humans tend to see patterns even when there are none. Random games are hence perfectly capable of creating the illusion of meaning and purpose in players.

My point was that it's a matter of degrees, and too far to one "side" will tend to limit enjoyment by the players. I make a significant differentiation between rolling random encounters off of a chart that was written up with "things that exist in this area" versus "random roll against every monster in the game to see what is there". The former, especially when combined with actual static places/events will vastly increase the players acceptance of the game world they are playing in. As you get towards the latter, it will have the opposite effect.

Note, that I'm also talking literally about "random encounters". There are certainly systems for randomly generating and filing in maps (hex crawls). But that's not the same thing either. You are rolling to see what sort of things are present in a given hex, and the encounter(s) in that hex will be related to that result. The players will still get the sense of "in this area, there are orcs, but in that other area over there, there are lizard men, and in yet another area is the ancient haunted ruins". You can use random methods to fill in the map in a world, but once filled in, it's no longer random. That's not the same as "every day, I will roll X number of random encounters and it can literally be anything in the monster manual no matter how absurd it may be". Doing that will absolultely be noticed.


As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

Because the GM is not writing the story of how the heroes defeated the bbeg. The GM is creating an environment in which the players write their own story. That's not to say that the GM can't put interesting and exciting things into that environment for the players to interact with, but there is a difference between putting "things going on" into the setting and "events the players encounter". The former provides the players with information about the setting, and allows them choices about what to do about those things. The later forces the players to run through the GMs "story".

If the players encounter something going on only at the "most exciting time", while there is something critical going on, then they are forced to interact with that thing, at that time, and in the manner in which the GM determined. It's a form of soft railroading. If, instead, the GM allows the players to encounter something or a group of someone's, but not in the middle of some excting crisis point, then they can learn about what is going on, see the progression from "what's happening now, to what will happen later", and then can make choices to decide to intervene and adjust the results.

Tossing them into chapter 10 of a 10 chapter story may put them right in the thick of the action, but it doesn't do a lot for player agency. You kinda skipped past the whole story and rushed right to the conflict and resolution bits. That may be "exciting", but it's not going to be very intresting for the players for very long IME. In an actual story, the author writes chapters 1-9 so that we arrive at chapter 10 as intended. But in a RPG, the players write chapters 1-9, which means that chapter 10 may be very different than the GM thought. Skipping ahead takes the storytelling (and pathing!) parts of the game away from the players. I prefer not to do that.


But if neither party has any inkling of the presence of the other, then the most interesting time for the PCs to encounter the wizard is when he's in the middle of summoning the monster, and can thus be interrupted should the party so choose.

Ok. But what happens if they chose not to? The problem here is that they are in a dungeon, and given the option to scout ahead and choose which direction to go. But, if the mere act of scouting ahead triggers this script, then they have no choice but to go in and encounter that event (or suffer the effects of not doing so).


I'm not a huge fan of scripted encounters, but there are times when they work fine (I've used them myself, in fact). However, if you are actively trying to get your players to utilize scouting, and have repeatedly complained on an internet forum about how your players don't ever scout ahead and "look before they leap", it's a really silly thing that when they do scout ahead, you then trigger the event on the act of scouting. is this a bit of metaGMing? Absolutely. But... If you want your players to scout then you really need to avoid effectively punishing them for scouting. Which is what happened here.

If the party enters a room with 4 hallways, one they entered and three others. They might send their scout down each of the three hallways to see what is there. Let's say that each hallway leads to a room, and each room has a scripted encounter. They check out each of the hallways, and decide that hallway B looks the most promising to them. So now, the scripts on A and C continue and whatever effects those things have now occur. By putting in scripted encounters, and having them trigger, not on the party actually entering the room, but merely passively observing the room (via scouting or scrying), you are eliminating the ability for the party to feel like they can actually use scouting for anything other than "see what's in a room we've already commited to entering before we enter". They cannot safely use scouting to decide which direction to go, or which area of the dungeon to explore, because any use of scouting may actually generate new threats and problems they have to deal with. The players learn that they must first pick which path to follow (A, B, or C), then scout it, and then go there. They can't use scouting to actually chooose which way to go in the first place.

Let's take an extreme example. The GM has written an entire dungeon level, and several of the rooms have scripted encounters. The players, being very clever, decide to use some sort of wizard eye scrying spell to look through the entire dungeon level before entering, so they can know what's where and decide how they want to proceed. So... Now every single effect generated by every single scripted encounter happens? Suddenly, there are a ton of wandering monsters that would not have otherwise been there, demons are summoned and now actively guarding some areas, prisoners are sacrified without any ability of the party to save them, etc.

There should be a point where the GM can edit his own process and say "yeah. Maybe this script should not run in this situation". IMO, this was one of those times.



But, contrary to what Gbaji thinks, I feel like most players enjoy exciting coincidences and are primed to expect them by consuming single author fiction where the plot is driven along by odd coincidences.

IME players do not appreciate this nearly as much as many people seem to think.



But the issue that exploring an area of the map "creates" new monsters is an issue. Because once you have established a monster exists, it has to be dealt with.

Why? It wasn't "dealt with" before they looked into the room, and it had a zero percent chance of being encountered while patrolling. Why does that chance change based on whether they looked into the room.

The very words you use "must be dealt with" suggest a very linear way of viewing the environment. Each room must be explored and resolved before moving on to the next. That precludes any ability to examing options and choose a path through the dungeon though.


The players do not like the loss of control that comes with a monster being able to attack them on its terms. That is what they are upset about.

No. They are not. They are upset that the act of scouting the room caused the monster to come into existence and later attack them. You literally stated this earlier, that they said that by scouting the room, it caused the monster to aggro them. Now, I agree that this isn't an accurate reflection of what happened, but they are correct that, if they had not scouted the room, they would not have encountered the monster later outside the room.


Before the players encounter a monster it could be anywhere or doing anything. Once the GM has established a concrete location and activity for it, the players have to deal with it.

Except that in this case, the monster could not be anywhere or doing anything. The monster did not exist until the scout looked into the room. Once he did, it began patrolling the dungeon.


What is the alternative?

I've given you several already. Have the wizard only summon and send out the monster in response to some PC activity that the wizard is aware of. Don't have the scout of the room trigger the event (it's an empty room configured for someoning a monster, or a room with a monster in a cage, waiting for the wizard to charm it later). Don't use scripted encounters at all. Just put resources in the dungeon, create the various NPCs and factions and whatnot in there, write up some stuff about how they will respond to the PCs exploring the dungeon, and just play it out. There's a wizard. There's a monster. If the wirzard decides the PCs are a problem, he goes to the monster and charms him and sends him out patrolling the dungeon. There's no need to have this trigger on the players happening to enter the room right when he's casting his spells (and also incredibly unlikely).

Any/all of these would have avoided the very thing the players didn't like about this.




The deeper down the players go, the stronger the monsters get.

If they choose to push on into areas that are above their level, they take the risk of death.

The relative power level of the dungeon area is not the issue. It's the distribution of the dangers in the area that is. I've already written about this a couple times in this thread. As a general rule, monsters which wander should not be more powerful than the monsters that are more setttled in given areas/rooms in the dungeon. Because if they are, then they should have wiped out those other monsters (unless they are all working together I supposed). But typically, the more powerful denizens of a dungoen are the ones who will claim specific areas of that dungeon and make it "theirs". Anything wandering should be something that doesn't form communities or settle down, some form of patrol guards from a group that does, or some other random threat/guardian/whatever thing that roams around as more of an environmental hazard.

And I provided guidelines for that last case (which is what this thing seems to be). If you do have things wandering around that are significantly more dangerous than most of the stuff in the rooms, you should provide ample warning that it's coming, and allow the PCs to avoid it. Their assessment of the risk of the dungeon area is going to be based on what they have encountered, typically in the rooms. They don't expect that some random thing wandering the halls is going to just wipe the floor iwth them if they happen to run into it. And if there is something that dangerous? Telegraph this to the players.,



I just find it kind of funny that you are complaining about my campaign being "scripted" and "like a railroad" when it appears your real issue is the lack of guard rails and contrived situations keeping them safe. Likewise, you are saying I needed to add in a contrived way to avoid the encounter if they wish, when the whole problem is that they did have an easy out and chose not to take it.

It's not about guard rails. It's about how you balance the threats contained within any given environment to both have it make sense to the players as a viable ecosystem, but to also provide some sort of reasonable balance for the area itself from a gameplay perspective.



I specifically said that my tactical analysis was merely my opinion, at which point I was told my opinion was objectively wrong.

Now, when I respond to that accusation, you are acting like I was the one who said there was an objectively right answer and attacking me for that.

Its like you guys are playing the forum equivalent of "quit hitting yourself".


Unless of course, you are talking about the benefit of hindsight. With perfect knowledge of the situation, I can confidently say that escaping through the back door would have been objectively the right choice in that situation.

/hmmm...

We responded how we did because you literally did claim that fleeing down the hallway was objectively the correct answer (which you just repeated again). The problem is that you know this as the GM based on information you have, but the players don't know this. When I said that was irrelevant, I was talking about this fact. It doesn't matter what is "objectively correct if you have perfect knowledge". What matters is what knowledge the players had at the time, and what their best course of action was.

That's what you got wrong. You assumed they would do one thing, they did something else. The players do not know what you know. Therefore, they will not make the same choices you think they will make. Therefore, you would be well served by not making assumptions about what choices they would make and crafting encounters around that assumption.


Where are you getting these numbers from? How do you know precisely how long the corridor was and how long it would take the party to transverse it at various speeds and how long they could survive against the monster?

I don't. I do know that the time scale of "search down that hallway and see what's there and then report back" tends to be much longer then "how long can we survive in combat against this monster that is wiping the floor with us". You have, many tmes, talked about how HoD's combat system tends to run fast, with people dropping in single hits, and no HP inflation. So forgive me if I assume that once they are into a combat and realizing they are losing, they probably don't have enough time at that point to have someone actually scout down an unexplored hallway to see if it's a safe exit for them.


The tank, healer, and illusionist could have easily held off the monster long enough for the rogue to scout out the backdoor and confirm to the party that it was safe.


For simplicity sake, the monster's movements are tied to the party's. Whenever the party moves from one room to another, so does the patrolling monster. I randomize its start location every time they enter the dungeon, and I randomize its route every time it comes to an intersection.

In this case, the party entered the room with three exits while the monster was in the room to the west of it, and I rolled randomly and the dice indicated the monster moved east. So I ruled that they entered the room at roughly the same time.

But I am really, really, really curious about what you are thinking the party could have done with an extra thirty seconds, or even a couple minutes, of warning.

I guess I'm confused about the distance and time scales being used here. How far apart are the rooms? How long are the hallways? How long does it take to travel from one to another? How long do they spend searching/encountering each room?

You seem to have a slowish ponderish monster moving around, and have tied its room movements to the room movements of the party, while they are exploring. Presumably, when exploring, they are moving slowly, checking for traps, looking ahead, peering into rooms, then encountering whatever is there, then deciding to move on to the next thing. I can easily see each "room" taking 15+ minutes or more of time (possibly quite a bit more time).

That gives a pretty large bit of granularity in terms of the "actual time" that the monster arrives in each room. Let's say 15 minutes, but could be more. Kinda depends on what's in each room, how long the hallways are, whether there's other stuff in between, etc.

I just find it odd that you seem to be minimizing the time frame that the rogue would have taken to explore the hall while in the middle of combat down to "very fast" (a few combat rounds?), but don't seem to realize that this represents a small slice of time in terms of the monsters movements in the first place. A minute or two of extra time before it entered the room, certainly would have also given the party rogue time to explore that same hallway and realized it lead to a dungeon exit, right?

How long are combat rounds?

My point is that you have a pretty broad granularty for the monsters movements, but choose to have it enter the room "exactly" at the same time as the party. No warning. No ability for them to avoid it. If the rogue had time in the middle of combat to determine if the hallway was a safe escape, then he certainly had time to do so if given just a couple minutes of warning that the monster was approaching.

By slightly varying the monster's arrival even just a minute or three, the players would have had options to do things other than "must fight monster", and then "must figure out how to escape monster".


The only thing I can think of is going back north and hiding in the dead end, which is great if it works, but if it doesn't, the party is in a much worse position as now they actually have no place to go and have no choice but fighting to the death or coming up with a brilliant escape plan (which may involve selling out some of their own).

You can think of "have the scout check down the unexplored hallway" when it's in the middle of a combat, but this option doesn't occur to you when it's "there's a monster coming that will be here in a couple minutes?". How does that work?


What's the point of writing a 3000 word post in a thread about random encounters when you don't believe that a random encounter actually happened and are instead talking about some imagined railroad?

The dice rolls determined that the monster would travel down the hallway and into the room. They did not determine the exact minute, much less second, within the time frame taken by "party travels to and explores a room" that each die roll for monster travel actually represents.

You made that decision all on your own. That's the point I'm calling BS on, not whether this was a random encounter in the first place.


And heck, if my goal was to railroad the party into a chase scene, why didn't I just wait until the party had decided to enter the corridor I wanted to chase them down and have the monster appear then? Having it show up at the three way intersection just shows that not only am I dishonest railroader, but I am an incompetent dishonest railroader!

I don't know. Why didn't you do this?

I suppose it depends on whether the objective (from a railroading perspective) is to force the outcome (PCs go down the hall, find the exit, and then escape), or to force the players to make a specific choice, which in turn leads to that same outcome. At least, that's the only difference I can see.

Of course, the players came up with a different choice, which you had not considered.


Yes, they knew the monster was patrolling the dungeon and had encountered it before.

How did that encounter go? How did they escape that time?


Yes, the wizard could have easily scryed for it.

Having no clue how scrying works in your game, I'll take your word for it. I do wonder why they're bothering to send a scout anywhere, if they have this ability.


If an extra thirty seconds warning is as vital as you say, placing an alarm in the corridor would have easily given the players that much warning, and should have been a prudent course of action.

Would they have heard the alarm far enough away to be useful? That's a very low probability thing IMO. The monster hits the alarm, placed X distance down the initial hallway from the room (closer and it does no good). This only works if the monster reaches the alarm while the party is close enough to hear it. I would not expect this to be useful as a player, and would only use an alarm like this if I was lingering in a single location for a longish period of time. The odds of the party happening to be traveling back down the hallway towards the room (or having just arrived back in the room) right at the point in time when the monter passes over the area we set for the alarm is very very small (more or less as unlikely as the monster just happening to enter the room from one side while we entered from the other, actually).

Or... And this is just crazy talk here. How about the players being able to just hear this monster coming down the hallway towards the room? This is a much much higher probability method of detection. Again. The odds of both the monster and the party happening to arrive at different entrances to the room at the exact same time (so that neither can detect or avoid each other prior to entering) are very very small. And any variation in that time (even just a few minutes) would allow the party to hear the monster in the room prior to entering (if it arrived first), or to hear the monster approaching the room (if they arrived first). Literally, the only way that "hear the monster approaching" doesn't work is the one case you actually had happen (both arrived at the exact same time).


Again. I don't know what other magical means they had available to them either. It's quite possible that they could have done a ton of things to help themselves out here. I'm also not sure how your spell/ability resources work either, so I can't assess the value versus risk involved in using these tools. Like, if the wizard can only cast a two scry spells a day, and has to pick a target, is he actually going to waste one use on "I want to scry for that one random wandering monster we ran into two days ago"? If they've got parts for just 5 alarm traps, are they going to choose to use one of them to place it say 50 feet down the hallway leading into this one room this one time they passed through it? Why not in the last room? Or the one before that? Or the one they just came down? Or the hallway they just returned down?

There are a ton of potential resource restrictions which may affect their choices here. I can't speak intelligently about them, except to assume that if they could scry anytime they wanted for anything they wanted, they almost certainly would be doing that (you've talked about how overly cautious your players are). And if they could actually leave an alarm trap behind them in every single hallway they travel down, I'm pretty sure they'd do that too (for the same reason). So... It's probably not quite as simple as "they had means to avoid/detect this encounter ahead of time, but choose not to use them".

[Reversefigure4]

The Players act under the assumption that anything the GM puts in the game is there because the GM thinks it will be interesting.

The Players open a door and see a wizard doing a summoning. From their perspective, this is entirely random.

Now, there are several possible outcomes here

1) "If we attack now, we get an easy fight against this Wizard and don't have to deal with their summon later"

2) "If we attack now, the Wizard finishes their summoning, and we have to fight both the wizard and the summon"

3) "If we DON'T Attack now, the wizard leaves us alone"

4) "If we DON'T Attack now, we might encounter the summon alone later"

In Talakeals game, it's a known quantity that the players don't trust the GM in the slightest. Of these outcomes, they'd assume it would actively change in response to their actions to match always being the worst one. If you attack the wizard, he immediately summons the monster and you have to fight them both at once. If you don't attack the wizard, the now-more-powerful monsters hunts you down and kills you later. It's a no-win scenario for them. (And indeed, here's a setpiece that starts from 'monster should be too deadly for the party to fight', so it's not unfounded.) The refusal to retreat scenario is caused by the concept that the safe retreat is likely to result in a second deadly encounter - just like the first deadly encounter - which is actually quite likely given what they've seen so far!

Whether or not they're right in -this- case about -this- retreat, it's a common enough scenario in their games that it's their running expectation that the GM is going to hose them, and you absolutely can't use Dramatic Narrative Timing with players who expect you'll use it to screw them as opposed to create the most entertaining encounter.

[KorvinStarmast]

In Talakeals game, it's a known quantity that the players don't trust the GM in the slightest. {snip] so far, agree

The refusal to retreat scenario is caused by the concept that the safe retreat is likely to result in a second deadly encounter - just like the first deadly encounter - which is actually quite likely given what they've seen so far! Not so sure. The reluctance to retreat is a symptom of a dysfunctional party, since T's recounting a few posts back showed that some were for that course of action but got shouted down. The team / party / small group is dysfunctional at its root.


... you absolutely can't use Dramatic Narrative Timing with players who expect you'll use it to screw them as opposed to create the most entertaining encounter. You can, but they may kvetch about it ... and with this group, they appear to prefer to argue than to play. But we are only getting one side of the story.

[Talakeal]

Basically, three of my old players were dead set against ever running away or surrendering.

AFAICT For Bob and Dave, it was an issue of pride and not liking to be told what to do, they would rather kill off their characters than back down. For Brian, it is a matter of nerves, for him making the call to flee or surrender is too scary, he is always afraid of going from the frying pan to the fire.

Dave no longer plays with us, but Bob and Brian still do.

Whenever a new player joins the group, that person often has the expectations that running or surrendering is a reasonable response to getting in over your head, but the older players typically shout them down until they join in on fighting to the death at all times.

[gbaji]

Not so sure. The reluctance to retreat is a symptom of a dysfunctional party, since T's recounting a few posts back showed that some were for that course of action but got shouted down. The team / party / small group is dysfunctional at its root.

It's notable that it was the new players who wanted to try checking out the unexplored hallway during the fight, and the long time players who shouted them down.

We could assume that the older players are just set in their ways, disfunctional, weird, or whatever. Or we could assume that they have longer experience with the GMs style and are taking that position based on that experience.

It's clear that the older players don't trust Talakeal to not screw them over if they make that choice. Why that is the case is a matter of pure speculation though.

[Pex]

Not liking random encounters is not (exactly) the same as not wanting encounters that have nothing to do with adventure plot. If we are to deal with the local environment while traveling from Point A to Point B I'd prefer that was preplanned part of the game all along instead of rolling at the game table at that moment to see if something happens then rolling to determine what that is.

The difference is a matter of pacing. We're not roleplaying out every moment of the adventure day. The DM will go right into the encounter. In theory with a random encounter rolled the DM can still say "A few hours traveling you come across . . .", but in practice that is not how it works. We have to listen to the DM describe each hour while a random encounter check is rolled. Given that no encounter is a possibility on the table we're spending that time hearing about scenery. With the planned encounter we're at the spot already to play it out. When there is no preplanned encounter that day the DM will take a moment to say the day is uneventful, you camp, and now it's the next day. If there really will be nothing happening going from Point A to Point B then we arrive at Point B and play it out even though it was just 30 seconds ago real world time the players said we are going to Point B. If there will be a planned encounter that has nothing to do with the adventure plot, great, let's get to it and play. Social interaction with an NPC, exploration of an area, combat, whatever it is let's just play it already.

There is a minor factor of resource management, especially if it's a combat, but experience has shown how much stuff PCs should use can be figured out by the threat. If the DM throws a really tough monster at you that you are Honest True meant to fight going nova is the point to have fun. DMs should keep in mind PC resources with these types of encounters as much as adventure encounters. It is unfair of the DM to use a random encounter that randomized into a tough fight that forces players to nova or die only to find the PCs don't have the stuff they needed anymore for the actual adventure encounter later that game day.

[kyoryu]

but in practice that is not how it works. We have to listen to the DM describe each hour while a random encounter check is rolled.

It should be. It has been in the games I've played that used them, or at most 10 seconds of description.

I don't think "people can do it badly" is a good reason not to do things, if they have value outside of that. I'm sorry you had that experience, though, it sounds exhausting.

[gbaji]

The difference is a matter of pacing. We're not roleplaying out every moment of the adventure day. The DM will go right into the encounter. In theory with a random encounter rolled the DM can still say "A few hours traveling you come across . . .", but in practice that is not how it works. We have to listen to the DM describe each hour while a random encounter check is rolled. Given that no encounter is a possibility on the table we're spending that time hearing about scenery. With the planned encounter we're at the spot already to play it out. When there is no preplanned encounter that day the DM will take a moment to say the day is uneventful, you camp, and now it's the next day. If there really will be nothing happening going from Point A to Point B then we arrive at Point B and play it out even though it was just 30 seconds ago real world time the players said we are going to Point B. If there will be a planned encounter that has nothing to do with the adventure plot, great, let's get to it and play. Social interaction with an NPC, exploration of an area, combat, whatever it is let's just play it already.

I'm not sure this has anything to do with whether the GM using random encounters, and has a lot to do with how terrible the GM's playstyle is. I suppose it could also be how exactly the GM is choosing to actually determine random encounters (which, again, does kinda go back to the GM's playstyle).

Yeah. If the GM is literally sitting at the table, and then going "Ok. Hour 1... <rolls on table>, <rolls on another table>, <looks up source stuff>, You encounter... [nothing|<monster>]", and then repeating each hour of the day, then that's pretty horrible GMing. Most sane GMs actually shortcut this process, by maybe determining first if there are encounters that entire day, and then how many, and then determining what/when they are. So this should flow more like "Ok. You travel for a few hours, come across a small stream, where you can refill your waterskins, and while you are there you notice <insert encounter here>", and "Ok. Later in the afternoon, while the sun is setting, you notice <something else>", and "In the early evening, just after setting up your camp, you are suddenly attacked by <insert monsters here>".

Honestly, even if I am using random encounters, I tend to pre-roll them ahead of time, specifically so that I'm not wasting my player's time rolling freaking dice at the table. I'm the GM. I wrote the adventure. I know what's in the area. I decided what sorts of events/encounters/monsters/whatever are in the area, and wrote up encounter tables for them. It should not be rocket science to spend a tiny bit of time to just pre-roll this ahead of time. In fact, I usually just pre-detail a handful of encounters, and determine randomly which one, and when. I never go hour by hour rolling. I go in the other direction. How many encounters total between A and B? When, within that time frame, will the encounters occur, and which encounter happens in each of those cases (which may vary especially if some are designed for night/camp time and some for day/travel).

Any GM who is rolling more than maybe one or two die rolls for an encounter while at the table is "doing it wrong". There are a host of ways to trim down the process to make this happen. And yeah, this is usually about pre-determining when encounters will occur, and then rolling to determine which, among the set of time appropriate encounters available, actually occurs at that particular point in time.

I'll also point out that I tend to lean strongly against large numbers of random encounters anyway. I use them primarily to establish the environment the PCs are in, and to create a sense of "yeah, there are things going on in the world not related specifically to what you are doing". And I tend to write them up ahead of time, and then dole them out during travel. Usually, not even randomly, but based on whatever I feel will fit best thematically (and sometimes, even game session time). And yeah, if we're actually talking about "wandering monsters" in a dungeon type environment, those are never going to be randomly determined (when may, but not much in terms of "what"). I know what is in the dungeon. I know what sort of monsters are there, and I know which types of those might be wandering around. I might roll randomly off of that (quite short usually) list, but that's about it. Nothing magically transports itself from the monster manual and into the middle of a dungeon purely due to a die roll though. That's just silly.


There is a minor factor of resource management, especially if it's a combat, but experience has shown how much stuff PCs should use can be figured out by the threat. If the DM throws a really tough monster at you that you are Honest True meant to fight going nova is the point to have fun. DMs should keep in mind PC resources with these types of encounters as much as adventure encounters. It is unfair of the DM to use a random encounter that randomized into a tough fight that forces players to nova or die only to find the PCs don't have the stuff they needed anymore for the actual adventure encounter later that game day.

Yeah. GM's need to take into account resource managment issues when dealing with random encounters. It's also why random encounters should really only very very rarely represent a significant threat to the party. There are just so very few environments where something that dangerous can be rationalized just "roaming around". This is doubly important if you do have planned encounters/places/whatever in the adventure. Having a herd of carnivorous mutant dinosaurs attack the party, when they are 10 minutes away from the entrance to the lair of the bbeg they are looking for, probably isn't a great idea.

Um... Honestly though, barring stuff actually in a dungeon environment (in which case, as I said above, it should be quite a bit less random), most of the time the PCs should have the opportunity to rest/recover between any such encounter and something "planned" anyway. Unless the PCs are just wandering around and have no clue when/where the thing they are supposed to encounter is, of course. But most of the time, the PCs are going "somewhere", and know what that somewhere is, and even where it is. So if they run into something super tough, they should be able to pull back, recover, and then go exploring the dungeon of doom tomorrow or something. I guess I'm assuming random encounters while travelling here, but that's the most common scenario.

Now yeah. Having some super powerful wandering monster hit the party while they are just outside the throneroom of the main bad guy is maybe not a great idea. Eh. I'm still kinda thinking that if you are far enough away from an adventure encounter that you haven't already encountered it, and the random encounter didn't raise enough ruckus to tip off said adventure encounter, I'm kinda wondering what is forcing the party to continue on at that point anyway? If the environment is "tight" (meaning everything inside is connected, like an enemy stronghold), then there should be no wandering anything. Everything should be connected to the bbeg's defense. If it's a "loose" environment (lots of different areas, criters, monster types, etc), then there could be something semi random wandering around, but you should be able to pull out and come back later. If the area is loose enough that some random thing wanders by without being "inside" the adventure encounters area, then the party is also not inside that area either.


Dunno. I just think that good GMs should be able to apply a bit of common sense to most of these things.

[Pex]

Whether it's literal or figurative about the DM describing each hour depends on the DM. I've played with the literal, but when it's figurative the point is more we are sitting at the game table doing nothing but listen to the DM describe the scenery we see traveling for at least 15 real world minutes. At night time the DM makes a fuss about who is on watch, whether we have dark vision or not, and after having whoever is on watch make a Perception check spends the next 5-10 minutes or so describing scenery again for every watch cycle (i.e. if three watches that's 15 to 30 minutes of the DM monologuing) then morning comes and the DM finally announces we had a long rest.

Not liking this is not the same thing as never wanting anything to happen during the night. It's still relevant who is on watch when, but even accepting something happening at night is random if random roll says nothing happens then just say nothing happens, you get a long rest, and play on. If something happens determine on which watch it happens, have that PC make the Perception check, and go right into that encounter. Don't monologue every instance.

[Thane of Fife]

Whether it's literal or figurative about the DM describing each hour depends on the DM.

I think I get what you're saying, but I don't think that has much to do with whether encounters are random or not. I mean, I will confess that I have personally run a game that was terrible in the way you describe, but I never rolled for a random encounter in it at all. The thought process of, "I have this story-significant encounter that I want to happen in the middle of the night, so I need to know who's on watch, but I'll have to disguise when it's going to happen by asking about things on an hour-by-hour basis (and obviously, I'll have to do this every day of the month-long journey so they won't get suspicious)" will lead you to the same place (believe me, I'm speaking from experience) without random encounters ever even crossing your mind.

[Pauly]

There has been a lot of discussion about random encounters as part of a game and gamist considerations.

From the perspective of narrative random encounters can have a number of different purposes. LotR is chock full of ‘random encounters’ that can illustrate some of tne narrative purposes.
1) Old Man Willow/Tom Bombadil. Establishes that the world is a dangerous place and that allies can also be found. They’re not true random encounters in that JRR wasn”t rolling a d100 and checking his random encounter table, but they fit the random encounter vibe in that they are events that are not needed as part of the main narrative moving forward.
2) The Barrow Wright/Tom Bombadil. Provides the party with needed resources.
3) Meeting Strider in Bree. Introduces new PCs/significant NPCs. It’s well documented that Tolkein himself didn’t know who Strider was or how he would affect the narrative when he first wrote of the hobbits encountering him in Bree.
4) Frodo and Sam encountering Faramir. Exposition dump as well as allowing the party to recover.
5) opening the gate to the mines of Moria. A non combat puzzle encounter to spice things up. *
6) Waking up the goblins and Balrog in the mines of Moria. Resource drain/combat encounter. *
7) Sam and Frodo getting mistaken for orcs. A Deus ex Machina puts the party back on track.


* From a main narrative perspective the whole mines of Moria episode in LotR could have been just narrated as the party enter the mines then exit peacefully without any encounters.

[gbaji]

I think I get what you're saying, but I don't think that has much to do with whether encounters are random or not. I mean, I will confess that I have personally run a game that was terrible in the way you describe, but I never rolled for a random encounter in it at all. The thought process of, "I have this story-significant encounter that I want to happen in the middle of the night, so I need to know who's on watch, but I'll have to disguise when it's going to happen by asking about things on an hour-by-hour basis (and obviously, I'll have to do this every day of the month-long journey so they won't get suspicious)" will lead you to the same place (believe me, I'm speaking from experience) without random encounters ever even crossing your mind.

I'm not sure why the GM needs to disguise this though. Have your players set up a watch list ahead of time. Have your players commit to a marching order and positions while traveling (allow them to modify this based on the terrain of course). Just ask them "what are you doing when walking through the forest/plains/mountains/whatever", and "what precautions are you taking while resting?". You then require them to expend those resources or have that watch schedule, or those positions, while any relevant encounter occurs.

What you don't do is describe something going on, and then ask them what they are doing in response. Obviously, the players will realize "there's an encounter happening", and will start casting spells, taking positions, etc, in preparation. That's what leads you to constantly describing things over and over to disguise when an actual encounter is happening. That method wastes a ton of table time though.

Just describe the general terrain they are traveling through, and ask them what they are doing in response. Unless their answer is "we're stopping every 15 minutes and casting defensive spells, and having our scout hide in the bushes in case we're about to be attacked" (in which case you should mark the resources and time spent doing this), then when an actual encounter happens, just assume that whatever they say they are doing, is what they are doing when the encounter starts. Give them a perception roll check to detect something X rounds before it happens (or not!), and move on from there. At night, just roll to see which watch the encounter occurs on (unless it's like a specific NPC targetted/timed thing), and then ask "who's on X watch?". Then go straight to the perception roll checks, using whatever they've previously stated they have available and are using for that entire watch.

You just don't allow them to do anything outside of what they do all the time, when starting the encounter. You balance that by using perception rolls to determine how much lead time they do have available to them. This avoids the problem of the players detecting the encounter and having their characters take out of the norm actions, purely in response to the GM describing stuff, and avoids the GM feeling he has to constantly create false descriptions in order to prevent that.

I've used this method for decades, with multiple game systems, and have never had a problem with the players trying to game the results. I mean, they can try, but it's not terribly successful. I've crafted the encounter such that they can't actually react to anything until they know there's something there to react to. And yes, I have had intelligent NPCs actually do things like probe the PCs defenses, skulking around out of sight during the night, so as to see how the PCs respond. If they immediately activate their most powerful abilities the moment they hear a twig crack, the NPCs will note this, and continue using tactics like this to make the PCs expend their resources. Teaches the players to wait until something is actually happening before doing such things. Also teaches the players to investigate things they see or hear first, before just going full combat mode. But yeah, most of the time, if these are actual random encounters, then it's going to be about "when do you detect that something is going on, and what do you do in response?".

Again though, barring rare cases (like I mentioned above, which is not realy a "random encounter"), I don't use "on watch or while traveling" encounters as a resource depletion tool. They serve other environmental and story telling purposes.

[Pex]

Whether it's literal or figurative about the DM describing each hour depends on the DM. I've played with the literal, but when it's figurative the point is more we are sitting at the game table doing nothing but listen to the DM describe the scenery we see traveling for at least 15 real world minutes. At night time the DM makes a fuss about who is on watch, whether we have dark vision or not, and after having whoever is on watch make a Perception check spends the next 5-10 minutes or so describing scenery again for every watch cycle (i.e. if three watches that's 15 to 30 minutes of the DM monologuing) then morning comes and the DM finally announces we had a long rest.

Not liking this is not the same thing as never wanting anything to happen during the night. It's still relevant who is on watch when, but even accepting something happening at night is random if random roll says nothing happens then just say nothing happens, you get a long rest, and play on. If something happens determine on which watch it happens, have that PC make the Perception check, and go right into that encounter. Don't monologue every instance.

By coincidence I'm watching Critical Role The Mighty Nein for the first time where this is exactly happening. It's early in the campaign. Mercer monologues for 20 or so minutes on the way to Zadash, makes a big deal about who is on watch noting the limitations of dark vision, have everyone make rolls, describes each watch for 5 minutes of non-events, then move on and repeat the next day. When leaving Zadash after agreeing to jobs from The Gentleman, the same thing happens. Lots of monologuing, make a big deal about watches, and nothing happens. During the second night of traveling only because Caleb (Liam) rolls 22 on Perception on watch does something happen. Would there still have been an ogre/goblin/wolf attack if Liam rolled low? Maybe, but there was about 45 minutes of nothing beforehand to endure. The cast's attempt at improv so there was something to watch despite nothing happening even fell flat. I've never been so bored of the show before. Being in Zadash was fine, but on the way and leaving get to the game already.

[BRC]

By coincidence I'm watching Critical Role The Mighty Nein for the first time where this is exactly happening. It's early in the campaign. Mercer monologues for 20 or so minutes on the way to Zadash, makes a big deal about who is on watch noting the limitations of dark vision, have everyone make rolls, describes each watch for 5 minutes of non-events, then move on and repeat the next day. When leaving Zadash after agreeing to jobs from The Gentleman, the same thing happens. Lots of monologuing, make a big deal about watches, and nothing happens. During the second night of traveling only because Caleb (Liam) rolls 22 on Perception on watch does something happen. Would there still have been an ogre/goblin/wolf attack if Liam rolled low? Maybe, but there was about 45 minutes of nothing beforehand to endure. The cast's attempt at improv so there was something to watch despite nothing happening even fell flat. I've never been so bored of the show before. Being in Zadash was fine, but on the way and leaving get to the game already.



So here's the thing

The above approach is the Technically Correct way to handle things. If there's a possibility that something might happen at night, you need to establish who is on watch when, and give a chance for such a thing to happen, and if the GM doesn't want to tip their hand, they have to present "Nothing Happens" and "Midnight Ambush" the exact same way.


That approach also sucks and nobody should ever do it. I Can see SOME times when you might want to do it (Say, it's the night before a major battle and you're deliberately trying to build tension) but in general, don't do that.

At some point, the GM and the PC's need to be able to trust each other enough to not metagame if Something Happens at the night. If the GM says "Who is on watch at 1 AM?" The answer shouldn't be "The guy with high perception and darkvision.


One thing Critical Role uses these sequences for is RP conversations between PCs on watch together. They get some great character moments out of that, because they're all professional actors putting on a good show and if you have two of them improv a scene together they can come up with something good. In general, your average table isn't going to be able to do that. Give a standard "Does anybody want to do anything during the night?" prompt.

[gbaji]

That approach also sucks and nobody should ever do it. I Can see SOME times when you might want to do it (Say, it's the night before a major battle and you're deliberately trying to build tension) but in general, don't do that.

Yup. Also utterly unnecessary IMO. See above for the correct way to manage this.


At some point, the GM and the PC's need to be able to trust each other enough to not metagame if Something Happens at the night. If the GM says "Who is on watch at 1 AM?" The answer shouldn't be "The guy with high perception and darkvision.

Yup. Again, this is 100% averted by having the players come up with a watch schedule ahead of time, and defining exacty what abilities they are utilizing the entire time during any given watch. So, if the GM rolls 2nd watch for the encounter to happen, the players can't decide that "the guy with darkvision is on that watch", because they already wrote who was there on their watch schedule. And they can't say "CharacterB, who's on second watch, is using his <detect bad things> abilitiy", because unless he'd previously stated he was using this for the entire watch (and likely therefore not having that ability avilable for use during the day), then it's not being used.

It's really that simple. Make the players commit to what resources/abilities they are expending/using during any given period of time, before that time comes up at the table, and they cannnot argue they are using them "this time", just when the encounter happens.

And yes. This does require that the players trust the the GM is not going to look at the watch schedule, note which characters may have natural abilities/senses/whatever that will benefit them in the encounter, and then choose to have the encounter during another watch. As a GM, you absolutely must "play this straight". Which yeah, sometimes means that the NPCs, sneaking up under cover of darkness, just happen to do this while the guy with darkvision is on watch (and they get spotted right off the bat). The GM cannot be overly invested into any particular outcome/script for the encounter. What happens, is what happens. The same applies to concepts like marching order in any given area. The GM should require this, but also not take it into account when formulating any encounters while marching. Aside from info that could reasonably be gleaned using perception abilities, of course (if the NPC bandits can see the wagon loaded with goodies, and see that there are massively armored warrior types on one side, and wimpy dress wearers on the other, that might reasonably affect how they choose to attack the group marching along with the wagon). Or course, with PCs, sometimes what you see isn't necessarily what you get... Again though, the GM must play this straight based on NPC knowledge, and not game it for his own purposes, or the players will lose trust in this method pretty quick.

I've also found that players will tend to respond to this method by actively and intelligently setting up watch schedules based on what abilities and senses the various characters actually have. So we might put the guy with darkvision on one watch, another character with a fast/cheap light spell on another, and maybe the guy with the ability to sense danger on another (and we'd avoid putting them all on one watch if possible). They will tend to balance things out based on the various capabilities each character may have if something dangerous happens during any given watch (or while marching along). Which is probably a good idea for the players to have considered ahead of time anyway, since this sort of pre-knowledge and planning will *also* tend to make them better at making decisions during regular play (they have a better idea of the various abilities and capabilities of each of the characters in the group).

[Thane of Fife]

I'm not sure why the GM needs to disguise this though.

I don't know what gave you the impression that I think a GM needs to (or should) do this. My point was I don't think random encounters are what drive people to play this way.

[Easy e]

They play that way because that has been the way it has been modelled to them to do it.

[gbaji]

I don't know what gave you the impression that I think a GM needs to (or should) do this. My point was I don't think random encounters are what drive people to play this way.

Because, what I was responding to was this:


I think I get what you're saying, but I don't think that has much to do with whether encounters are random or not. I mean, I will confess that I have personally run a game that was terrible in the way you describe, but I never rolled for a random encounter in it at all. The thought process of, "I have this story-significant encounter that I want to happen in the middle of the night, so I need to know who's on watch, but I'll have to disguise when it's going to happen by asking about things on an hour-by-hour basis (and obviously, I'll have to do this every day of the month-long journey so they won't get suspicious)" will lead you to the same place (believe me, I'm speaking from experience) without random encounters ever even crossing your mind.

I responded by saying that instead of trying to disquise the fact that you are having an encounter by asking hour by hour, you have the players pre-determine who is on watch at any given time of the night instead. Then, when you want to have your "story-significant enounter in the middle of the night", you can just do that, and nothing else but that. There is no need to have to "ask about things on an hour by hour basis", and you certainly don't have to do this "every day of the month long journey so they wont get suspicious". That's a massive amount of wasted fluff time, for no actual benefit. You are correct that this has nothing to do with whether an encounter is random or not, but it does have everything to do with a GM "wasting table time on descriptions in order to hide when an encounter is going to happen from the players".

Just have the players come up with a watch schedule. Decide when the encounter happens, and then whomever is on watch on the schedule is who is on watch. This is like 100x easier, and takes no actual table time to do (time is spent one time at the beginning of the adventure, and we're done). Is writing down a watch schedule for the adventure really a new concept to some people? We've been doing this for like 40+ years.


And yes. The GM can absolutely choose to do such long winded narrative descriptions in the hopes of tricking the players into wasting resources for nothing. But, barring actual circumstances where intelligent NPCs are actually doing this intentionally (case I posted about earlier), the GM is really just wasting a ton of time on this sort of "gotcha" thing. Just don't do it. You'll annoy the heck out of the players, and there's very little value. The players will (correctly IMO) see this as a "GM vs the players" mini-game, and not be happy with it. As a GM, I would strongly recommend just balancing the planned encounters to the power of the group instead of trying to play games with resource depletion via tricks like this. It's not really fun for anyone.

If I want to run a "manage resources" scenario, I'll make that the actual scenario. There will be a dark tower (or similar). It will have a bbeg. It will have organized defenses. And the PCs will have to figure out how to deal with the entire tower and its defenses in one shot (or fail in some way). And yeah, it'll be balanced in its entirety such that the PCs will have to be very careful to manage their resources to deal with this. I just find "use random/wandering encounters to wear down resources" to be a lazy way to manage this. That latter approach will almost always leave the players either feeling that their success/failure is subject to the whims of the RNG *or* that the GM is going to fluff the RNG to "make things interesting/difficult" no matter how well (or poorly!) they manage their resources otherwise. Both of which, in turn, will make the players feel like their own choices and contributions just aren't that important to the resolution of the adventure itself.

Which, yeah, is not going to result in happy players. There's just very few ways to make actual random encounters work well, if those encounters are frequent and/or measureable resource sinks. Which is why I overwhelmingly just use them for color and setting stuff. I suppose the exception is if there are no planned things, and the adventure is just "wander around the wilderness encountering random things". But to me, that gets boring really fast.

[rel]

Random encounters were, when first introduced, absolutely part of larger minigames of resource management alongside daily resources, limited supplies and consistent danger.

likewise, I think its reasonable to say that a lot of systems now include those traditional design elements without considering their original purpose or what they might bring to the game but simply because they are common in other games and have a long history.

And when originally quite specific mechanics are blindly included in a game because of tradition, you will often run into problems, because said mechanics are unlikely to be a good fit for the system, and might be incomplete.

The OP asks what random encounters are actually for, given that they seem to actively reduce their fun at the table.
My answer is, that these days such mechanics often serve no purpose, vestigial elements of more complex gameplay loops that no longer exist.

Now you can certainly mod those old systems back into a game that doesn't have them, or adjust the existing mechanics or your gameplay until they fit one another, but a built for purpose mechanic will do a better job.


For you, perhaps.

I... don't think I understand this response.



As I pointed out, a formal encumbrance system is also in Blades in the Dark. (And it's a bit less fiddly than D&D's).

I'm sure it is. But what does the encumbrance system in some specific RPG have to do with the current discussion, or the OP's question for that matter?

[KorvinStarmast]

But what does the encumbrance system in some specific RPG have to do with the current discussion, or the OP's question for that matter? You were complaining about old mechanics. The encumbrance is also an old mechanic/feature.

[Cactus]

Gbaji, I think Thane of Fife was presenting the thought process that leads to the tedium of narrating every hour in order to show that random encounters are not necessarily the cause. Thus this bad GMing technique (which I'm guilty of too) shouldn't be held up as a reason why random encounters are bad.

At no point did they say this was how they run or recommend anyone runs a game. You don't need to deconstruct why this is poor technique, everybody's in agreement on that point.

[gbaji]

Gbaji, I think Thane of Fife was presenting the thought process that leads to the tedium of narrating every hour in order to show that random encounters are not necessarily the cause. Thus this bad GMing technique (which I'm guilty of too) shouldn't be held up as a reason why random encounters are bad.

At no point did they say this was how they run or recommend anyone runs a game. You don't need to deconstruct why this is poor technique, everybody's in agreement on that point.

Ah. Ok. I think I misread that post a bit then. I think I got to the last bit about arriving in the same place, and interpreted that as saying "so this is just as good a method as any". Re-reading it, it's a lot more clear. I guess I was mentally following that right after the presentation of "sitting at the table rolling encounter tables while describing things, and dragging things out", and got them jumbled up a bit.

I will re-iterate my point that I'm not a fan of using random encounters as resource drains though. IMO, that's at least relevant.

[kyoryu]

I will re-iterate my point that I'm not a fan of using random encounters as resource drains though. IMO, that's at least relevant.

I think "deliberate resource drain" is a pretty minority position.

I think "pressure to keep moving" is more common, as well as "portraying possible but not definite risks".

[gbaji]

I think "deliberate resource drain" is a pretty minority position.

I think "pressure to keep moving" is more common, as well as "portraying possible but not definite risks".

Yeah. I can see that. Though, honestly, if I'm running the PCs though something where there is (or should be) some kind of "you need to keep moving" pressure, I'd prefer for that motivation to not be "or a random monster will show up and attack" and rather it be "or the denizens of the area you are exploring will report to their friends/allies/whatever that they saw you, organize their defenses, and come over and curb stomp you". Time pressures should be a natural reaction of the environment the PCs are in. If the PCs are assaulting the enemy stronghold, and they stop moving foward and attacking, then yeah, the defenders are going to organize, rally, and counter attack.

I does feel a bit artificial to me to use actual random encounters or wandering monsters for this though. Objectively speaking, there should be no greater odds (arguably lower odds) of encountering some random/wandering monster while spending X time sitting in a single location versus X time exploring. So the idea that "something showed up while you were sitting around in a single location, so you should hurry up and leave that location so as to avoid having such encounters", just seems counter intuitive to me.

I don't see the second part as actual random encounters (but can certainly be considered "wandering monsters"). That fits into one of the categories I think I listed previously as "guards/patrols/whatever of things that exist in the area". So, if they run into a group of NPCs roaming around, that clues them in that this particular kind of NPC is in the area, so when they encounter a larger group of, or location with, those same NPCs, it makes the area seem more dynamic.

I also think using actual random wandering monsters in this way may have a counter result to what the GM may intend. I would certainly assume (quite reasonably) as a player that there *should* be a fixed number of monsters in the area. And, if some of them are roaming around, I will almost certainly be better off encountering them while in a defensive position (like say where we holed up for the rest period), then while exploring the area itself. Thus, if the GM starts hitting us with random/wandering monsters, my inclination would be to think 'Ok, great. We can set up a kill zone here, where we are at our most defensive, and then wait until all the monsters that roam this area show up, and kill them one at a time using far fewer resources and at far lower risk then if we roam around ourselves". Then, having cleared the area of the roamers, we can safely explore the area without worrying about something randomly showing up while we're in the middle of doing something else.

To me, that sort of "actual random and unconnected monster" encounter is not going to incentivize to me move faster at all. It'll tell me "there are things wandering here, that you might want to take out before you risk encountering them at an inconvenient time". On the other hand, "connected monsters" (ie: things that are clearly part of a larger whole set of monsters), absolutely create a time pressure. Doubly so if I'm not really sure if we just killed all of them, or the group that just attacked us sent one of their number back to report on us. But yeah. I like to create whole areas as actual realistic eco systems that the party explores. So things aren't just there by chance. They're there because they "fit" in some way. That does not preclude some of the things in the area wandering around, but they will have a reason to be wandering around. They're hunting for food, or patrolling their borders/boundaries, or have some other purpose.

That's not to say that there can't be environments with wandering monsters that don't deplete (ghouls or other undead things poping up out of a doorway to the underworld in the area, and then roaming around, for example). But those are rare. Most of the time, if you kill something here, you wont run into the same thing later somewhere else in the area. So choosing where you kill something is often a pretty smart way to approach things.

[Pex]

Gbaji, I think Thane of Fife was presenting the thought process that leads to the tedium of narrating every hour in order to show that random encounters are not necessarily the cause. Thus this bad GMing technique (which I'm guilty of too) shouldn't be held up as a reason why random encounters are bad.

At no point did they say this was how they run or recommend anyone runs a game. You don't need to deconstruct why this is poor technique, everybody's in agreement on that point.

Correlation is not causation. I'm amenable to that. I can agree I've played in random encounters that proved fun in their own right, but too often random encounters are run via the "boredom method" even when the DM is not hiding he's using random encounters. The other issue of random encounters forcing players to waste needed resources is still a bother, but as a personal matter since I'm experienced in conserving resources knowing when to fire the big guns or not it's not that big a deal to me presuming the DM is not being adversarial. Not all random encounters are combat. The actual playing of one wouldn't be the issue. It's the boring part of DM monologuing until it actually happens, so the correlation is still an issue.

[Telok]

Many random encounters, at least the ones I run and the modules I adapt, are checked on a timer or per extremely noisy event near high traffic areas. I have one table with animals (hunting fleeing ambushing sleeping), local factions (patrol hunt trade), noises (animal people "natural"), a wandering crazy doctor looking for patients, a mercenary giant looking for booze, and an npc adventuring group. Roll 4d10, first is the 2/10 yes/no, next two are the table entry, last is what its doing.

The pcs holed up for a rest one time in an inaccessible place. There's a 2/10 chance per half hour or big noisy event. They missed meeting two neutral/friendly npcs, a patrol, and only had to deal with some trivial flying animals (aerial jellyfish, didn't even warrant combat, just sent the heavy armor & poison immune guy in to stab them each once). Pretty much every time they rip off a couple good long bursts from their guns I check for another wandering encounter. It only came up with another add-on encounter twice in the last six or eight sessions.

But recently they used full-auto firearms in a place where the locals don't have firearms. Ended up dealing with a 3-wave fight with a cabal of necromancers and blade zombies and when we return after xmas they'll have maybe a minute before the npc adventurers, mad doctor, and a double strength patrol of mutant clown-folk come down on them from different directions. That crap isn't random, its the result of ringing the "here's loot/dinner" bell a whole bunch.

[sandmote]

I just spent a bunch of time putting encounter tables together. Partially this was because it was for an area where I wasn't sure what monsters even could show up (and there definately aren't enough printed 5e stat blocks to fill it out), and since this I consider "what's the purpose" to be a necessary way to determine "how do I make them useful to me" I'm putting thoughts to paper here. Bit a stream of consciousness thing I guess, which I usually don't try.


Back to Random Encounters. Can some one explain how they make a GMs job easier, because I am not sure I see it. Can folks tell me more about how Random Encounters make things easier for a GM? The first thing I get out of random encounter tables is that it narrows the scope of the question I want to answer. Sitting down and asking "what specific thing is the party encountering this time," is very broad and open ended. With a random encounter table, I an move on to more interesting questions.

Actually rolling dice for a table I have prepared: 5 on the d6. That particular d6 roll determines initial encounter type; so assuming the party is in the dismal delve on the plane of earth, that's a d20 roll. The d20 tells me which item of the rolled encounter table I'm looking at; I rolled a 9. That's an encounter with "2d4 mining slaves (veterans)"; I rolled 7 of them.

Now, instead of asking myself "what is the party encountering this time" I can skip to asking myself "what are these 7 mining slaves doing here." By setting up a table beforehand, I've skipped several questions and can move on to determining how to make the encounter interesting or useful or to say something about the world. This roll ended pretty rote (most of the results are supposed to make sense) but I managed it a lot faster than if I tried to make something up completely on the spot. It also helps when I roll for something less generic (running into a flail snail is on the same table) so I'm not always going with the most obvious option.

I will say, though, that the d100 tables a lot of books use (Xanathar's Guide has some examples) are far too broad to really work for an individual forest/mountain/plain. I broke my tables into four groups when working through what I think might be helpful. The numbers shown in front of each option are where rolls on the initial encounter table typically tell me to go:

1-2: social encounters with a die roll of d20 or d100 to choose which one shows up.
3: generic area wandering monsters with a die roll of d6 or d20 to choose which one shows up.
4-5: sub area wandering monsters with a die roll of d20 or 100 to choose which one shows up.
6: environmental encounters with a die roll of d12 or d20 to choose which one shows up.

Sometimes I know what I want the party to encounter. If I have news I want to remind them of or they've spent too long standing in one spot arguing, I skip to the social and sub area wander monsters respectively. I know what sort of encounter I need, so I skip the table picking what I don't need. Rolled a 5 for the former example, giving a result of 1 cult fanatic leading 11 cultists. Do I want them encountering that? If the party has been fighting a rival cult and these guys are willing to discuss targets to bring that cult down, then maybe. But that's a more specific question than "who do they encounter," so its easier for me to say I think it would go better if they encounter a pair of gahleb duhr. I rolled the party encounters two of them by the way; I just skipped to the result for gahleb duhr on the same table where I rolled the cultists. But "are the cultists what I want" is a much easier question than "what should the party encounter," so it helps keep me moving.

If I'm preparing stuff beforehand, having tables with social encounters, environmental encounters, and sub area wandering monsters (1-6 or 1-20 on the sub area wandering monster table is the generic area wandering monster table) just means I have a quick reference guide for what I think should show up in the area. But if the party is taking too long in game, it greatly speeds up my ability to get things moving if I roll on the appropriate table and throw 3 gargoyles at the party. I rolled 1 gargoyle, but that's probably underpowered, so I'll adjust the number. But as with all the previous examples, "how many gargoyles to use" is a more specific question than "what am I throwing at the party." A final roll for the number of creatures isn't always helpful either, but a 1 is going to bias my result downward, to an easy encounter rather than one that risks a PC's life.

I'd still probably try to use them the way gargoyles are supposed to be be used (hiding among inanimate statues to surprise people) if I can, but on the plane of earth its probably assumed all gargoyles are animate anyway, so a generic random encounter they can be.

With these tables I still need to DM, and knowing which creatures can appear in an area speeds me up, but assigning a die roll to the list of things that can show up still helps me come up with something that makes sense on the spot. It isn't a panacea to figuring out what's where (again, I still have to DM), but it helps.

So for a wider region with related environments, I have those four sets of tables, each helping me answer a different question:

Who is traveling through here
What are the most common threats
How are these areas different (with a separate table for each sub area)
What non-creature stuff is out here

And once I've got the tables set up, I know I have options to roll or choose when the party is going to encounter it. Presumably social encounters are friendlier and wandering monsters are less so, but not necessarily. The 7 slaves I rolled above could be working, they could be walking down the passage to a job site, they could be trying to escape. They could be hostile to being interrupted, they could be friendly and try to trade information, they could ignore the party completely. Questions I'd still have to answer for most encounters, but easier to answer for 7 miners than for all possible options of creatures showing up.

This also isn't the only place on the table something like them can appear: the social table has "A mining expedition of 1d12+1 veterans" and "1d4 sandmen with 1d12 slaves (bandits)" (bolding represents a stat block either in the books or which I've written). But the different prompts represent different things (a "mining expedition" might be dao slaves or not) so they still can pull me in some slightly different directions despite mostly making sure miners are more common on the plane than dao or dragons.

There's probably some additional ways to break up the tables to help with areas that contain a wider variety of living creatures or where the sub areas don't overlap enough to have united common encounters. But the work for making the table can be done before the session, saving me time during the session. And if I save more generic tables or the party comes back to an area, I don't need to repeat as much of the work.


I mentioned it above a bit, but I don't find those massive 1d100 tables with 50+ options very helpful. All the encounter types I break up above are mixed in, so I have a harder time when I know what sort of encounter I want bit still need to pick specifics. The Forest Encounters (levels 1-4) table in xanathar's guide is probably one of the most egregious? Given there's encounters that say X or Y (how do you end up writing "1 scout or 2d4 guards with 1d8 mastiffs?") there's about 90 examples on the table. What kind of forest simultaneously contains 2d4 woodcutters (commoners) or 1 yuan-ti abomination with an equal chance of stumbling on either? I think there's also 10 different encounters across the four forest tables that don't involve creatures, so the environment isn't playing much of a role in the...environment you're traveling through.

But we have that, because of course the tables are there to give the DM something to roll on, rather than a set of useful options for what the party might encounter. I'd rather have a d20 or d10 table for an "orc inhabited region (levels 1-4)" and another one for "goblinoid inhabited region (levels 1-4)" and use a different table to check the animals, but the listed environment types are things like "forest," so we're stuck with a "forest encounters (levels 1-4)" table where my chances of "an old tree with a wizened face carved into the trunk" are nill until they get higher level. But owls are as common as a CR7 creature which is (a) considered a "lethal" encounter for 4 PCs of the highest level the table is meant for and (b) has lore saying it should be travelling with a bunch of servants and lesser creatures.

Which I can still adjudicate as DM, but the "1d3 dire camels in a swamp" table doesn't do anything to help me skip questions I need to know about a off the cuff encounter the way focused tables broken down by encounter type do. And focused encounter tables don't necessarily limit what I can choose. The same way those 7 mining slaves can also be a social encounter, I can also grab something off a social encounter table and turn it into a fight. I've just given myself some guidance for the loot table based on whether the guys with the veteran stat block were rolled up as a social encounter or as a wondering monster, even if the table they originated from doesn't give strict instructions on how friendly they are.

Rolling the table doesn't necessarily make any individual encounter better, but having a proper set of tables with good options makes my encounters better on average; and I can generate them faster too.

[Pex]

Many random encounters, at least the ones I run and the modules I adapt, are checked on a timer or per extremely noisy event near high traffic areas. I have one table with animals (hunting fleeing ambushing sleeping), local factions (patrol hunt trade), noises (animal people "natural"), a wandering crazy doctor looking for patients, a mercenary giant looking for booze, and an npc adventuring group. Roll 4d10, first is the 2/10 yes/no, next two are the table entry, last is what its doing.

The pcs holed up for a rest one time in an inaccessible place. There's a 2/10 chance per half hour or big noisy event. They missed meeting two neutral/friendly npcs, a patrol, and only had to deal with some trivial flying animals (aerial jellyfish, didn't even warrant combat, just sent the heavy armor & poison immune guy in to stab them each once). Pretty much every time they rip off a couple good long bursts from their guns I check for another wandering encounter. It only came up with another add-on encounter twice in the last six or eight sessions.

But recently they used full-auto firearms in a place where the locals don't have firearms. Ended up dealing with a 3-wave fight with a cabal of necromancers and blade zombies and when we return after xmas they'll have maybe a minute before the npc adventurers, mad doctor, and a double strength patrol of mutant clown-folk come down on them from different directions. That crap isn't random, its the result of ringing the "here's loot/dinner" bell a whole bunch.

What game are you running? Serious inquiry. I know it's not your intention, but my inner cynic argh is tingling due to rolling for a random encounter when they use a weapon you said they are allowed to use. I know it's not every instance, but the possibility itself triggers my cynicism. It gives the appearance of punishing the players for using the weapon by possibly drawing more enemies they can't handle right now. Is this normal for the game or are you thinking it's a logical consequence and the players really aren't caring about the noise they make? As the saying goes, don't balance something by making it annoying to use.

[Lord Torath]

What game are you running? Serious inquiry.Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7th Edition. Check his sig.

[Telok]

I know it's not your intention, but my inner cynic argh is tingling due to rolling for a random encounter when they use a weapon you said they are allowed to use.

DtD40k7e is not balanced. It is not gentle. It is not fair. You can start out as a gnome Atlantean pyromancer starship captain with tamed riding T-Rex, wearing power armor and dual weilding ak-47s, on top of the starship you own. Legit starting character that.

They are in a long lost whacko dungeon of weirdness that a corporation tried to monetize a couple thousand years ago. Something went wrong, the place sealed up, massive explosions, etc., etc. The pcs opened it up again and found the descendents of the corp employees and original inhabitants who have been warped a mutated by the dungeon. They're basically in a d&d style dungeon with random technological artifacts and some SCP style anomalies.

The locals, in the levels they've explored are between stone age and early iron age technology. That are not, with the exception of a few unfortunate mutations, stupid. They hear gunfire and find the blasted corpses the party leaves behind, largely ascribing it to a new kind on noisy combat spell. Undead respond by their programming or hunger, if unintelligent, and as intelligent creatures otherwise.The animals are either hunter/scavengers or herbivore/scavengers and will cautiously approach noises if hunting or without a current food source.

Everything down to the giant pillbugs has been mutated or changed by the environment to be more aggressive, carnivorous, and hostile. And pretty much nothing is as noisy and attention getting as gunfire. So there's 3000 years of no guns, weird magic, and near starvation conditions. A new noise might be a new food. It doesn't help that the party can't effectively communicate with the natives or read much of the written stuff they find. They have enough recovered documents they could unravel the mystery, but the language barrier and their... disregard... for stuff that isn't precious metals, gems, or magic items, has been seriously hindering them.

[Pex]

Ok, a logical consequence of action based on game setting and rules used as designed. Telling my inner cynic to go to bed.

Thanks.

[Telok]

Ok, a logical consequence of action based on game setting and rules used as designed. Telling my inner cynic to go to bed.

Thanks.

No worries. If they were using laser guns, silenced pistols, stealth, or trying to talk to people then it would be different. And easier. But its rock & roll with gunpowder heavy weapons as their first reaction to almost everything. Not even assault rifles, actual "no rate of fire selector" machineguns.

They're combat monsters, and one has great intelligence skills, but talking to npcs is a big weak point for them. Murderizing stands them in good stead when they're just hacking & blasting primitives with stone spears and basic vodoun traditions. But the next assassin and bounty hunter (two characters took enemy & hunted flaws which certain game rules have triggered) have normal social skills & stats and are going to try getting chummy with their targets before the plasma grenades and two weapon frenzy chainswords come out.

[kyoryu]

I would certainly assume (quite reasonably) as a player that there *should* be a fixed number of monsters in the area.

That makes sense for a more limited dungeon, where "clearing" it is a reasonable expectation.

It doesn't make as much sense in the more original context of a megadungeon, where the dungeon is basically large enough that the idea of a known, finite number of critters doesn't make as much sense, and the dungeon "replenishes" itself over time between delves.

[KorvinStarmast]

That makes sense for a more limited dungeon, where "clearing" it is a reasonable expectation.

It doesn't make as much sense in the more original context of a megadungeon, where the dungeon is basically large enough that the idea of a known, finite number of critters doesn't make as much sense, and the dungeon "replenishes" itself over time between delves. Also, how time is tracked, and how time passes (particularly when you are recovering one hit point per day unless magical healing is available) allows time for the "world" to change and for other monsters to happen by, occupy empty areas, etc.

[gbaji]

That makes sense for a more limited dungeon, where "clearing" it is a reasonable expectation.

It doesn't make as much sense in the more original context of a megadungeon, where the dungeon is basically large enough that the idea of a known, finite number of critters doesn't make as much sense, and the dungeon "replenishes" itself over time between delves.

Sure. But there must (should?) be allowances for the "area". Yes, in a large enough area (like a mega dungeon), we can make those assumptions. But at any given time period the "area" we are concerned about and actively encountering is much smaller than that. I was specifically addressing the idea of the GM having wandering monsters come along and attack the party while they are resting in an otherwise cleared space, in an otherwise cleared "area" around that space, and the GM doing so to "hurry the players up" (implication being that the GM doesn't want them to take time to recover fullly before continuing to explore new areas).

Sure. Given enough time (like if we leave the dungeon and come back weeks later), it's reasonable to assume some new things have migrated into areas previously cleared out. But it's pretty darn absurd to assume that during a single 8 hour rest period X number of monsters unrelated to what we've already been fighting in this area just happen to stumble upon where we are resting. If that was the rate of "monster roam", then why didn't they run into and attack the prevous residents of the space we're in now? Presumably, the kobolds that were here before we killed them would also have been attacked by any ransom slimes, or gelatonous cubes, or cave trolls, or whatever, if that's what wanders around here. The "immediate area" should have reached some sort of balance point in terms of "things settled in spaces versus things wandering around/among them" long before the PCs ever arrived.

If the actual rate of wandering monster was that high, then they should have wiped out whatever was settled here long ago *or* whatever was settled here should have wiped out the wandering monsters and reduced them to a reasonable rate that they could maintain and hold their area from. And sure. Maybe we don't need to think this hard if we're just going for "toss fun encounters at the players". I tend to prefer to make the spaces seem at least somewhat realistic. When running PCs though any part of my game world, I strive to make that part make sense from a "how did it look and work before the PCs arrived?" pov. I don't toss random encounters at the PCs that, if they were tossed at whatever else is "static" and in the area, would have wiped them out. This rule of thumb is the same whether I'm generating encounters while they are traveling along a road between two towns, or they are exploring a dungeon. To me, the same "rule" needs to apply.

But yeah. If you and your players don't care about this, and are ok with a "the dungeon generates monsters and we fight them" style game, then that's perfectly fine. That's certainly how the old school dungeons were structured. The PCs explored until they could not maintain the rate of encounters any more, and then left with their loot (or over extended and died horrible deaths!). And yeah, I do put things in like this, but they are very specifically structured and presnted as some sort of magically enchanted area/thing that generates monsters for some reason (the tomb that eternally generates a variety of undead, the ancient war tower in the center of the area that creates construct opponents eternally for the particpants to fight, some plane the PCs travel to which a bored god created as a playground to test people in, etc) . But for most "normal" adventure locales in my game setting? I wont do this. What is there is what is there, and it wont ever exceed some kind of logical balance limit, and it will only recover from losses below that limit over a period of time far longer than "one or two rest periods". That's just how I prefer to run my games.

[kyoryu]

Sure. But there must (should?) be allowances for the "area". Yes, in a large enough area (like a mega dungeon), we can make those assumptions. But at any given time period the "area" we are concerned about and actively encountering is much smaller than that. I was specifically addressing the idea of the GM having wandering monsters come along and attack the party while they are resting in an otherwise cleared space, in an otherwise cleared "area" around that space, and the GM doing so to "hurry the players up" (implication being that the GM doesn't want them to take time to recover fullly before continuing to explore new areas).

In a megadungeon, no area is "cleared". That's, to a certain extent, the point. You don't clear a megadungeon room by room - you go in there, try to get what you can, and get out before you die. The presumption is that the monster population is high enough that it is, effectively, unknowable.

And it's not about recovery - it's about doing eighteen search for traps checks or look for secret doors every step. To force some balance of danger and caution.

And, to reiterate, for most modern scenarios I agree with you! Most people aren't playing '70s and '80s style megadungeons, and the why and how of random encounters needs to adjust based on the play and scenario assumptions.

(Interestingly in the reboot of XCom, they ended up using a different mechanic to also counter overly-defensive play - people were playing the game very cautiously originally (move + overwatch), so in the expansion they added a resource that would dissipate in a few turns, to force you to not just sit back and hold a defensive stance.)

[KorvinStarmast]

(Interestingly in the reboot of XCom, they ended up using a different mechanic to also counter overly-defensive play - people were playing the game very cautiously originally (move + overwatch), so in the expansion they added a resource that would dissipate in a few turns, to force you to not just sit back and hold a defensive stance.) I remember the discussions in Star Craft on how to deal with "turtling" as a strategy ... that goes back a ways ...

[sandmote]

My previous comment was way too long and really focusing on the tiny details on account of my trying to put together some encounter tables for a plane in general, so I think I'll back out a bit and try to collect my thoughts of the overall way random encounters work:
General
First, a lot of encounter tables are just badly put together. A gelatinous cube that the inhabitants let stay for extra protection and janitorial work might make sense, but you shouldn't be seeing goblins, orcs, and kobolds in the same dungeon. Maybe in different areas of the same megadungeon, but not all right next each other taking turns to attack the party one group at a time.

Similarly, not all forests are going to (or should) contain all the same threats, but we tend to grab one "forest encounter table" with everything you could maybe see encountering in that type of environment on it. So with a couple of bad rolls you could end up having to justify a bunch of factions that should have driven each other away. Further, in trying to force these tables bigger, they start to include things that's don't make much sense, like the 1d3 Dire Camels on a swamp encounter table.

Trying to figure out exactly is in every particular spot of the world is impossible, and can take a lot of time. One thing I can do to save time as DM during the session is to have basic answers prepared when something unexpected come up. And since no plan survives contact with the party, that's pretty beneficial.

Immediate Area
For the immediate area, I do think that that random encounters should be forcing the party to consider the environment, how the enemies act, and not to try topping off their rest based resources after every fight.

To that end, I think an encounter table for an individual dungeon or part of a megadungeon should be small, and certain types of targets should be struck off of it once beaten. The types of units should be relegated to ones the inhabitants would field, known auxiliaries, and occasional creatures that make sense to that group.

Gnolls warbands are pretty heterogenous, so for a level 4 5e party fighting them, maybe something following this general concept:
d12 Encounter
1-4: 1d6+1 gnolls
5-6: 4d4 gnoll witherlings
7-8: 1d4 maw demons
9-10: 1d4 flesh gnawers
11: 1 leucrottta with 1 gnoll (4 pairs total)
12: 1 troll (2 total)
For more organized groups or ones with fewer special creatures, this should probably include some more variety in units: guards making the rounds, sure, but also archers or skirmishers wandering around, people looking for a private place to duel, and individuals who run off to try to raise the alarm.

The party therefore is necessarily facing slightly different problems every single time you need to keep them moving or they attract attention. The fact you have multiple options for what shows up helps keep things fresh. They might be able to hold person one flesh gnawer long enough to kill the other next time, to they might have to focus on clearing out a bunch of witherlings, and that's going to be a better session than if every group of patrols is 6 guards with the same stat block. Not necessarily a massive difference, but better.

Region or Megadungeon
For a larger region, random encounters against help flesh out the area, but there should still be a clear set of creature types you end up finding for a particular forest, that isn't necessarily the same as those of every other forest. One forest could be infested with gnolls, another with orcs, and a third with yuan-ti, and should have something to reflect that. The other bit is that in a larger area you're going to want a larger variety of encounters, and listing them out helps make sure the list is big enough.

For a forest region, I'd want several tables: mundane animals that fill out the world and/or can be hunted, native beasts strong enough to be a threat, friendly encounters in case the party needs help (merchants, druids, pixies, couatls, ect.) and whatever the main local threat is. I want this prepared when I arrive to the session, so I'm not spending 5 minutes flipping through pages every time and having to settle on the first thing I find that works. And then if I have an idea of what sort of encounter I want, I can roll to see which table I'm looking at, instead of having everything stuck on the same d100 table with all different types of encounters mixed together. It doesn't help to roll to see what the party attracted with their loud noises and land on "1d6 web cocoons hanging from the branches, holding withered carcasses." But if I want to mark a particular part of the forest the party will be able to recognize in the future, saying its next to the trees with those cocoons is actually helpful, and the party running into a phase spider isn't. A table of options here also helps if the party ends up interested in multiple spots in the forest, because I've got them prepared.

In this case the encounter table helps you tailor local encounters to the local area, where not only are the encounters different in a forest than in a desert, but also the encounters in this forest are different from the other forest.

Large Scale Tables
Individual d100 tables like the ones they like to put in first party materials are probably only useful for pulling ideas from. Functionally just a list where if you're not sure you can let a die decide, more useful for ideas to add to a table for a particular area. A big list of everything that can show up can make it easier to decide what does show up.

This is the sort of situation where you're going to expect patrols of the kingdom throughout the kingdom, but the plains on the northern border have different problems than at the empire's core, and the separated encounter tables can help represent both. Its harder to forget to have various elementals show up on an elemental plane if they're 60% of random encounters compared to trying to remember which elementals you have stat blocks for off the top of your head. After all, I've got them written down on a little list next to me, and if I'm not sure which one to use I can toss a die before the party gets too bored and off track.

Here, the encounter table takes over the effort of making sure I know what's around the party and that the party is regularly reminded what this region is like without having to spend a lot of time at the table to make this happen.

[RedWarlock]

Can I just ask, what the heck is it with some of you and being so hyper-specific about what constitutes a "Random Encounter" as to create a strawman about it MUST be entirely dice-generated (no connection to the plot even as a post-facto justification), not regional-specific or CR-selective, randomly-rolled-out-of-the-entire-MM, must be utterly boring, badly run, and resource-draining, or else it's only "sparkling" railroading?

[Pex]

Can I just ask, what the heck is it with some of you and being so hyper-specific about what constitutes a "Random Encounter" as to create a strawman about it MUST be entirely dice-generated (no connection to the plot even as a post-facto justification), not regional-specific or CR-selective, randomly-rolled-out-of-the-entire-MM, must be utterly boring, badly run, and resource-draining, or else it's only "sparkling" railroading?

It's important to know the perspective of the individual of why they like or not like random encounters. In my case it's been more the correlation of random encounters being involved in wasting time listening to the DM monologue about nothing happening when the encounter doesn't even happen as the cause of my displeasure of it. When we understand and agree what the discussion is about we gain insight to others' point of view as well as clarification of our own. We come to understand the different degrees of randomness people enjoy from true random of everything determined by dice to randomly chosen based on a specific list of possibilities to randomness of one defined event but random on the time of adventuring day it will occur. The strawman that exists is only the one you brought in yourself.

[thirdkingdom]

My background is with BX and similar-style games, and less with AD&D, although there are similarities. I think that, as originally introduced, the idea of dungeon delving was to get in and out as quickly as possible with as much loot as possible. This is a system where gold is far more valuable as an XP metacurrency than killing creatures.

Random encounters are meant to speed things along and encourage the PCs to strike a balance between full investigation of each chamber and rushing through (plus, if you're doing a good job mapping, you should be able to tell where a number of secret doors/chambers are based on the map); random encounters do not typically result in meaningful treasure, so you're risking resource drain in exchange for, theoretically, very little.

Plus, the morale and reaction rolls in BX ensure that not all encounters end in combat; in fact, the incentive is to minimize combat. Surprise rolls give the PCs the chance to potentially avoid combat altogether, and most monsters are automatically hostile only on a roll of 5 or less on 2d6 (modified by Charisma if the characters attempt to parley). Morale checks are made, and many monsters will attempt to flee or surrender instead of fighting to the death.

A great Actual Play podcast that does a good job highlighting the old school style of play, and the use of random encounters, is 3d6 Down the Line, especially their current delve into the Arden Vul megadungeon.

[KorvinStarmast]

My background is with BX and similar-style games, and less with AD&D, although there are similarities. I think that, as originally introduced, the idea of dungeon delving was to get in and out as quickly as possible with as much loot as possible. This is a system where gold is far more valuable as an XP metacurrency than killing creatures.

Random encounters are meant to speed things along and encourage the PCs to strike a balance between full investigation of each chamber and rushing through (plus, if you're doing a good job mapping, you should be able to tell where a number of secret doors/chambers are based on the map); random encounters do not typically result in meaningful treasure, so you're risking resource drain in exchange for, theoretically, very little.

Plus, the morale and reaction rolls in BX ensure that not all encounters end in combat; in fact, the incentive is to minimize combat. Surprise rolls give the PCs the chance to potentially avoid combat altogether, and most monsters are automatically hostile only on a roll of 5 or less on 2d6 (modified by Charisma if the characters attempt to parley). Morale checks are made, and many monsters will attempt to flee or surrender instead of fighting to the death.
Yes, that style of play incentivized more than combat. :smallcool:
The other key feature of that was "Treasure in Lair" - if you weren't in the lair, there wasn't any treasure, beyond the usual claw, tooth, or maybe body part one might be interested in for making potions or trading to an NPC wizard for something ...

[gbaji]

It's important to know the perspective of the individual of why they like or not like random encounters. In my case it's been more the correlation of random encounters being involved in wasting time listening to the DM monologue about nothing happening when the encounter doesn't even happen as the cause of my displeasure of it. When we understand and agree what the discussion is about we gain insight to others' point of view as well as clarification of our own. We come to understand the different degrees of randomness people enjoy from true random of everything determined by dice to randomly chosen based on a specific list of possibilities to randomness of one defined event but random on the time of adventuring day it will occur. The strawman that exists is only the one you brought in yourself.

Pretty much this. If we don't ask for details about what someone's talking about, then the statement "Random encounters are bad!" is meaningless. Similarly, a counter argument of "No. Random encounters are good!" is similarly pointless. The term can mean a lot of things, and be used in a lot of different ways, many of which are "good" when used well/properly, and many of which may be "bad" if not.

I personally, find that the realization as a player that I may randomly run into the same begger, street urchin, or prostitute, in every single town we travel to in an adventure setting to be "bad" use of random encounters. Same deal if it becomes obvious that the same "traveling in plains" or "traveling in a forest", or "traveling in moutains" tables are being employed by the GM runnning the game (and yes, it really doesn't take that long to figure this out). But that's just me. So yeah, asking questions like "how customized are the tables to the specific area/place I'm adventuring in" is super relevant.

And yeah, as you pointed out, asking questions like "do you just sit at the table monologuing while rolling to see if we have an encounter or not", also becomes relevant. I would vastly prefer that the GM predetermine that we're going to run into gnolls while traveling through the hills, and then engage their own brains and decide "this would be a good spot to have the party encounter those gnolls I randomly determined they'd run into", then have the GM rolling on encounter charts while we're at the table, theoretically traveling through the hills. Again though, that's my preference.

Other players may absolutely love the idea that the GM is never actually applying any of their own thought process into anything, and truely just determining everything based on random tables and die rolls. IMPO though, if you distrust your GM that much, maybe you should not be playing in their game in the first place. But again, that's just me. And yes, some posters have expressed enjoymnent in games where everything is random, so it may not even be about trust at all. I personally find such games extremely tedious and boring, but that is, again, my own opinion. I suppose there's still a social element there, so that's a bit better than just playing a CRPG, or just rolling up encounters on my own and having my characters fight things for exp and loot (which yeah, seems silly).

Different players get different things out of playing RPGs. There's no "wrong" way of playing. And how random stuff is managed is absolutely going to tie into that.

[JusticeZero]

Random encounters fill a clock. It keeps people from going "Okay, we wait eight days" without thinking about it in terms of "Ugh, we have to stand around for a week." Is it a good system for doing that? No, it's awful. But there's a purpose to it, so I respect it for being a primitive solution to an existing problem.

[rel]

Random encounters fill a clock. It keeps people from going "Okay, we wait eight days" without thinking about it in terms of "Ugh, we have to stand around for a week." Is it a good system for doing that? No, it's awful. But there's a purpose to it, so I respect it for being a primitive solution to an existing problem.

If that's the design goal I don't think it's going to deliver the desired results without some very careful balancing.
Unless the random encounters are so dangerous there's a legitimate chance of the party not making it home or not making it back, it's not that much harder for the Players to say 'we retreat to a safe place where there are no random encounters, wait 8 days, then go back to where we were before.'

[JusticeZero]

If that's the design goal I don't think it's going to deliver the desired results without some very careful balancing.'
I mean... it was the 80's or whatever. Blue box stuff. You can't expect the ideas from then to actually be great ideas, they were more... valiant rough drafts.

[Mutazoia]

Random encounters have been a part of the hobby for fifty years, and I am still not sure if I see the point of them. I sometimes include them, and they seem to always piss the players off.

Furthermore, many random encounter tables include a few things that are wildly out of line with the rest in terms of difficulty. For example, most D&D encounter tables have an adult dragon as the maximum result, despite the fact that the vast majority of PCs will have no chance against one in a fight.

So what actual purpose do random encounters, particularly powerful ones, serve on either a mechanical or narrative level?



My players thought of a few reasons, none of which I really buy and all seem overly cynical:

1: They are there to add a horror element of the game to placate the small minority of players who enjoy horror at the expense of normal players who are there for fantasies or power and control.
2: The original designers are trolls, and later designers are just aping them.
3: They are there as a crutch for new GMs who don't actually know how to build or balance an encounter on their own.
4: They are included as a warning system for players; any GM who uses random encounter tables by the book is clearly incompetent and you should leave their game.

Monsters don't sit idly by in their assigned room in a dungeon, waiting for some random group of adventurers to wander in. They move. The less intelligent ones hunt for food, and the more intelligent ones investigate noises and anticipate threats. Think about the last time you were walking outside and a squirrel ran by. Technically, that squirrel was a random encounter for you. Good thing they can't cast fireball....

Whether you are clanking around in a dungeon, or spending days trekking across the wilderness, you are eventually going to encounter another living thing that you were not expecting to encounter. Random encounter tables are a method to aid a DM in replicating this in their games, giving the less experienced DMs a tool to generate a random encounter on the fly. Tables like this are not perfect, they are merely a starting point that can (and should) be modified by the individual DM as they see fit and gain more experience in their system of choice.