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.

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.

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.

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.