What is the purpose of random encounters?

[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 Doom_tm, 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 Doom_tm, 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."