What is the purpose of random encounters?

[Vahnavoi]

@gbaji: you make a small, but important error, when you think of game where player characters "just walk around and roll to see what happens".

Where did you get the idea that a game being arbitrary and random will lead to players feeling a game is arbitrary and random?

Because it can be empirically shown that humans are primed to see patterns, but bad at detecting randomness - which put together mean humans tend to see patterns even when there are none. Random games are hence perfectly capable of creating the illusion of meaning and purpose in players.

Which goes a long way to explain overall longevity of games of chance. You know, the genre of games that is both older and more popular, taken in total, than tabletop roleplaying games have ever been? The idea that "most players" wouldn't enjoy a random game is ill-established - if anything, tabletop roleplayers are the odd ones out for wanting a pretense of "playing a character" or "living world" or whatever. Most people who play games are perfectly happy rolling dice, flipping cards, dealing tiles or watching blinking lights of a slot machine without such extra baggage.

[Lord Torath]

@gobaji

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I feel you're being way too hard on Talakeal for his Wizard-Sumoning-A-Monster room.

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

If the PCs learn about the wizard back in town, and that he's going to be summoning monsters, then by all means, implement a time limit. "Wizard will complete his summoning in Your Favorite Number of hours." Or if the PCs enter the dungeon, do not encounter the wizard, but kill many of the other inhabitants, the wizard may learn that someone has penetrated the dungeon, and maybe he should summon some extra protection. In that case, sure, have the monster already summoned the next time the PCs enter the dungeon.

But if neither party has any inkling of the presence of the other, then the most interesting time for the PCs to encounter the wizard is when he's in the middle of summoning the monster, and can thus be interrupted should the party so choose.

[Easy e]

Lord Torath- You are making the classic blunder, which is only followed by starting a land war in Asia.

You are looking at the game as a piece of media, a story. It appears a lot of folks do not do this. They think of it purely as either a game or a simulation. They are not interested in the connection to story. This forum has at least taught me this about player preference.

They either prefer a gamist or a simulationist approach rather than a Narrativist approach. Therefore, when you ask which would a player prefer..... the answer varies a lot depending on where they fall on the triangle between gamist, simulationist, and narrativist.

To make it harder, each is a spectrum and everyone falls on a different place on it, so there is no objective "This is the right mix".

[GloatingSwine]

@gobaji

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I feel you're being way to hard on Talakeal for his Wizard-Sumoning-A-Monster room.

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going in is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

The disconnect comes when you provide that scenario to Talakeal's players, who live in bizarro world and are also paranoid and risk averse.

When they see a summoning in progress they don't assume they're going to be able to interrupt it, they assume it's piling even more risk on top of the risk they'd already be taking fighting the wizard because they can't possibly stop it before the monster appears fight them.

[Morgaln]

The disconnect comes when you provide that scenario to Talakeal's players, who live in bizarro world and are also paranoid and risk averse.

When they see a summoning in progress they don't assume they're going to be able to interrupt it, they assume it's piling even more risk on top of the risk they'd already be taking fighting the wizard because they can't possibly stop it before the monster appears fight them.

I think the issue is a bit different from that, although still related to Talakeal's specific group:

Gbaji's point is that both the wizard and the summon only existed in the first place because the room they were in was opened. If the players had never opened that room, the summoning wouldn't have occurred and the players would never have met that monster. I'm not sure Talakeal has ever confirmed this is how it would have played out (I might have missed that confirmation), but that's the assumption in gbaji's post, and it is a likely one.

What this means is that scouting the room added a threat that would not have been present if the players hadn't scouted and just ignored that room. In other words, on a meta-level i. e. from the viewpoint of the players (but not the characters) scouting was detrimental in this case. Most players would probably realize that and recognize it as a not uncommon GM tactic, but look at it from the character viewpoint of "we ignored that wizard, it came back to bite us." Maybe they'd even decide to go back and take out that wizard now to prevent that from happening again.

Talakeal's players, however, have a very adversarial relationship with their GM and assume he did this to spite them. So their takeaway from this happening even once is that scouting is useless as the GM will make them encounter the monster anyway, even if they try to avoid it. Which of course completely ignores that they encountered the summoned monster but not the wizard, and probably also that scouting did work for them multiple times in the past. It's confirmation bias at its finest.

Note that I have no problem with the wizard being a scripted event. Personally, I might have it being contingent on other factors (Mostly how likely it is the wizard even knows the players are around, since the summoning narratively was supposed to be a reaction to the players' presence), but I am certainly guilty of doing similar things.

[Talakeal]

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going in is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

This is pretty accurate.

But, I don't generally run a cinematic game. I don't begrudge GM's who do, but I tend to fall on the more simulationist side.

I only do things like this when some scene strikes me as cool, probably less than 1% of encounters. But, contrary to what Gbaji thinks, I feel like most players enjoy exciting coincidences and are primed to expect them by consuming single author fiction where the plot is driven along by odd coincidences.

Of course, this doesn't stop the players from bitching about it when they lose, but IMO at this point its that they are looking for any excuse to justify being upset.

Sure. But as I've posted a number of times on this forum, I tend to allow for *one* "unlikely event/encounter" in an adventure. And that one encounter is the "hook" that starts up the adventure. The PCs "just happen" to be walking down the trail when they see someone fleeing from bandits. The party "just happens" to be sitting at a table at a tavern when the wounded stranger shows up and hands off some clue to a treasure map to them. These are unlikely things to happen, but if they didn't happen to the PCs, they'd happen to someone else, and those other people would be on the adventure instead. It's assumed for the adventure path to occur in the first place.

But, having set that up, you need to be extremely aware of introducing random and unlikely events after that point. Having too many things "just happen" to occur in ways that lead the players through an adventure will feel a bit too pat to the players, but also feel a lot like railroading. Set up the hook. Let the players choose to follow it where it leads.

Your game sounds extremely boring and I am glad I am not one of your players.

Just to check, I went through some classic, very highly regarded, adventure modules and most of them have an unlikely coincidence on every single page, presumably because the players expect action and adventure and you don't get action and adventure from ordinary everyday occurrences.

Except the way you've described the process there is a significance between them. If the party does not witness the magical ritual, then they will never encounter the monster. There is a very direct casual relationship between one and the other.

Also, it's not just "never going in the room at all", it's "never looking into the room at all". In the case you described, the party scout went ahead and looked into the room. He saw the wizard casting spells on the monster. He then reported back. It was the act of him "scouting the room" that created the monster. So yes, it's exactly a question of "scouting versus not scouting". If the party had not sent their scout ahead to look into that room, would the monster have been patroling the dungeon such that they could encounter it? The answer, at least as you've described things, is: No. Thus, the monster only patrolled the dungeon as a result of their scout looking into the room.

That's a problem to me.

No. it is not. But it is safe to assume that the odds of the monster leaving the room and causing trouble should be the same whether the scout ever opened the door and looked into the room or not. You are arguing that it's uneasonable to assume that this monster will just always sit in the room and never leave. And you are correct about that. But the problem here is that the monster does just that until the scout looks into the room. What should happen is that you have the room marked as the monster's lair, and the entire region around the dungeon marked as having a random chance of encountering that monster as it's wandering around, looking for food, or otherwise causing trouble.

But that's not what you did in this case. In this case there was no chance of encountering the monster outside the room until *after* the scout looked into the room. Which, in the case of just a monster being in a room, would seem extremely unrealistic, and would make the players think that the monster was created by them scouting (and they would be correct).

This is correct. So let's focus on the actual problem rather than inventing things that never happened and trying to solve those.

This issue isn't really how viable scouting is; the players got information through scouting, could have acted on it, but chose not to. Saying this means scouting is weak is like saying a +5 holy avenger is too weak because the players never took it out of the scabbard.

But the issue that exploring an area of the map "creates" new monsters is an issue. Because once you have established a monster exists, it has to be dealt with.

From a realism perspective, I could track the movements of monsters before the players know where they are. But, this is both a lot more work for me and, more importantly, will make the players more upset, not less. The lack of "realism" isn't what they are upset about, its wandering monsters. If anything, my players would be more happy with a *less* realistic game where the monsters just sat in a 10x10 room guarding a chest and never leaving to eat or use the latrine, even when provoked.

The players do not like the loss of control that comes with a monster being able to attack them on its terms. That is what they are upset about.

What did you expect would happen?

I already said, I expected them to try fighting, realize they were in over their heads, and either retreat down the unknown corridor and escape out the back or dig in their heels and die. What I did not expect was half the party wanting to do one, half the party wanting to do the other, and then being sacrificed by their allies.

But again, that's just an expectation. Things rarely play out that way in practice, and my players are certainly capable of surprising me and pulling off amazing wins / escapes that I never saw coming; they are stubborn, not stupid.

Fools for wanting the game world they are playing in to make sense to them? I don't think that's foolish. I think that's what most players want.

They are fools for demanding something unrealistic.

No GM, except maybe Quertus, is actually going to keep track of where every NPC in the campaign is and what they are doing at all times. They are going to use shortcuts. These shortcuts may be quantum / temporal ogres, random encounter tables, scripting, or just a GM deciding to follow the rule of cool and do whatever seems most interesting at the time. These are all valid approaches, and it is none of the player's business which one the GM is using, their job is to respond to situations as they arrive.

And if you actually look at things complexly, realistic models do not have the NPCs exist in a vacuum. The behavior of one NPC will influence the behavior of every other NPC they interract with, and this includes NPCs who are "off the map". I read an article the other day that was explaining how the fall of the Aztec empire was the direct consequence of a decision made in Imperial China a century earlier, despite the fact that they occurred on opposite sides of the planet and the two civilizations never encountered one another. The same would be true of a realistic model of NPC behavior.

This is, of course, ridiculous. But it is "realistic". We aren't talking about realism, but rather an arbitrary line.

That's a heck of a pivot/strawman from "players should expect that the NPCs actions should not change based purely on being observed". We're not talking about quantum physics here. It's not at all unreasonable for the players to expect that scouting a room should not kick off some script that now creates a new threat in the dungeon that otherwise would not have existed for them to have to deal with. I'm not sure how much more clearly to state this.

Before the players encounter a monster it could be anywhere or doing anything. Once the GM has established a concrete location and activity for it, the players have to deal with it.

What is the alternative?

The GM created the thing that is too strong for them. The GM created the random tables/rules/whatever that determined when/where the PCs might encounter that thing. I think you have the direction of my argument backwards. It's not "if the players, by chance, encounter something too strong for them, ...", it's "If the GM creates a monster that is too strong for the players to fight, he should not have them run into it randomly and with no chance to avoid the encounter".

You're leading with the conditions I specifically said you should not do. Let me repeat again: If you create a monster that is too powerful for the party to defeat if they run into it randomly and without the ability to prep/whatever to defeat it, then you... wait for it... should not put it on a random encounter table and have them encounter it. Or, if you do, then you need to contrive some means to ensure they can avoid the encounter if the wish. Blaming this all on the die rolls after the fact is a cop out.

This is a mega-dungeon. An indoor sandbox.

The players can choose to explore it in any order they like.

The deeper down the players go, the stronger the monsters get.

If they choose to push on into areas that are above their level, they take the risk of death.


I just find it kind of funny that you are complaining about my campaign being "scripted" and "like a railroad" when it appears your real issue is the lack of guard rails and contrived situations keeping them safe. Likewise, you are saying I needed to add in a contrived way to avoid the encounter if they wish, when the whole problem is that they did have an easy out and chose not to take it.

Irrelevant. Your players at the table you GM made that decision. It's not about what I think, or what any other forum poster thinks. It's the fact that your assessment of the players decision was radically different from what the players actual decision was when presented with the situation. There is no "objectively correct risk assessment". There is only "what the players will decide to do". The danger here is that you seem to think that there *is* one objectively correct risk assessment and that your players will arrive at the exact same answer as the one you think that one is.

That's where you are going wrong.

I agree, it is irrelevant. Yet you and Vahnovoi keep bringing it up.

I specifically said that my tactical analysis was merely my opinion, at which point I was told my opinion was objectively wrong.

Now, when I respond to that accusation, you are acting like I was the one who said there was an objectively right answer and attacking me for that.

Its like you guys are playing the forum equivalent of "quit hitting yourself".


Unless of course, you are talking about the benefit of hindsight. With perfect knowledge of the situation, I can confidently say that escaping through the back door would have been objectively the right choice in that situation.

The option to scout down the other hallway only occurred *after* the party encountered the monster and were losing to it. This was not a situation where the scout could take 15 or 20 minutes to quietly sneak down the hallway, see what is there and come back so the party could make a decision about what to do. The "odds of death" were extremely high for everyone in the party *except* the rogue, since they were the ones left fighting the monster (one person down no less), while the scout is off doing this.

Again. It's not about the rogue's safety. It's about the entire party. Because they were already in combat, and losing, their options and decisions were radically different than they would have been otherwise. It's just weird to me that you are even talking about the rogue when it was the rest of the party actively in combat at the time. The rogue may very well have escaped, but it's unlikely the rest of the party would have survived if they tried to do this. The only way the whole party could survive is if the whole party all ran down the unexplored hallway, at full speed (unless this is a really slow monster), which puts the whole party at risk of running smack into something else dangerous and being crushed between that and the monster chasing them.

You eliminated their options by not allowing them to avoid the encounter.

Where are you getting these numbers from? How do you know precisely how long the corridor was and how long it would take the party to transverse it at various speeds and how long they could survive against the monster?

The rogue couldn't hurt the monster without rolling a nat 20. That was a big reason why they had no hope of killing the monster. His presence contributes almost nothing to the fight.

The tank, healer, and illusionist could have easily held off the monster long enough for the rogue to scout out the backdoor and confirm to the party that it was safe.

Half the party realized this, and were shouted down. After the rest of the party demanded they sacrifice themselves for their escape, I stopped the game and did a ret-con, and this was indeed exactly what happened.

You drew the map and placed the minis. You rolled the dice. You interpreted what the dice rolls meant. I'm not sure what "roughly the same time" actually means here. What exact time granularity are your dice actually calibrated for? I mean, there's a lot of variation in terms of how quickly people and monsters move when wandering/exploring. Again, it seems like an extremely contrived situation for the monster to "just happen" to enter that room from the other side at the exact time the party did. One minute earlier or later and they could have detected the monster and avoided it.

For simplicity sake, the monster's movements are tied to the party's. Whenever the party moves from one room to another, so does the patrolling monster. I randomize its start location every time they enter the dungeon, and I randomize its route every time it comes to an intersection.

In this case, the party entered the room with three exits while the monster was in the room to the west of it, and I rolled randomly and the dice indicated the monster moved east. So I ruled that they entered the room at roughly the same time.

But I am really, really, really curious about what you are thinking the party could have done with an extra thirty seconds, or even a couple minutes, of warning.

The only thing I can think of is going back north and hiding in the dead end, which is great if it works, but if it doesn't, the party is in a much worse position as now they actually have no place to go and have no choice but fighting to the death or coming up with a brilliant escape plan (which may involve selling out some of their own).

I'm sorry. I'm calling BS on the whole "it was the dice and not me!" claim.

What's the point of writing a 3000 word post in a thread about random encounters when you don't believe that a random encounter actually happened and are instead talking about some imagined railroad?

And heck, if my goal was to railroad the party into a chase scene, why didn't I just wait until the party had decided to enter the corridor I wanted to chase them down and have the monster appear then? Having it show up at the three way intersection just shows that not only am I dishonest railroader, but I am an incompetent dishonest railroader!

None of those methods would work if the party is literally entering a room from one side while the monster "just happens" to enter from the other. Any trip wire alarms would sound too far away for the party to detect. They don't need the flour to see the monsters footprints, they can see the monster's feet. How can they scry something if they don't know it's there yet? Did they encounter this thing previously? Did they realistically have a way to sit in a room while a spellcaster sends some sort of wizard's eye or something exploring the dungeon around them (honestly don't know how scrying works in your game)? I'm also assuming that the illusionist has to know where the monster is (and that it exists) before he can cast his "see through the monsters eyes" spell, so not sure how that would help in this situation either.

Yes, they knew the monster was patrolling the dungeon and had encountered it before.

Yes, the wizard could have easily scryed for it.

If an extra thirty seconds warning is as vital as you say, placing an alarm in the corridor would have easily given the players that much warning, and should have been a prudent course of action.

Lord Torath- You are making the classic blunder, which is only followed by starting a land war in Asia.

You are looking at the game as a piece of media, a story. It appears a lot of folks do not do this. They think of it purely as either a game or a simulation. They are not interested in the connection to story. This forum has at least taught me this about player preference.

They either prefer a gamist or a simulationist approach rather than a Narrativist approach. Therefore, when you ask which would a player prefer..... the answer varies a lot depending on where they fall on the triangle between gamist, simulationist, and narrativist.

To make it harder, each is a spectrum and everyone falls on a different place on it, so there is no objective "This is the right mix".

I think the issue is a bit different from that, although still related to Talakeal's specific group:

Gbaji's point is that both the wizard and the summon only existed in the first place because the room they were in was opened. If the players had never opened that room, the summoning wouldn't have occurred and the players would never have met that monster. I'm not sure Talakeal has ever confirmed this is how it would have played out (I might have missed that confirmation), but that's the assumption in gbaji's post, and it is a likely one.

What this means is that scouting the room added a threat that would not have been present if the players hadn't scouted and just ignored that room. In other words, on a meta-level i. e. from the viewpoint of the players (but not the characters) scouting was detrimental in this case. Most players would probably realize that and recognize it as a not uncommon GM tactic, but look at it from the character viewpoint of "we ignored that wizard, it came back to bite us." Maybe they'd even decide to go back and take out that wizard now to prevent that from happening again.

Talakeal's players, however, have a very adversarial relationship with their GM and assume he did this to spite them. So their takeaway from this happening even once is that scouting is useless as the GM will make them encounter the monster anyway, even if they try to avoid it. Which of course completely ignores that they encountered the summoned monster but not the wizard, and probably also that scouting did work for them multiple times in the past. It's confirmation bias at its finest.

Note that I have no problem with the wizard being a scripted event. Personally, I might have it being contingent on other factors (Mostly how likely it is the wizard even knows the players are around, since the summoning narratively was supposed to be a reaction to the players' presence), but I am certainly guilty of doing similar things.

This is all correct.

[Xervous]

GNS isn’t a wise choice to bring up as it was formulated with the intention of forcing games into these hard categories; not to mention it carries a lot of baggage. I’ve found it more productive to discuss the specific things that players might enjoy, as generalizations quickly erase the distinctions between topics that end up lumped together.

For example, take three players. The first wants to work with others to develop a narrative. The second wants to experience this fictional life in a fictional world through the lens of their character. The third is showing up for the joys of acting in character.

The first constitutes the entirety of N in GNS. Lumping the second player into N would imply narrative concerns that the player doesn’t necessarily have. Pushing #2 to S would group them among all manner of spreadsheet crunching minutiae. #3 is the most ill served by GNS, as there’s not much in the way of game structure that captures their specific delight.

Some people write it up as 8 types of fun, could possibly be split further if you’re hunting for minutiae to clarify differences in approach and desire.

Acting, story writing, experiencing life in someone else’s shoes, exploring a world and its responses to your actions, playing for a challenge, playing for a power trip, playing as a social activity, playing because it’s that time of the week you set aside where you don’t have to care about anything else in the world.

Games can be structured towards some of these, others are up to the individual or group specifics.


Random encounters...

Only preclude acting and expression so far as the frequency and duration of combat in the system takes up time.

Are disruptive of end to end planning in story writing.

Are simply a lived experience for the character.

End up being a challenge or a nuisance based on the way the rest of the system runs.

Can be an opportunity for power play.

And the rest of the reasons don’t apply here.


The most common failing with random encounters is that of time wasting, typically for combat when the resolution involves no or minimal changes to the game state beyond the encounter having transpired.


Talakeal has players who desire an overlap of power play with conditional hints of exploration. The game he’s serving them appears to be catering towards challenges both in combat and exploration. Random encounters are fine from T’s perspective since probabilistic risk assessment and risk taking is a long way of writing challenge. Random encounters for the players remain fine so long as they, the traumatized paranoid individuals that they are, get enough information to feel like they are making informed decisions.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think the issue is a bit different from that, although still related to Talakeal's specific group:

Gbaji's point is that both the wizard and the summon only existed in the first place because the room they were in was opened. If the players had never opened that room, the summoning wouldn't have occurred and the players would never have met that monster.

Are we dealing with a quantum ogre, Schroedinger's dungeon, or what here? Scouting is a necessary aspect of exploration and discovery. A party that just kicks down doors without any recon/scouting ought to now and again pay a price for that level of carelessness.

What this means is that scouting the room added a threat that would not have been present if the players hadn't scouted and just ignored that room.

That's bizarre.
In AD&D 1e there was an Appendix which you could use explore a truly random dungeon. (And I think there was a Dragon Magazine article before that)
It was purely procedurally generated, and that tool was eventually adapted to games like Rogue and many others.

This issue isn't really how viable scouting is; the players got information through scouting, could have acted on it, but chose not to. Saying this means scouting is weak is like saying a +5 holy avenger is too weak because the players never took it out of the scabbard.

Fairly stated.

The players do not like the loss of control that comes with a monster being able to attack them on its terms. That is what they are upset about.

Time for them to go back to video games. But this is also an expectations issue. What kind of game do they expect to be playing?

This is a mega-dungeon. An indoor sandbox.

The players can choose to explore it in any order they like.

The deeper down the players go, the stronger the monsters get.

If they choose to push on into areas that are above their level, they take the risk of death.

As long as they know this ahead of time, I don't get their complaint.

What's the point of writing a 3000 word post in a thread about random encounters when you don't believe that a random encounter actually happened and are instead talking about some imagined railroad?

I confess, I sniggered.

[BRC]

Re: The Wizard


The Players act under the assumption that anything the GM puts in the game is there because the GM thinks it will be interesting.

The Players open a door and see a wizard doing a summoning. From their perspective, this is entirely random.


Now, there are several possible outcomes here

1) "If we attack now, we get an easy fight against this Wizard and don't have to deal with their summon later"

2) "If we attack now, the Wizard finishes their summoning, and we have to fight both the wizard and the summon"

3) "If we DON'T Attack now, the wizard leaves us alone"

4) "If we DON'T Attack now, we might encounter the summon alone later"



Of the first two, what's more interesting. "We stumbled into the Wizard Room and killed a guy and now the GM throws away their statblock for the summon" or "As we attack the wizard finishes their summoning".

Since this was presented as a purely random encounter (They opened the door, there was wizard doing a summoning), the PC's must assume they're following the Most Expected Path for this encounter (Opening the door and stumbling upon it by random), and the Most Expected Path usually leads to fully experiencing the encounter. In this case, that would mean fighting both wizard and summon.
Like it's metagamey, but not THAT metagamey. Usually you don't get to skip part of an encounter by doing the most obvious thing (Rushing the evil wizard).

[Pex]

Pex and I are definitely on opposite sides of the fence on this. Which is fine!

He wants all random encounters while traveling, and I want none!

We all have our preferences.

You misinterpret. I don't want random encounters while traveling. As I said my first posting here I find them a waste of time. When we go from Point A to Point B, I want the DM to say "A week later you arrive at Point B" and we move on to the adventure. I don't want to roleplay every hour of every day listening to the DM monologuing about scenery and rolling dice to see if something happens then make a big deal about who is keeping watch when at night having us make perception checks where nothing happens anyway.

[Lord Torath]

Lord Torath- You are making the classic blunder, which is only followed by starting a land war in Asia.

Where'd we leave that Sicilian? Maybe if I combine the blunders they'll cancel out?

[Easy e]

You misinterpret. I don't want random encounters while traveling. As I said my first posting here I find them a waste of time. When we go from Point A to Point B, I want the DM to say "A week later you arrive at Point B" and we move on to the adventure. I don't want to roleplay every hour of every day listening to the DM monologuing about scenery and rolling dice to see if something happens then make a big deal about who is keeping watch when at night having us make perception checks where nothing happens anyway.

Oh, than you and I are aligned completely.

Let's get to the movie and stop watching all the ads before hand!

[gbaji]

@gbaji: you make a small, but important error, when you think of game where player characters "just walk around and roll to see what happens".

Where did you get the idea that a game being arbitrary and random will lead to players feeling a game is arbitrary and random?

Because it can be empirically shown that humans are primed to see patterns, but bad at detecting randomness - which put together mean humans tend to see patterns even when there are none. Random games are hence perfectly capable of creating the illusion of meaning and purpose in players.

My point was that it's a matter of degrees, and too far to one "side" will tend to limit enjoyment by the players. I make a significant differentiation between rolling random encounters off of a chart that was written up with "things that exist in this area" versus "random roll against every monster in the game to see what is there". The former, especially when combined with actual static places/events will vastly increase the players acceptance of the game world they are playing in. As you get towards the latter, it will have the opposite effect.

Note, that I'm also talking literally about "random encounters". There are certainly systems for randomly generating and filing in maps (hex crawls). But that's not the same thing either. You are rolling to see what sort of things are present in a given hex, and the encounter(s) in that hex will be related to that result. The players will still get the sense of "in this area, there are orcs, but in that other area over there, there are lizard men, and in yet another area is the ancient haunted ruins". You can use random methods to fill in the map in a world, but once filled in, it's no longer random. That's not the same as "every day, I will roll X number of random encounters and it can literally be anything in the monster manual no matter how absurd it may be". Doing that will absolultely be noticed.

As Rich said of his story about the Empire of Blood, if what's going is *not* the most interesting part of the empire's history, why aren't you writing about the part that is?

From a player perspective, which is more interesting: Arriving in time to interrupt the summoning, or having the summoning occur entirely off-screen? Assuming the PCs know nothing about the wizard - no hints, no rumors, no childhood friends of the wizard concerned about his recent decent into demon summoning asking the PCs to go check on him - and the wizard knows nothing about the PCs, there is no defined timeline for when the wizard should start and complete his summoning. Why not have the PCs arrive in time to do something about it?

Because the GM is not writing the story of how the heroes defeated the bbeg. The GM is creating an environment in which the players write their own story. That's not to say that the GM can't put interesting and exciting things into that environment for the players to interact with, but there is a difference between putting "things going on" into the setting and "events the players encounter". The former provides the players with information about the setting, and allows them choices about what to do about those things. The later forces the players to run through the GMs "story".

If the players encounter something going on only at the "most exciting time", while there is something critical going on, then they are forced to interact with that thing, at that time, and in the manner in which the GM determined. It's a form of soft railroading. If, instead, the GM allows the players to encounter something or a group of someone's, but not in the middle of some excting crisis point, then they can learn about what is going on, see the progression from "what's happening now, to what will happen later", and then can make choices to decide to intervene and adjust the results.

Tossing them into chapter 10 of a 10 chapter story may put them right in the thick of the action, but it doesn't do a lot for player agency. You kinda skipped past the whole story and rushed right to the conflict and resolution bits. That may be "exciting", but it's not going to be very intresting for the players for very long IME. In an actual story, the author writes chapters 1-9 so that we arrive at chapter 10 as intended. But in a RPG, the players write chapters 1-9, which means that chapter 10 may be very different than the GM thought. Skipping ahead takes the storytelling (and pathing!) parts of the game away from the players. I prefer not to do that.

But if neither party has any inkling of the presence of the other, then the most interesting time for the PCs to encounter the wizard is when he's in the middle of summoning the monster, and can thus be interrupted should the party so choose.

Ok. But what happens if they chose not to? The problem here is that they are in a dungeon, and given the option to scout ahead and choose which direction to go. But, if the mere act of scouting ahead triggers this script, then they have no choice but to go in and encounter that event (or suffer the effects of not doing so).


I'm not a huge fan of scripted encounters, but there are times when they work fine (I've used them myself, in fact). However, if you are actively trying to get your players to utilize scouting, and have repeatedly complained on an internet forum about how your players don't ever scout ahead and "look before they leap", it's a really silly thing that when they do scout ahead, you then trigger the event on the act of scouting. is this a bit of metaGMing? Absolutely. But... If you want your players to scout then you really need to avoid effectively punishing them for scouting. Which is what happened here.

If the party enters a room with 4 hallways, one they entered and three others. They might send their scout down each of the three hallways to see what is there. Let's say that each hallway leads to a room, and each room has a scripted encounter. They check out each of the hallways, and decide that hallway B looks the most promising to them. So now, the scripts on A and C continue and whatever effects those things have now occur. By putting in scripted encounters, and having them trigger, not on the party actually entering the room, but merely passively observing the room (via scouting or scrying), you are eliminating the ability for the party to feel like they can actually use scouting for anything other than "see what's in a room we've already commited to entering before we enter". They cannot safely use scouting to decide which direction to go, or which area of the dungeon to explore, because any use of scouting may actually generate new threats and problems they have to deal with. The players learn that they must first pick which path to follow (A, B, or C), then scout it, and then go there. They can't use scouting to actually chooose which way to go in the first place.

Let's take an extreme example. The GM has written an entire dungeon level, and several of the rooms have scripted encounters. The players, being very clever, decide to use some sort of wizard eye scrying spell to look through the entire dungeon level before entering, so they can know what's where and decide how they want to proceed. So... Now every single effect generated by every single scripted encounter happens? Suddenly, there are a ton of wandering monsters that would not have otherwise been there, demons are summoned and now actively guarding some areas, prisoners are sacrified without any ability of the party to save them, etc.

There should be a point where the GM can edit his own process and say "yeah. Maybe this script should not run in this situation". IMO, this was one of those times.

But, contrary to what Gbaji thinks, I feel like most players enjoy exciting coincidences and are primed to expect them by consuming single author fiction where the plot is driven along by odd coincidences.

IME players do not appreciate this nearly as much as many people seem to think.

But the issue that exploring an area of the map "creates" new monsters is an issue. Because once you have established a monster exists, it has to be dealt with.

Why? It wasn't "dealt with" before they looked into the room, and it had a zero percent chance of being encountered while patrolling. Why does that chance change based on whether they looked into the room.

The very words you use "must be dealt with" suggest a very linear way of viewing the environment. Each room must be explored and resolved before moving on to the next. That precludes any ability to examing options and choose a path through the dungeon though.

The players do not like the loss of control that comes with a monster being able to attack them on its terms. That is what they are upset about.

No. They are not. They are upset that the act of scouting the room caused the monster to come into existence and later attack them. You literally stated this earlier, that they said that by scouting the room, it caused the monster to aggro them. Now, I agree that this isn't an accurate reflection of what happened, but they are correct that, if they had not scouted the room, they would not have encountered the monster later outside the room.

Before the players encounter a monster it could be anywhere or doing anything. Once the GM has established a concrete location and activity for it, the players have to deal with it.

Except that in this case, the monster could not be anywhere or doing anything. The monster did not exist until the scout looked into the room. Once he did, it began patrolling the dungeon.

What is the alternative?

I've given you several already. Have the wizard only summon and send out the monster in response to some PC activity that the wizard is aware of. Don't have the scout of the room trigger the event (it's an empty room configured for someoning a monster, or a room with a monster in a cage, waiting for the wizard to charm it later). Don't use scripted encounters at all. Just put resources in the dungeon, create the various NPCs and factions and whatnot in there, write up some stuff about how they will respond to the PCs exploring the dungeon, and just play it out. There's a wizard. There's a monster. If the wirzard decides the PCs are a problem, he goes to the monster and charms him and sends him out patrolling the dungeon. There's no need to have this trigger on the players happening to enter the room right when he's casting his spells (and also incredibly unlikely).

Any/all of these would have avoided the very thing the players didn't like about this.

The deeper down the players go, the stronger the monsters get.

If they choose to push on into areas that are above their level, they take the risk of death.

The relative power level of the dungeon area is not the issue. It's the distribution of the dangers in the area that is. I've already written about this a couple times in this thread. As a general rule, monsters which wander should not be more powerful than the monsters that are more setttled in given areas/rooms in the dungeon. Because if they are, then they should have wiped out those other monsters (unless they are all working together I supposed). But typically, the more powerful denizens of a dungoen are the ones who will claim specific areas of that dungeon and make it "theirs". Anything wandering should be something that doesn't form communities or settle down, some form of patrol guards from a group that does, or some other random threat/guardian/whatever thing that roams around as more of an environmental hazard.

And I provided guidelines for that last case (which is what this thing seems to be). If you do have things wandering around that are significantly more dangerous than most of the stuff in the rooms, you should provide ample warning that it's coming, and allow the PCs to avoid it. Their assessment of the risk of the dungeon area is going to be based on what they have encountered, typically in the rooms. They don't expect that some random thing wandering the halls is going to just wipe the floor iwth them if they happen to run into it. And if there is something that dangerous? Telegraph this to the players.,

I just find it kind of funny that you are complaining about my campaign being "scripted" and "like a railroad" when it appears your real issue is the lack of guard rails and contrived situations keeping them safe. Likewise, you are saying I needed to add in a contrived way to avoid the encounter if they wish, when the whole problem is that they did have an easy out and chose not to take it.

It's not about guard rails. It's about how you balance the threats contained within any given environment to both have it make sense to the players as a viable ecosystem, but to also provide some sort of reasonable balance for the area itself from a gameplay perspective.

I specifically said that my tactical analysis was merely my opinion, at which point I was told my opinion was objectively wrong.

Now, when I respond to that accusation, you are acting like I was the one who said there was an objectively right answer and attacking me for that.

Its like you guys are playing the forum equivalent of "quit hitting yourself".


Unless of course, you are talking about the benefit of hindsight. With perfect knowledge of the situation, I can confidently say that escaping through the back door would have been objectively the right choice in that situation.

/hmmm...

We responded how we did because you literally did claim that fleeing down the hallway was objectively the correct answer (which you just repeated again). The problem is that you know this as the GM based on information you have, but the players don't know this. When I said that was irrelevant, I was talking about this fact. It doesn't matter what is "objectively correct if you have perfect knowledge". What matters is what knowledge the players had at the time, and what their best course of action was.

That's what you got wrong. You assumed they would do one thing, they did something else. The players do not know what you know. Therefore, they will not make the same choices you think they will make. Therefore, you would be well served by not making assumptions about what choices they would make and crafting encounters around that assumption.

Where are you getting these numbers from? How do you know precisely how long the corridor was and how long it would take the party to transverse it at various speeds and how long they could survive against the monster?

I don't. I do know that the time scale of "search down that hallway and see what's there and then report back" tends to be much longer then "how long can we survive in combat against this monster that is wiping the floor with us". You have, many tmes, talked about how HoD's combat system tends to run fast, with people dropping in single hits, and no HP inflation. So forgive me if I assume that once they are into a combat and realizing they are losing, they probably don't have enough time at that point to have someone actually scout down an unexplored hallway to see if it's a safe exit for them.

The tank, healer, and illusionist could have easily held off the monster long enough for the rogue to scout out the backdoor and confirm to the party that it was safe.


For simplicity sake, the monster's movements are tied to the party's. Whenever the party moves from one room to another, so does the patrolling monster. I randomize its start location every time they enter the dungeon, and I randomize its route every time it comes to an intersection.

In this case, the party entered the room with three exits while the monster was in the room to the west of it, and I rolled randomly and the dice indicated the monster moved east. So I ruled that they entered the room at roughly the same time.

But I am really, really, really curious about what you are thinking the party could have done with an extra thirty seconds, or even a couple minutes, of warning.

I guess I'm confused about the distance and time scales being used here. How far apart are the rooms? How long are the hallways? How long does it take to travel from one to another? How long do they spend searching/encountering each room?

You seem to have a slowish ponderish monster moving around, and have tied its room movements to the room movements of the party, while they are exploring. Presumably, when exploring, they are moving slowly, checking for traps, looking ahead, peering into rooms, then encountering whatever is there, then deciding to move on to the next thing. I can easily see each "room" taking 15+ minutes or more of time (possibly quite a bit more time).

That gives a pretty large bit of granularity in terms of the "actual time" that the monster arrives in each room. Let's say 15 minutes, but could be more. Kinda depends on what's in each room, how long the hallways are, whether there's other stuff in between, etc.

I just find it odd that you seem to be minimizing the time frame that the rogue would have taken to explore the hall while in the middle of combat down to "very fast" (a few combat rounds?), but don't seem to realize that this represents a small slice of time in terms of the monsters movements in the first place. A minute or two of extra time before it entered the room, certainly would have also given the party rogue time to explore that same hallway and realized it lead to a dungeon exit, right?

How long are combat rounds?

My point is that you have a pretty broad granularty for the monsters movements, but choose to have it enter the room "exactly" at the same time as the party. No warning. No ability for them to avoid it. If the rogue had time in the middle of combat to determine if the hallway was a safe escape, then he certainly had time to do so if given just a couple minutes of warning that the monster was approaching.

By slightly varying the monster's arrival even just a minute or three, the players would have had options to do things other than "must fight monster", and then "must figure out how to escape monster".

The only thing I can think of is going back north and hiding in the dead end, which is great if it works, but if it doesn't, the party is in a much worse position as now they actually have no place to go and have no choice but fighting to the death or coming up with a brilliant escape plan (which may involve selling out some of their own).

You can think of "have the scout check down the unexplored hallway" when it's in the middle of a combat, but this option doesn't occur to you when it's "there's a monster coming that will be here in a couple minutes?". How does that work?

What's the point of writing a 3000 word post in a thread about random encounters when you don't believe that a random encounter actually happened and are instead talking about some imagined railroad?

The dice rolls determined that the monster would travel down the hallway and into the room. They did not determine the exact minute, much less second, within the time frame taken by "party travels to and explores a room" that each die roll for monster travel actually represents.

You made that decision all on your own. That's the point I'm calling BS on, not whether this was a random encounter in the first place.

And heck, if my goal was to railroad the party into a chase scene, why didn't I just wait until the party had decided to enter the corridor I wanted to chase them down and have the monster appear then? Having it show up at the three way intersection just shows that not only am I dishonest railroader, but I am an incompetent dishonest railroader!

I don't know. Why didn't you do this?

I suppose it depends on whether the objective (from a railroading perspective) is to force the outcome (PCs go down the hall, find the exit, and then escape), or to force the players to make a specific choice, which in turn leads to that same outcome. At least, that's the only difference I can see.

Of course, the players came up with a different choice, which you had not considered.

Yes, they knew the monster was patrolling the dungeon and had encountered it before.

How did that encounter go? How did they escape that time?

Yes, the wizard could have easily scryed for it.

Having no clue how scrying works in your game, I'll take your word for it. I do wonder why they're bothering to send a scout anywhere, if they have this ability.

If an extra thirty seconds warning is as vital as you say, placing an alarm in the corridor would have easily given the players that much warning, and should have been a prudent course of action.

Would they have heard the alarm far enough away to be useful? That's a very low probability thing IMO. The monster hits the alarm, placed X distance down the initial hallway from the room (closer and it does no good). This only works if the monster reaches the alarm while the party is close enough to hear it. I would not expect this to be useful as a player, and would only use an alarm like this if I was lingering in a single location for a longish period of time. The odds of the party happening to be traveling back down the hallway towards the room (or having just arrived back in the room) right at the point in time when the monter passes over the area we set for the alarm is very very small (more or less as unlikely as the monster just happening to enter the room from one side while we entered from the other, actually).

Or... And this is just crazy talk here. How about the players being able to just hear this monster coming down the hallway towards the room? This is a much much higher probability method of detection. Again. The odds of both the monster and the party happening to arrive at different entrances to the room at the exact same time (so that neither can detect or avoid each other prior to entering) are very very small. And any variation in that time (even just a few minutes) would allow the party to hear the monster in the room prior to entering (if it arrived first), or to hear the monster approaching the room (if they arrived first). Literally, the only way that "hear the monster approaching" doesn't work is the one case you actually had happen (both arrived at the exact same time).


Again. I don't know what other magical means they had available to them either. It's quite possible that they could have done a ton of things to help themselves out here. I'm also not sure how your spell/ability resources work either, so I can't assess the value versus risk involved in using these tools. Like, if the wizard can only cast a two scry spells a day, and has to pick a target, is he actually going to waste one use on "I want to scry for that one random wandering monster we ran into two days ago"? If they've got parts for just 5 alarm traps, are they going to choose to use one of them to place it say 50 feet down the hallway leading into this one room this one time they passed through it? Why not in the last room? Or the one before that? Or the one they just came down? Or the hallway they just returned down?

There are a ton of potential resource restrictions which may affect their choices here. I can't speak intelligently about them, except to assume that if they could scry anytime they wanted for anything they wanted, they almost certainly would be doing that (you've talked about how overly cautious your players are). And if they could actually leave an alarm trap behind them in every single hallway they travel down, I'm pretty sure they'd do that too (for the same reason). So... It's probably not quite as simple as "they had means to avoid/detect this encounter ahead of time, but choose not to use them".

[Reversefigure4]

The Players act under the assumption that anything the GM puts in the game is there because the GM thinks it will be interesting.

The Players open a door and see a wizard doing a summoning. From their perspective, this is entirely random.

Now, there are several possible outcomes here

1) "If we attack now, we get an easy fight against this Wizard and don't have to deal with their summon later"

2) "If we attack now, the Wizard finishes their summoning, and we have to fight both the wizard and the summon"

3) "If we DON'T Attack now, the wizard leaves us alone"

4) "If we DON'T Attack now, we might encounter the summon alone later"

In Talakeals game, it's a known quantity that the players don't trust the GM in the slightest. Of these outcomes, they'd assume it would actively change in response to their actions to match always being the worst one. If you attack the wizard, he immediately summons the monster and you have to fight them both at once. If you don't attack the wizard, the now-more-powerful monsters hunts you down and kills you later. It's a no-win scenario for them. (And indeed, here's a setpiece that starts from 'monster should be too deadly for the party to fight', so it's not unfounded.) The refusal to retreat scenario is caused by the concept that the safe retreat is likely to result in a second deadly encounter - just like the first deadly encounter - which is actually quite likely given what they've seen so far!

Whether or not they're right in -this- case about -this- retreat, it's a common enough scenario in their games that it's their running expectation that the GM is going to hose them, and you absolutely can't use Dramatic Narrative Timing with players who expect you'll use it to screw them as opposed to create the most entertaining encounter.

[KorvinStarmast]

In Talakeals game, it's a known quantity that the players don't trust the GM in the slightest.

{snip] so far, agree

The refusal to retreat scenario is caused by the concept that the safe retreat is likely to result in a second deadly encounter - just like the first deadly encounter - which is actually quite likely given what they've seen so far!

Not so sure. The reluctance to retreat is a symptom of a dysfunctional party, since T's recounting a few posts back showed that some were for that course of action but got shouted down. The team / party / small group is dysfunctional at its root.

... you absolutely can't use Dramatic Narrative Timing with players who expect you'll use it to screw them as opposed to create the most entertaining encounter.

You can, but they may kvetch about it ... and with this group, they appear to prefer to argue than to play. But we are only getting one side of the story.

[Talakeal]

Basically, three of my old players were dead set against ever running away or surrendering.

AFAICT For Bob and Dave, it was an issue of pride and not liking to be told what to do, they would rather kill off their characters than back down. For Brian, it is a matter of nerves, for him making the call to flee or surrender is too scary, he is always afraid of going from the frying pan to the fire.

Dave no longer plays with us, but Bob and Brian still do.

Whenever a new player joins the group, that person often has the expectations that running or surrendering is a reasonable response to getting in over your head, but the older players typically shout them down until they join in on fighting to the death at all times.

[gbaji]

Not so sure. The reluctance to retreat is a symptom of a dysfunctional party, since T's recounting a few posts back showed that some were for that course of action but got shouted down. The team / party / small group is dysfunctional at its root.

It's notable that it was the new players who wanted to try checking out the unexplored hallway during the fight, and the long time players who shouted them down.

We could assume that the older players are just set in their ways, disfunctional, weird, or whatever. Or we could assume that they have longer experience with the GMs style and are taking that position based on that experience.

It's clear that the older players don't trust Talakeal to not screw them over if they make that choice. Why that is the case is a matter of pure speculation though.

[Pex]

Not liking random encounters is not (exactly) the same as not wanting encounters that have nothing to do with adventure plot. If we are to deal with the local environment while traveling from Point A to Point B I'd prefer that was preplanned part of the game all along instead of rolling at the game table at that moment to see if something happens then rolling to determine what that is.

The difference is a matter of pacing. We're not roleplaying out every moment of the adventure day. The DM will go right into the encounter. In theory with a random encounter rolled the DM can still say "A few hours traveling you come across . . .", but in practice that is not how it works. We have to listen to the DM describe each hour while a random encounter check is rolled. Given that no encounter is a possibility on the table we're spending that time hearing about scenery. With the planned encounter we're at the spot already to play it out. When there is no preplanned encounter that day the DM will take a moment to say the day is uneventful, you camp, and now it's the next day. If there really will be nothing happening going from Point A to Point B then we arrive at Point B and play it out even though it was just 30 seconds ago real world time the players said we are going to Point B. If there will be a planned encounter that has nothing to do with the adventure plot, great, let's get to it and play. Social interaction with an NPC, exploration of an area, combat, whatever it is let's just play it already.

There is a minor factor of resource management, especially if it's a combat, but experience has shown how much stuff PCs should use can be figured out by the threat. If the DM throws a really tough monster at you that you are Honest True meant to fight going nova is the point to have fun. DMs should keep in mind PC resources with these types of encounters as much as adventure encounters. It is unfair of the DM to use a random encounter that randomized into a tough fight that forces players to nova or die only to find the PCs don't have the stuff they needed anymore for the actual adventure encounter later that game day.

[kyoryu]

but in practice that is not how it works. We have to listen to the DM describe each hour while a random encounter check is rolled.

It should be. It has been in the games I've played that used them, or at most 10 seconds of description.

I don't think "people can do it badly" is a good reason not to do things, if they have value outside of that. I'm sorry you had that experience, though, it sounds exhausting.

[gbaji]

The difference is a matter of pacing. We're not roleplaying out every moment of the adventure day. The DM will go right into the encounter. In theory with a random encounter rolled the DM can still say "A few hours traveling you come across . . .", but in practice that is not how it works. We have to listen to the DM describe each hour while a random encounter check is rolled. Given that no encounter is a possibility on the table we're spending that time hearing about scenery. With the planned encounter we're at the spot already to play it out. When there is no preplanned encounter that day the DM will take a moment to say the day is uneventful, you camp, and now it's the next day. If there really will be nothing happening going from Point A to Point B then we arrive at Point B and play it out even though it was just 30 seconds ago real world time the players said we are going to Point B. If there will be a planned encounter that has nothing to do with the adventure plot, great, let's get to it and play. Social interaction with an NPC, exploration of an area, combat, whatever it is let's just play it already.

I'm not sure this has anything to do with whether the GM using random encounters, and has a lot to do with how terrible the GM's playstyle is. I suppose it could also be how exactly the GM is choosing to actually determine random encounters (which, again, does kinda go back to the GM's playstyle).

Yeah. If the GM is literally sitting at the table, and then going "Ok. Hour 1... <rolls on table>, <rolls on another table>, <looks up source stuff>, You encounter... [nothing|<monster>]", and then repeating each hour of the day, then that's pretty horrible GMing. Most sane GMs actually shortcut this process, by maybe determining first if there are encounters that entire day, and then how many, and then determining what/when they are. So this should flow more like "Ok. You travel for a few hours, come across a small stream, where you can refill your waterskins, and while you are there you notice <insert encounter here>", and "Ok. Later in the afternoon, while the sun is setting, you notice <something else>", and "In the early evening, just after setting up your camp, you are suddenly attacked by <insert monsters here>".

Honestly, even if I am using random encounters, I tend to pre-roll them ahead of time, specifically so that I'm not wasting my player's time rolling freaking dice at the table. I'm the GM. I wrote the adventure. I know what's in the area. I decided what sorts of events/encounters/monsters/whatever are in the area, and wrote up encounter tables for them. It should not be rocket science to spend a tiny bit of time to just pre-roll this ahead of time. In fact, I usually just pre-detail a handful of encounters, and determine randomly which one, and when. I never go hour by hour rolling. I go in the other direction. How many encounters total between A and B? When, within that time frame, will the encounters occur, and which encounter happens in each of those cases (which may vary especially if some are designed for night/camp time and some for day/travel).

Any GM who is rolling more than maybe one or two die rolls for an encounter while at the table is "doing it wrong". There are a host of ways to trim down the process to make this happen. And yeah, this is usually about pre-determining when encounters will occur, and then rolling to determine which, among the set of time appropriate encounters available, actually occurs at that particular point in time.

I'll also point out that I tend to lean strongly against large numbers of random encounters anyway. I use them primarily to establish the environment the PCs are in, and to create a sense of "yeah, there are things going on in the world not related specifically to what you are doing". And I tend to write them up ahead of time, and then dole them out during travel. Usually, not even randomly, but based on whatever I feel will fit best thematically (and sometimes, even game session time). And yeah, if we're actually talking about "wandering monsters" in a dungeon type environment, those are never going to be randomly determined (when may, but not much in terms of "what"). I know what is in the dungeon. I know what sort of monsters are there, and I know which types of those might be wandering around. I might roll randomly off of that (quite short usually) list, but that's about it. Nothing magically transports itself from the monster manual and into the middle of a dungeon purely due to a die roll though. That's just silly.

There is a minor factor of resource management, especially if it's a combat, but experience has shown how much stuff PCs should use can be figured out by the threat. If the DM throws a really tough monster at you that you are Honest True meant to fight going nova is the point to have fun. DMs should keep in mind PC resources with these types of encounters as much as adventure encounters. It is unfair of the DM to use a random encounter that randomized into a tough fight that forces players to nova or die only to find the PCs don't have the stuff they needed anymore for the actual adventure encounter later that game day.

Yeah. GM's need to take into account resource managment issues when dealing with random encounters. It's also why random encounters should really only very very rarely represent a significant threat to the party. There are just so very few environments where something that dangerous can be rationalized just "roaming around". This is doubly important if you do have planned encounters/places/whatever in the adventure. Having a herd of carnivorous mutant dinosaurs attack the party, when they are 10 minutes away from the entrance to the lair of the bbeg they are looking for, probably isn't a great idea.

Um... Honestly though, barring stuff actually in a dungeon environment (in which case, as I said above, it should be quite a bit less random), most of the time the PCs should have the opportunity to rest/recover between any such encounter and something "planned" anyway. Unless the PCs are just wandering around and have no clue when/where the thing they are supposed to encounter is, of course. But most of the time, the PCs are going "somewhere", and know what that somewhere is, and even where it is. So if they run into something super tough, they should be able to pull back, recover, and then go exploring the dungeon of doom tomorrow or something. I guess I'm assuming random encounters while travelling here, but that's the most common scenario.

Now yeah. Having some super powerful wandering monster hit the party while they are just outside the throneroom of the main bad guy is maybe not a great idea. Eh. I'm still kinda thinking that if you are far enough away from an adventure encounter that you haven't already encountered it, and the random encounter didn't raise enough ruckus to tip off said adventure encounter, I'm kinda wondering what is forcing the party to continue on at that point anyway? If the environment is "tight" (meaning everything inside is connected, like an enemy stronghold), then there should be no wandering anything. Everything should be connected to the bbeg's defense. If it's a "loose" environment (lots of different areas, criters, monster types, etc), then there could be something semi random wandering around, but you should be able to pull out and come back later. If the area is loose enough that some random thing wanders by without being "inside" the adventure encounters area, then the party is also not inside that area either.


Dunno. I just think that good GMs should be able to apply a bit of common sense to most of these things.

[Pex]

Whether it's literal or figurative about the DM describing each hour depends on the DM. I've played with the literal, but when it's figurative the point is more we are sitting at the game table doing nothing but listen to the DM describe the scenery we see traveling for at least 15 real world minutes. At night time the DM makes a fuss about who is on watch, whether we have dark vision or not, and after having whoever is on watch make a Perception check spends the next 5-10 minutes or so describing scenery again for every watch cycle (i.e. if three watches that's 15 to 30 minutes of the DM monologuing) then morning comes and the DM finally announces we had a long rest.

Not liking this is not the same thing as never wanting anything to happen during the night. It's still relevant who is on watch when, but even accepting something happening at night is random if random roll says nothing happens then just say nothing happens, you get a long rest, and play on. If something happens determine on which watch it happens, have that PC make the Perception check, and go right into that encounter. Don't monologue every instance.

[Thane of Fife]

Whether it's literal or figurative about the DM describing each hour depends on the DM.

I think I get what you're saying, but I don't think that has much to do with whether encounters are random or not. I mean, I will confess that I have personally run a game that was terrible in the way you describe, but I never rolled for a random encounter in it at all. The thought process of, "I have this story-significant encounter that I want to happen in the middle of the night, so I need to know who's on watch, but I'll have to disguise when it's going to happen by asking about things on an hour-by-hour basis (and obviously, I'll have to do this every day of the month-long journey so they won't get suspicious)" will lead you to the same place (believe me, I'm speaking from experience) without random encounters ever even crossing your mind.

[Pauly]

There has been a lot of discussion about random encounters as part of a game and gamist considerations.

From the perspective of narrative random encounters can have a number of different purposes. LotR is chock full of ‘random encounters’ that can illustrate some of tne narrative purposes.
1) Old Man Willow/Tom Bombadil. Establishes that the world is a dangerous place and that allies can also be found. They’re not true random encounters in that JRR wasn”t rolling a d100 and checking his random encounter table, but they fit the random encounter vibe in that they are events that are not needed as part of the main narrative moving forward.
2) The Barrow Wright/Tom Bombadil. Provides the party with needed resources.
3) Meeting Strider in Bree. Introduces new PCs/significant NPCs. It’s well documented that Tolkein himself didn’t know who Strider was or how he would affect the narrative when he first wrote of the hobbits encountering him in Bree.
4) Frodo and Sam encountering Faramir. Exposition dump as well as allowing the party to recover.
5) opening the gate to the mines of Moria. A non combat puzzle encounter to spice things up. *
6) Waking up the goblins and Balrog in the mines of Moria. Resource drain/combat encounter. *
7) Sam and Frodo getting mistaken for orcs. A Deus ex Machina puts the party back on track.


* From a main narrative perspective the whole mines of Moria episode in LotR could have been just narrated as the party enter the mines then exit peacefully without any encounters.

[gbaji]

I think I get what you're saying, but I don't think that has much to do with whether encounters are random or not. I mean, I will confess that I have personally run a game that was terrible in the way you describe, but I never rolled for a random encounter in it at all. The thought process of, "I have this story-significant encounter that I want to happen in the middle of the night, so I need to know who's on watch, but I'll have to disguise when it's going to happen by asking about things on an hour-by-hour basis (and obviously, I'll have to do this every day of the month-long journey so they won't get suspicious)" will lead you to the same place (believe me, I'm speaking from experience) without random encounters ever even crossing your mind.

I'm not sure why the GM needs to disguise this though. Have your players set up a watch list ahead of time. Have your players commit to a marching order and positions while traveling (allow them to modify this based on the terrain of course). Just ask them "what are you doing when walking through the forest/plains/mountains/whatever", and "what precautions are you taking while resting?". You then require them to expend those resources or have that watch schedule, or those positions, while any relevant encounter occurs.

What you don't do is describe something going on, and then ask them what they are doing in response. Obviously, the players will realize "there's an encounter happening", and will start casting spells, taking positions, etc, in preparation. That's what leads you to constantly describing things over and over to disguise when an actual encounter is happening. That method wastes a ton of table time though.

Just describe the general terrain they are traveling through, and ask them what they are doing in response. Unless their answer is "we're stopping every 15 minutes and casting defensive spells, and having our scout hide in the bushes in case we're about to be attacked" (in which case you should mark the resources and time spent doing this), then when an actual encounter happens, just assume that whatever they say they are doing, is what they are doing when the encounter starts. Give them a perception roll check to detect something X rounds before it happens (or not!), and move on from there. At night, just roll to see which watch the encounter occurs on (unless it's like a specific NPC targetted/timed thing), and then ask "who's on X watch?". Then go straight to the perception roll checks, using whatever they've previously stated they have available and are using for that entire watch.

You just don't allow them to do anything outside of what they do all the time, when starting the encounter. You balance that by using perception rolls to determine how much lead time they do have available to them. This avoids the problem of the players detecting the encounter and having their characters take out of the norm actions, purely in response to the GM describing stuff, and avoids the GM feeling he has to constantly create false descriptions in order to prevent that.

I've used this method for decades, with multiple game systems, and have never had a problem with the players trying to game the results. I mean, they can try, but it's not terribly successful. I've crafted the encounter such that they can't actually react to anything until they know there's something there to react to. And yes, I have had intelligent NPCs actually do things like probe the PCs defenses, skulking around out of sight during the night, so as to see how the PCs respond. If they immediately activate their most powerful abilities the moment they hear a twig crack, the NPCs will note this, and continue using tactics like this to make the PCs expend their resources. Teaches the players to wait until something is actually happening before doing such things. Also teaches the players to investigate things they see or hear first, before just going full combat mode. But yeah, most of the time, if these are actual random encounters, then it's going to be about "when do you detect that something is going on, and what do you do in response?".

Again though, barring rare cases (like I mentioned above, which is not realy a "random encounter"), I don't use "on watch or while traveling" encounters as a resource depletion tool. They serve other environmental and story telling purposes.

[Pex]

Whether it's literal or figurative about the DM describing each hour depends on the DM. I've played with the literal, but when it's figurative the point is more we are sitting at the game table doing nothing but listen to the DM describe the scenery we see traveling for at least 15 real world minutes. At night time the DM makes a fuss about who is on watch, whether we have dark vision or not, and after having whoever is on watch make a Perception check spends the next 5-10 minutes or so describing scenery again for every watch cycle (i.e. if three watches that's 15 to 30 minutes of the DM monologuing) then morning comes and the DM finally announces we had a long rest.

Not liking this is not the same thing as never wanting anything to happen during the night. It's still relevant who is on watch when, but even accepting something happening at night is random if random roll says nothing happens then just say nothing happens, you get a long rest, and play on. If something happens determine on which watch it happens, have that PC make the Perception check, and go right into that encounter. Don't monologue every instance.

By coincidence I'm watching Critical Role The Mighty Nein for the first time where this is exactly happening. It's early in the campaign. Mercer monologues for 20 or so minutes on the way to Zadash, makes a big deal about who is on watch noting the limitations of dark vision, have everyone make rolls, describes each watch for 5 minutes of non-events, then move on and repeat the next day. When leaving Zadash after agreeing to jobs from The Gentleman, the same thing happens. Lots of monologuing, make a big deal about watches, and nothing happens. During the second night of traveling only because Caleb (Liam) rolls 22 on Perception on watch does something happen. Would there still have been an ogre/goblin/wolf attack if Liam rolled low? Maybe, but there was about 45 minutes of nothing beforehand to endure. The cast's attempt at improv so there was something to watch despite nothing happening even fell flat. I've never been so bored of the show before. Being in Zadash was fine, but on the way and leaving get to the game already.

[BRC]

By coincidence I'm watching Critical Role The Mighty Nein for the first time where this is exactly happening. It's early in the campaign. Mercer monologues for 20 or so minutes on the way to Zadash, makes a big deal about who is on watch noting the limitations of dark vision, have everyone make rolls, describes each watch for 5 minutes of non-events, then move on and repeat the next day. When leaving Zadash after agreeing to jobs from The Gentleman, the same thing happens. Lots of monologuing, make a big deal about watches, and nothing happens. During the second night of traveling only because Caleb (Liam) rolls 22 on Perception on watch does something happen. Would there still have been an ogre/goblin/wolf attack if Liam rolled low? Maybe, but there was about 45 minutes of nothing beforehand to endure. The cast's attempt at improv so there was something to watch despite nothing happening even fell flat. I've never been so bored of the show before. Being in Zadash was fine, but on the way and leaving get to the game already.

So here's the thing

The above approach is the Technically Correct way to handle things. If there's a possibility that something might happen at night, you need to establish who is on watch when, and give a chance for such a thing to happen, and if the GM doesn't want to tip their hand, they have to present "Nothing Happens" and "Midnight Ambush" the exact same way.


That approach also sucks and nobody should ever do it. I Can see SOME times when you might want to do it (Say, it's the night before a major battle and you're deliberately trying to build tension) but in general, don't do that.

At some point, the GM and the PC's need to be able to trust each other enough to not metagame if Something Happens at the night. If the GM says "Who is on watch at 1 AM?" The answer shouldn't be "The guy with high perception and darkvision.


One thing Critical Role uses these sequences for is RP conversations between PCs on watch together. They get some great character moments out of that, because they're all professional actors putting on a good show and if you have two of them improv a scene together they can come up with something good. In general, your average table isn't going to be able to do that. Give a standard "Does anybody want to do anything during the night?" prompt.

[gbaji]

That approach also sucks and nobody should ever do it. I Can see SOME times when you might want to do it (Say, it's the night before a major battle and you're deliberately trying to build tension) but in general, don't do that.

Yup. Also utterly unnecessary IMO. See above for the correct way to manage this.

At some point, the GM and the PC's need to be able to trust each other enough to not metagame if Something Happens at the night. If the GM says "Who is on watch at 1 AM?" The answer shouldn't be "The guy with high perception and darkvision.

Yup. Again, this is 100% averted by having the players come up with a watch schedule ahead of time, and defining exacty what abilities they are utilizing the entire time during any given watch. So, if the GM rolls 2nd watch for the encounter to happen, the players can't decide that "the guy with darkvision is on that watch", because they already wrote who was there on their watch schedule. And they can't say "CharacterB, who's on second watch, is using his <detect bad things> abilitiy", because unless he'd previously stated he was using this for the entire watch (and likely therefore not having that ability avilable for use during the day), then it's not being used.

It's really that simple. Make the players commit to what resources/abilities they are expending/using during any given period of time, before that time comes up at the table, and they cannnot argue they are using them "this time", just when the encounter happens.

And yes. This does require that the players trust the the GM is not going to look at the watch schedule, note which characters may have natural abilities/senses/whatever that will benefit them in the encounter, and then choose to have the encounter during another watch. As a GM, you absolutely must "play this straight". Which yeah, sometimes means that the NPCs, sneaking up under cover of darkness, just happen to do this while the guy with darkvision is on watch (and they get spotted right off the bat). The GM cannot be overly invested into any particular outcome/script for the encounter. What happens, is what happens. The same applies to concepts like marching order in any given area. The GM should require this, but also not take it into account when formulating any encounters while marching. Aside from info that could reasonably be gleaned using perception abilities, of course (if the NPC bandits can see the wagon loaded with goodies, and see that there are massively armored warrior types on one side, and wimpy dress wearers on the other, that might reasonably affect how they choose to attack the group marching along with the wagon). Or course, with PCs, sometimes what you see isn't necessarily what you get... Again though, the GM must play this straight based on NPC knowledge, and not game it for his own purposes, or the players will lose trust in this method pretty quick.

I've also found that players will tend to respond to this method by actively and intelligently setting up watch schedules based on what abilities and senses the various characters actually have. So we might put the guy with darkvision on one watch, another character with a fast/cheap light spell on another, and maybe the guy with the ability to sense danger on another (and we'd avoid putting them all on one watch if possible). They will tend to balance things out based on the various capabilities each character may have if something dangerous happens during any given watch (or while marching along). Which is probably a good idea for the players to have considered ahead of time anyway, since this sort of pre-knowledge and planning will *also* tend to make them better at making decisions during regular play (they have a better idea of the various abilities and capabilities of each of the characters in the group).

[Thane of Fife]

I'm not sure why the GM needs to disguise this though.

I don't know what gave you the impression that I think a GM needs to (or should) do this. My point was I don't think random encounters are what drive people to play this way.

[Easy e]

They play that way because that has been the way it has been modelled to them to do it.

[gbaji]

I don't know what gave you the impression that I think a GM needs to (or should) do this. My point was I don't think random encounters are what drive people to play this way.

Because, what I was responding to was this:

I think I get what you're saying, but I don't think that has much to do with whether encounters are random or not. I mean, I will confess that I have personally run a game that was terrible in the way you describe, but I never rolled for a random encounter in it at all. The thought process of, "I have this story-significant encounter that I want to happen in the middle of the night, so I need to know who's on watch, but I'll have to disguise when it's going to happen by asking about things on an hour-by-hour basis (and obviously, I'll have to do this every day of the month-long journey so they won't get suspicious)" will lead you to the same place (believe me, I'm speaking from experience) without random encounters ever even crossing your mind.

I responded by saying that instead of trying to disquise the fact that you are having an encounter by asking hour by hour, you have the players pre-determine who is on watch at any given time of the night instead. Then, when you want to have your "story-significant enounter in the middle of the night", you can just do that, and nothing else but that. There is no need to have to "ask about things on an hour by hour basis", and you certainly don't have to do this "every day of the month long journey so they wont get suspicious". That's a massive amount of wasted fluff time, for no actual benefit. You are correct that this has nothing to do with whether an encounter is random or not, but it does have everything to do with a GM "wasting table time on descriptions in order to hide when an encounter is going to happen from the players".

Just have the players come up with a watch schedule. Decide when the encounter happens, and then whomever is on watch on the schedule is who is on watch. This is like 100x easier, and takes no actual table time to do (time is spent one time at the beginning of the adventure, and we're done). Is writing down a watch schedule for the adventure really a new concept to some people? We've been doing this for like 40+ years.


And yes. The GM can absolutely choose to do such long winded narrative descriptions in the hopes of tricking the players into wasting resources for nothing. But, barring actual circumstances where intelligent NPCs are actually doing this intentionally (case I posted about earlier), the GM is really just wasting a ton of time on this sort of "gotcha" thing. Just don't do it. You'll annoy the heck out of the players, and there's very little value. The players will (correctly IMO) see this as a "GM vs the players" mini-game, and not be happy with it. As a GM, I would strongly recommend just balancing the planned encounters to the power of the group instead of trying to play games with resource depletion via tricks like this. It's not really fun for anyone.

If I want to run a "manage resources" scenario, I'll make that the actual scenario. There will be a dark tower (or similar). It will have a bbeg. It will have organized defenses. And the PCs will have to figure out how to deal with the entire tower and its defenses in one shot (or fail in some way). And yeah, it'll be balanced in its entirety such that the PCs will have to be very careful to manage their resources to deal with this. I just find "use random/wandering encounters to wear down resources" to be a lazy way to manage this. That latter approach will almost always leave the players either feeling that their success/failure is subject to the whims of the RNG *or* that the GM is going to fluff the RNG to "make things interesting/difficult" no matter how well (or poorly!) they manage their resources otherwise. Both of which, in turn, will make the players feel like their own choices and contributions just aren't that important to the resolution of the adventure itself.

Which, yeah, is not going to result in happy players. There's just very few ways to make actual random encounters work well, if those encounters are frequent and/or measureable resource sinks. Which is why I overwhelmingly just use them for color and setting stuff. I suppose the exception is if there are no planned things, and the adventure is just "wander around the wilderness encountering random things". But to me, that gets boring really fast.