Random encounters

[Yeti Spaghetti]

A thread for all things random encounter-related: Best practices, examples from real games, or just random monster stats.

 

[xanther]

For me some quasi-plausible ecology (even if it requires magic) is key as it informs my encounter charts, especially predator-prey relationships. For example, creatures that have a penchant to decimate an area ((e.g. giant ants) have natural predators (e.g. carrion crawlers for me) so if you come across prey in an encounter the predator may be near...just like surfing in seal infested waters.

I love random monsters, always make little encounter charts for my locations/dungeons and for the more intelligent sorts to creatures with habits where they are at different times during the day. So many charts include time period specificity (well not too specific usually like dawn-day-dusk-night kind of thing)

to digress......

Ahhhh The Lurker Above...love the concept yet by the description one of the most ridiculous/not well thought out....unless these things breed and grow like flies. Non-intelligent, fights to the death? How in the world do they grow to such size? Especially if they feed on anything but plants and the smallest of animals (relative to their size)? A human is just too big for such a creature (which is literally not denser than air) to see as prey.

Now this gas that provides buoyancy, can think of only four that would reasonably work...lighter than air enough (and are not deadly poison/highly corrosive which think the description would mention...but that is what I'd use to make them extra deadly and how they really kill)....helium or hydrogen or methane or handwavium.

Helium: First creatures cannot generate it....now they may be able to capture it over lots of time from rocks or pockets that collect underground but that would imply these creatures are very rare or there is some huge breeding colony deep under the earth near the helium pockets and they just stream forth, we will hand wave how they get from there to here. Also we are talking some pretty amazing membranous material to keep the helium from leaking out...you really cannot lose any because you can't generate it absent magic.

Hydrogen: This is the only one that makes logical sense as plenty of ways to generate it, and it would give the most buoyancy of the lot...and given the picture think (ratio of gas sack to creature) it would have to be hydrogen. Of course as we know, hydrogen very flammable and incredibly so mixed with oxygen from personal experience. Now well assume the membranes of these gas sacks are pretty damn hydrogen tight (no mean feet given the RMS speed of it at STP and it's size) because even if it can be generated...if it gets close to any heat or spark or flame...BOOM!...or more precisely VOOM!...oh the humanity. However, a creature that is just this side of exploding is non-intelligent? Hmmmm, the possibilities. Also if it is non intelligent imagine there are plenty of ways this would be a primary source of hydrogen...just farm these things and also harvest their biologically amazing gas sacks. Now if you told me these things are bred and released as weapons of terror (kind of like mines) I would not be surprised.

Methane: Pretty much same as hydrogen, even easier to generate, less explosive but also far, far less lift...so the thing should look much more like a balloon. Pretty much a stretch really for enough lift.

Handwavium: Well yes it behaves how I want it to behave and that behavior changes as I see fit to make sure the plot I have in mind proceeds. This is clearly a magical substance so it should light up like a Christmas tree under Detect Magic.

 

[David Johansen]

I was really impressed by Rolemaster Standard System's random encounter tables by terrain type until I discovered that it almost always rolls "Common Bird." I don't know about you but the absence of birds seems like more of an encounter than a single common bird. Anyhow, interesting concept, neat booklet, great monster stat summary.

I really like what second edition AD&D's DMG said about encounters. An encounter should require actual choices. The example used was that seeing smoke in the distance and choosing to avoid it or investigate is more of an encounter than running into a band of orcs and fighting them.

 

[xanther]

I mean "Common Bird" is what most of us encounter so good realism there, sure "Brazen Strumpet" and " Saucy Tart" are more interesting but also a bit offensive. I think Rolemaster was ahead of its time

 

[xanther]

I do like the idea of "nuisance encounters", these being more ones that are easily avoided if detected. I believe TFT discuses them, as well as Aftermath! if recall correctly but maybe under environmental encounters.

I love the idea of smoke in the distance, David Johansen are there encounter tables for stuff like that?

For me, it could arise if there are fire making creatures in the area and when outdoors I include a "distance" of the encounter type roll.

 

[David Johansen]

To quote Groo the Wanderer "Ah ha! Smoke in the distance! That means there's a village! Or a fire! Or a village on fire!"

 

[TJS]

Best practice: Always think about how an encounter presents a decision to the players.

An encounter that is a simple fight, or is something that can be resolved simply by die rolling is ultimately pointless.

And remember basic psychology.

If the PCs are well armed and are likely to win the fight the other side should know better than to fight, maybe they flee, or look for reinforcements or try to follow the party.

If the PCs seem likely to lose a fight, then the agressors should generally also try to avoid a fight, by threatening and cajoling and demanding surrender. Your average bandit doesn't want to risk his life even if his side is likely to win the fight.

If the sides seem about equal, there is likely to be posturing and the like but a fight probably requires the two sides to work themselves up to it and can probably be avoided if the players wish.

If the encounter is with predators they will act like predators: either try and intimade and then snatch a fleeing victim, or stealth and ambush at a convenient time.

 

[ffilz]

I like random encounters. I don't currently have a handle on random encounter tables that I really like...

I'd like regional and terrain specific encounter tables, but everything I've seen just seems a bit unsatisfactory.

In the end, I use whatever I have and do the best. I may ignore or re-roll if I'm not in the mood for the encounter generated or it doesn't seem to fit.

Hmm, an interesting thought on the "when" of encounter tables... Many war games and some RPGs use movement points to adjust movement speed depending on terrain (some RPGs the movement points are represented as speed and some as how long it takes to cross a given distance). You could have encounter density points (so moving 1 mile in the desert is X encounter points, while moving 1 mile in the forest is Y encounter points - more encounter points is less frequent encounters). Then you make a roll (using a cumulative probability table like I've discussed before) to see how many encounter points before the next encounter. Then start chalking up encounter points as the PCs move. When the encounter point total equals or exceeds the next encounter point generated, you have an encounter in that terrain. You can even be fancy and have different encounter points for night and day. Working with the cumulative distribution, an encounter point basically means, say a 5% chance of an encounter during the time represented by that encounter point (encounter points should be per unit of time in the terrain - oh, and the encounter points can be different for different movement types, being stationary, hunting, etc.). Now you can do things like have river crossings that should have some chance of encounter but maybe shouldn't represent a "watch" worth of encounter probability have 1 (or more) encounter points. Entering a town might have 10 encounter points.

Once you resolve the encounter, subtract the generated encounter point from the accumulated total, and roll again. If you roll low enough, you might have another encounter effectively immediately because whatever terrain encounter point accumulation you had had some residual after subtracting the generated encounter point.

One cool thing is you could potentially have super local encounter tables. If your extrapolation of the encounter points places the encounter when you go by some very specific location (which might even add some encounter points above the terrain - just like a river crossing) then you roll on that specific location table. Pass a particular grave yard or battle site and you have a chance of encountering specific undead...

Now computerize this whole thing so you don't have to do all the math and keep track of all the tables...

Beyond that, based on various reading, I would definitely like more encounter tables that present more than just traditional "you see X" encounters. Spoor and tracks, smoke in the distance, a recent battle scene, etc.

 

[ffilz]

Oh, and on things like Lurker Above or wolves that attack PC parties and such...

I'm playing a fantasy adventure game. There may be weird creatures that make no sense using science. Animals and even intelligent creatures may act in totally unnatural ways. That said, I WOULD like a BIT more sense in the encounters. But I still want PCs to get to fight wolves and I DON'T want a setup where the only thing that ever attacks PCs is things that have reason to believe they are far superior to the PCs. I'm OK with 6 goblins attacking a well armed party. It's part of the fantasy adventure game genre that I play.

 

[TJS]

Oh, and on things like Lurker Above or wolves that attack PC parties and such...

I'm playing a fantasy adventure game. There may be weird creatures that make no sense using science. Animals and even intelligent creatures may act in totally unnatural ways. That said, I WOULD like a BIT more sense in the encounters. But I still want PCs to get to fight wolves and I DON'T want a setup where the only thing that ever attacks PCs is things that have reason to believe they are far superior to the PCs. I'm OK with 6 goblins attacking a well armed party. It's part of the fantasy adventure game genre that I play.

The way I see it, if the PCs are going to fight 6 goblins, it's more interesting if they made the choice to do it.

If the 6 goblins attack the PCs and die what was achieved? The players didn't make any choices, the fight wasn't particularly hard. I guess if you really like combat for it's own sake then you get a chance to do it. But this kind of thing seems to be what leads to the widespread rejection of random encounters wholesale.

If the Goblins spot the PCs and either a) start fleeing, or b) start following the party ,then the players have a choice.

Can they afford to let the goblins get away and warn others? Do they want the goblins following them?

In both cases the players have things to decide and interact with. If they decide to chase the golbins, then you have a chase, and an easy fight becomes more interesting, because the goal becomes not just winning, but preventing any escape; if the goblins are following them then they will likely try to plan an ambush so as to take them out with the minimal possible loss of resources. In this case, again the fight is made more interesting due to a secondary goal.

One thing I will often do if I have something on an encounter table like a handful of goblins is have them follow the party and then if more goblins get rolled later, they join the existing ones, so that the potential threat becomes greater. If 6 goblins become 12 then the party need to decide whether to act now before they become 18.

 

[Brock Savage]

I aim to make dungeons crawls tense but rewarding. Unfortunately, most dungeon challenges are trivial given enough time, manpower, and excavation tools. Random encounters give the players a sense of urgency while forcing them to exercise sound and light discipline.

One of the major effects of wandering monsters in 5e is that it makes short rests in the dungeon a calculated risk and long rests more or less impossible. This helps curtail caster dominance and eliminates the dreaded "5 minute workday".

Wandering monsters work best when treasure makes up the majority of XP; players don't want to risk death fighting for pocket change. It's easy enough to do treasure for XP in 5e.* I never had a problem with players having too much money; in fact they were cash-starved until about 6th level but I present them a lot of cool shit to blow their money on such as downtime activities and consumables.

I ask one of the players to roll for wandering monsters using a large novelty d6. I feel that it adds more fun and tension to have it in the open for everyone to see. Usually I have them roll a d6 every hour with a monster on a 1-2. If they make a lot of noise or whatever that will force a roll as well.

One idea I stole (from Barrowmaze I think) was that at nighttime the wandering monster tables often get more dangerous. If nothing else, that's when the dangerous incorporeal undead start roaming around and lesser undead appear in greater numbers. My players caught on pretty quick that best practice was to enter a dungeon close to dawn and gtfo before dusk. Again this gives the players a sense of urgency which I think is vital for the dungeon experience.

*I rule that defeating monsters rewards 10% of their "by the book" XP value.

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

 

[TJS]

Hey, Gradulf, you've let the Elephant wander off. You were supposed to be on watch.
I was; a giant eagle swept down out of the sky and carried it off. There was nothing I could do.
Yeah. Right. You fell asleep didn't you?

 

[xanther]

To quote Groo the Wanderer "Ah ha! Smoke in the distance! That means there's a village! Or a fire! Or a village on fire!"

Well usually when I see rings of smoke through the trees, I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving.

 

[xanther]

Oh, and on things like Lurker Above or wolves that attack PC parties and such...

I'm playing a fantasy adventure game. There may be weird creatures that make no sense using science. Animals and even intelligent creatures may act in totally unnatural ways. That said, I WOULD like a BIT more sense in the encounters. But I still want PCs to get to fight wolves and I DON'T want a setup where the only thing that ever attacks PCs is things that have reason to believe they are far superior to the PCs. I'm OK with 6 goblins attacking a well armed party. It's part of the fantasy adventure game genre that I play.

I'm with you on being more about genre than realism, but think you can have both...and having both makes for far better adventures and allows the PCs to use sense and reasoning on the world instead of just giving up on engaging with the setting if it is all just random and because there must be blood.

For example, Lurkers Above...I like thinking about the "how" as it allows for all sorts of extrapolations....I like the idea these things are basically booby traps/mines...actively created, once created, out of control, have some built in control, who knows...if you have this it rewards players who think and want to know why. Science then would have me include that they may go VOOM! when you fight them...which would be stun damage for me and make the fight far, far more intersting. I'm all for using magic to explain things, but as a last resort, as a first resort seems like a cop out and way too easy to create internally inconsistent worlds.
Also to "control" the population of these lurker aboves may say the gray ooze is its natural predator.

Likewise on wolves, if they attack my players know that is signal, something is up. Are the wolves starving and driven to desperation? (well examine them) Otherwise it is a clue that someone or something put the wolves up to it, controlled them, summoned them, etc. Or there is something on or about the PCs that induced them to attack. To me it is wholly unsatisfying if the reason is "we kill things and take their stuff" so wolvers need to attack us, to the death. Now if this was Death World (ala Harry Harrison) sure but even then...no spoilers.

On intelligent creatures attacking to certain death, so many reasons. Intelligent creatures do the most foolish of things and throw their lives away based on all sorts of nonsense. Yet, knowledge is power, so my players know if creatures act in an obviously suicidal manner something is up (it's not just a cheap way for me to lower their HP and resources...I have plenty of refined and intricate ways to do that) they will likely try to capture a suicidal goblin. Of course the "reason" may be they just want to die glorious, or they are dedicated to their people so they must wound and slow the invaders, they are really high on mushrooms and just went berserk, etc. A more likely encounter for me with outmatched goblins is they are scouts, and will watch and report back to prepare an ambush...far, far more deadly should the PCs fail to discover this.

It is all part of a "narrative sandbox" everything acts for some in setting "reason" and not a metagame reason, as this is D&D and things always attack and fight to the death because "game."

 

[Skarg]

Assuming I have time/energy to do so, I like to roll several times for random encounters, and then place them all further from the PCs than either can detect each other, and think about what each is doing and the terrain/weather/daylight involved and then see who goes near enough each other to have a chance to detect each other, see who detects the other, and play out what happens.

That way, things play out naturally, and PCs have appropriate chances to respond to what they notice and act how they choose. It's still possible that they will choose to walk directly into a situation where they get attacked without managing to notice the other side or any signs that was going to happen, but it won't be happening just because the GM says so.

I prefer to have tables that actually list what's commonly in the area, with appropriate likelihood for each, but if I don't have that, I will roll on semi-appropriate tables and then make a "confirmation roll" for each result that doesn't seem like it would commonly be in the environment, with the odds for that being based on how rare I think it would be (and sometimes just saying no to inappropriate things).

 

[xanther]

I aim to make dungeons crawls tense but rewarding. Unfortunately, most dungeon challenges are trivial given enough time, manpower, and excavation tools. Random encounters give the players a sense of urgency while forcing them to exercise sound and light discipline.

One of the major effects of wandering monsters in 5e is that it makes short rests in the dungeon a calculated risk and long rests more or less impossible. This helps curtail caster dominance and eliminates the dreaded "5 minute workday".

Wandering monsters work best when treasure makes up the majority of XP; players don't want to risk death fighting for pocket change. It's easy enough to do treasure for XP in 5e.*.....

I like that wandering monsters make the dungeon a living breathing place, but if they are "needed" for metagame reasons...basically how D&D magic and healing works (to counter balance it), to avoid a 5 min adventure day, or how xp is awarded...that is a problem with the game rules, adventure design or both in my mind. My view is wandering monsters and random encounters should flow from the setting, which is easy enough to do and perfectly fine if they address wonkiness in the rules.

For me wandering monsters are to be avoided because they can hurt you and more importantly give away your location if you hole up in a room. IF there happens to be any organized creatures near by then that can be a death sentence where you find your route out trapped and ambushes around every corner; or depending on configuration they will just smoke you out as fire in an enclosed space is extremely deadly.

As old OD&D players, still take precautions to cover ones track and scent trail, simple traps on the perimeter (trip wire, bear trap, caltrops, marbles, chalk dust on the floor for invisible things, etc.) if they make sense, ambush points if can do it, and of course someone always on guard. Stringent light and sound discipline.

I kind of turn it on it's head. Wandering monsters are not there to ensure the dungeon is non-trivial....the overall adventure design does that but wandering monsters, patrols, active and living opponents are often part of that design...same effect but different reasoning.

I also design dungeons where you can clean out the first level, maybe the second etc. and set up camp inside. Sure feel secure as you stretch your lines of supply and communication thinner and thinner...how many guards can you afford at your back? Do you really know all the entrances? Are you sure you are not making yourself a tasty target, risking stirring up something from below? Feel free to forget you are invaders...and all is safe and secure I don't need magic or hand waving to pop that bubble.

 

[ffilz]

The way I see it, if the PCs are going to fight 6 goblins, it's more interesting if they made the choice to do it.

If the 6 goblins attack the PCs and die what was achieved? The players didn't make any choices, the fight wasn't particularly hard. I guess if you really like combat for it's own sake then you get a chance to do it. But this kind of thing seems to be what leads to the widespread rejection of random encounters wholesale.

If the Goblins spot the PCs and either a) start fleeing, or b) start following the party ,then the players have a choice.

Can they afford to let the goblins get away and warn others? Do they want the goblins following them?

In both cases the players have things to decide and interact with. If they decide to chase the golbins, then you have a chase, and an easy fight becomes more interesting, because the goal becomes not just winning, but preventing any escape; if the goblins are following them then they will likely try to plan an ambush so as to take them out with the minimal possible loss of resources. In this case, again the fight is made more interesting due to a secondary goal.

One thing I will often do if I have something on an encounter table like a handful of goblins is have them follow the party and then if more goblins get rolled later, they join the existing ones, so that the potential threat becomes greater. If 6 goblins become 12 then the party need to decide whether to act now before they become 18.

So the problem I have with 6 goblins being not a good fight for the PCs is considering I play zero to hero style games, how do the encounters know the level of the PCs?

That WAS one reason I was interested in Ben Robbins West Marches campaign ideas. Having leveled wilderness regions means the PCs are mostly encountering stuff that is close to them in power. And if they are slumming it, it may be more obvious to the intelligent foes.

The time pressure random encounters put on the PCs for old school style gaming though is negated if the weaker encounters run away. In an old school D&D dungeon, the PCs aren't going to chase down the lone orc, so now you've just wasted everyone's time rolling it. If it attacks and possibly does a bit of damage, then it's putting the pressure on the PCs even if it is suicidal.

For my RuneQuest campaign, I play things with a bit of logic, but in the end, it's still a game, and part of the game is combat, and sometimes the PCs should have an easy time of it. So the lone trollkin attacks the party...

What I want out of an encounter system is less about matching up power levels and more about making different regions more unique, and making things like river crossings more significant because they change the encounter profile.

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

 

[TJS]

So the problem I have with 6 goblins being not a good fight for the PCs is considering I play zero to hero style games, how do the encounters know the level of the PCs?

By what they can see in front of them, and if they can't see it then they get it wrong.

 

[ffilz]

By what they can see in front of them, and if they can't see it then they get it wrong.

But unless level of ability is somehow visible, the 6 goblins can only base off of how many the opposition is, and assume that opposition with better gear is also possibly better ability. And what do you do in 3.x where a "good fight" is one or maybe two goblins against a 1st level party? The party clearly has superior numbers, yet for the game to work as designed, they should have plenty of fights with just one or two goblins. Now I don't run 3.x anymore, but still my games would feel REALLY deadly if most of the encounters that attacked them were superior in numbers.

In the end, I fall on the side of "game," so if part of the game is that there are random encounters (OD&D/AD&D old school dungeons need random encounters), then we have to have them, and many if not most of them have to be encounters that the PCs will probably win, with a decent number of encounters being trivial.

RuneQuest is not quite so dependent on random encounters to provoke resource use, but still would be very deadly if too many of the encounters were only with opponents that would have any reason to believe they had a very good chance of winning.

I dunno, I don't know how to resolve this conundrum.

 

[TJS]

6 Goblins are goblins. They're short and weak and probably not especially well armed. The lowest level of ability they're likely to face is extremely dangerous to them. They should probably always be cautious about getting into fights. Maybe if there's one or two PCs they might believe they can mob them quickly.

One or two goblins against a party? If that's the encounter then I already said what I would do - if there's the possibilty of a fight let the PCs choose to start it.*

A 'balanced' encounter in D&D is one in which the PCs are likely to win with some loss of resources. No one intelligent would enter into such a fight willingly or knowingly.

* As I said, it's not just a matter of realism. These easy fights lack tension and are often considered boring. They're one of the reasons random encounters get ditched entirely. If I'm going to have them at all, it's better if the players are responsible for starting them, and there is some other goal other than rolling some dice to cut up cannon fodder.

 

[TJS]

Random encounter 1: 1d4 Orcs roll a 2.

The party come across two orcs in a clearing with a halfling tied to a spit, and they are building up a fire to cook him.

Lots of ways this could go. The most likely is probably that the party will rush in and attack and there will be a fight. That's fine. The party could pass on by, they look dangerous and the Orcs have dinner (if the party are the sort to do that I might hint that the halfling looks the wealthy sort). The party could probably scare the Orcs off in a social encounter if they really want to, although the Orcs would probably bluster and threaten at first and likely a fight would still break out.

Second encounter: a Komodo Dragon. If there's any reason for a PC to be separated from the others even a little, then they should be attacked. Or perhaps there's a child trapped up a tree with the Komodo dragon threatening them. Or the komodo dragon is eating the corpse of someone who looks like they may have some money on them.

But I try to present the encounter so that there are things to interact with and not just a fight.

 

[ffilz]

Since I'm not playing D&D 3.x, and I like sandboxes, I want to be careful of setting the encounter based on who the PCs are. I haven't decided what this REALLY means for my RQ campaign, I honestly haven't run enough old school type gaming since deciding it's not my place to scale encounters for the PCs in an open sandbox - if I'm creating an adventure for the PCs on the fly, I am happy to scale, that's not really different than writing up a scaled adventure ahead of time and giving the PCs clues to it, I just didn't ALSO write up adventures above or below the PCs ability and give them clues to those also with difficulty clues. So back to random encounters when they aren't part of a scaled adventure, I'll probably mostly take the random encounter tables as is, and hopefully if something too hard shows up, there are clues that help the PCs avoid.

So now we have this encounter with a bunch of trollkin (RQ's "goblins"). If the trollkin get the drop, they maybe should try and avoid the PCs if they have any reason to believe the PCs are a superior force, and I would probably do that.

I dunno, I really haven't thought this out completely...

But in a more dungeon type setting, the encounters are what they are, and probably scaled to the PCs. Some will be easy, some will be harder, some might be trivial, some might be deadly. In a dungeon, encounters are far more likely to be cornered and will fight even against a superior force. My RQ dungeons haven't featured much in the way of random encounters.

Now in the OD&D dungeons, yea, there are pointless random encounters. But in old school dungeon play, each encounter impacts the PCs resources and such. Yea, often a trivial encounter will be brushed off. The players get to breathe a sigh of relief that THIS encounter didn't sap any resources. But it COULD have. The lone orc COULD have hit someone for damage that now needs to be healed, or that PC is that much closer to death. In OD&D, a fight with a trivial encounter should go really quickly.

We're playing different play styles.

 

[TJS]

I'm not talking at all about scaling encounters to PCs.

I'm exclusively talking about how encounters react to PCs in believable ways. And secondarily how to take the information on an encounter table and make it more interesting to interact with. Yes there's a purpose in D&D to encounters that just drain resources, but the game is better when those encounters are also more interesting than just combat for it's own sake.

I have no idea where you are getting the idea that I scale encounters.

 

[Fenris-77]

I reject the notion of balanced encounters completely.

 

[David Johansen]

hmmm...I guess it depends on the premise of the game for me...for a fairly boardgamey dungeon crawl with newer players balance has its uses.

I do like Traveller's encounter tables, even if they will occasionally give you more people than the planet's population. But if you're rolling random encounters on a population 1 world, something must be up.

 

[Voros]

I'm not talking at all about scaling encounters to PCs.

I'm exclusively talking about how encounters react to PCs in believable ways. And secondarily how to take the information on an encounter table and make it more interesting to interact with. Yes there's a purpose in D&D to encounters that just drain resources, but the game is better when those encounters are also more interesting than just combat for it's own sake.

I have no idea where you are getting the idea that I scale encounters.

I totally agree, a detail or basic setup that makes the encounter something beyond another 'roll for int' combat is essential.

Otherwise random encounters become very boring and montonous.

 

[Brock Savage]

I totally agree, a detail or basic setup that makes the encounter something beyond another 'roll for int' combat is essential.

Otherwise random encounters become very boring and montonous.

I thought pretty much everyone nowadays customized random encounters to make them more interesting than "2d6 orcs roll for initiative". For dungeon encounters I do it before hand to ease the cognitive load. It's a lot easier to come up with interesting situations on the fly for wilderness encounters.

 

[ffilz]

I'm not talking at all about scaling encounters to PCs.

I'm exclusively talking about how encounters react to PCs in believable ways. And secondarily how to take the information on an encounter table and make it more interesting to interact with. Yes there's a purpose in D&D to encounters that just drain resources, but the game is better when those encounters are also more interesting than just combat for it's own sake.

I have no idea where you are getting the idea that I scale encounters.

I was being a little terse in saying you scale encounters, but the posts you have made in this thread suggest that you look for what the encounter might be up to to make it interesting. Your examples for encounters that would be trivial suggested that for those encounters you look more to them doing something that might catch the PCs attention rather than attacking the PCs. I was reading something into your process that may not be there. If I was going to have some encounters be the PCs coming on goblins or orcs roasting a halfling, I would expect that to happen no matter the PCs power level, not as a way to make a trivial encounter more interesting for a more powerful party. If that's not what you're doing then all is cool.

So from that perspective, what would be good to add to encounter tables is a "what these NPCs are up to" element. Then the GM can take the NPC group and what it's up to and what the PCs are doing, and determine who is aware of the other first, and assuming the NPCs become aware first with enough time to change their plans, what do they do?

Now there's still a problem in zero to hero games of what you so so low power PCs have some idea where it is safe to adventure.

 

[TJS]

I was being a little terse in saying you scale encounters, but the posts you have made in this thread suggest that you look for what the encounter might be up to to make it interesting. Your examples for encounters that would be trivial suggested that for those encounters you look more to them doing something that might catch the PCs attention rather than attacking the PCs. I was reading something into your process that may not be there. If I was going to have some encounters be the PCs coming on goblins or orcs roasting a halfling, I would expect that to happen no matter the PCs power level, not as a way to make a trivial encounter more interesting for a more powerful party.

No I would do it for all encounters. I actually think it's necessary for the sake of consistency to contextualise encounters. In a lot of old school encounter tables there's things that could result in arbitrary TPKs.

So if I'm not contextualising the goblins in some way, but just having them attack, then I'm overly favouring the PCs if a red dragon encounter is rolled and that's not an automatic combat.

If that's not what you're doing then all is cool.

So from that perspective, what would be good to add to encounter tables is a "what these NPCs are up to" element. Then the GM can take the NPC group and what it's up to and what the PCs are doing, and determine who is aware of the other first, and assuming the NPCs become aware first with enough time to change their plans, what do they do?

Now there's still a problem in zero to hero games of what you so so low power PCs have some idea where it is safe to adventure.

Yeah. I think the old school encounter table is really quite primitive and could definitely be improved on.

If I write my own it, it's more about situations then particular monsters.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

I love the idea of smoke in the distance, David Johansen are there encounter tables for stuff like that?

The Alexandrian's hex crawl system has "tracks" as a standard encounter option. I haven't had a chance to give the system a run yet, but I think that relatively small part will turn out to be a key component in making wilderness exploration engaging. Campfire smoke and the like would definitely fall comfortably under the "tracks" encounters.

Hexcrawl

As part of my essay on game structures in roleplaying games, I specifically discussed the basic structure of the hexcrawl:(1) Draw a hexmap. In general, the terrain of each hex is given as a v

thealexandrian.net

 

[Skarg]

So the problem I have with 6 goblins being not a good fight for the PCs is considering I play zero to hero style games, how do the encounters know the level of the PCs?

That WAS one reason I was interested in Ben Robbins West Marches campaign ideas. Having leveled wilderness regions means the PCs are mostly encountering stuff that is close to them in power. And if they are slumming it, it may be more obvious to the intelligent foes.

The time pressure random encounters put on the PCs for old school style gaming though is negated if the weaker encounters run away. In an old school D&D dungeon, the PCs aren't going to chase down the lone orc, so now you've just wasted everyone's time rolling it. If it attacks and possibly does a bit of damage, then it's putting the pressure on the PCs even if it is suicidal.

For my RuneQuest campaign, I play things with a bit of logic, but in the end, it's still a game, and part of the game is combat, and sometimes the PCs should have an easy time of it. So the lone trollkin attacks the party...

What I want out of an encounter system is less about matching up power levels and more about making different regions more unique, and making things like river crossings more significant because they change the encounter profile.

Well, in the first place, having encounters just magically scale to the level of the PCs is surreal, and undermines the idea that anyone is really improving their abilities at all.

In the second place, if the GM is running the game as a real place, then foes which run away and escape... tend to be vastly more dangerous than ones who suicidally fight and die even when out-matched. At least, if they have any allies in the location, and they end up organizing a force that the PCs don't outmatch, and/or setting up attacks or other mischief against the PCs that is actually effective, like real foes with any sense of self-preservation and/or what would be a useful thing to do.

And _that_ is a way that a game can provide challenge and interest in a natural and dynamic way. So the PCs don't just find the whole world transforms to give them "balanced" encounters. But if/when they reveal their strength, people in the world will tend to try to react to that.

 

[xanther]

hmmm...I guess it depends on the premise of the game for me...for a fairly boardgamey dungeon crawl with newer players balance has its uses.

I tend to tie the balance to the location...certain areas having more dangerous stuff than others. Ala the whole dungeon level thing, but for me there will be weak/bottom of the food chain creatures throughout (such as my favorites giant rats and giant ants)

 

[xanther]

I thought pretty much everyone nowadays customized random encounters to make them more interesting than "2d6 orcs roll for initiative". For dungeon encounters I do it before hand to ease the cognitive load. It's a lot easier to come up with interesting situations on the fly for wilderness encounters.

Ahhh I wish that were the case....my last such as a player was 7 owlbears (the 5e party was strong) literally you see them roll for initiative, but there may have been roll for perception first .

...a lot of metagame BS on how they engaged...how they kind of walked (if they ran a spell caster would have been dead) towards the "nearest" but not really...pretty much for the convenience of the magic use and feat spot light.

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

 

[Ravenswing]

(wonders, offhand, exactly how the drooling neckbeards who wrote that "encounter" up distinguished a "brazen strumpet" from a "cheap trollop," a "saucy tart" or a "wanton wench.")

 

[TJS]

View attachment 33962

How can the 'typical streetwalker' be typical if the chance of an encouter is only 15%

 

[soltakss]

Random encounters are fine if focussed.

So, you would not have anything popping up, but if your scenario was set in a chaos lair then Broos, Scorpionmen, Jack o'Bears are fine. They wouldn't make much sense in a Troll stronghold, though.

That's why I always tailor my Random Encounters so they fit the location.