Thursday 2 August 2018

Random Encounters – Purpose and Design (and Thoughts on Player Agency)


I am not an expert DM by any means, but I think random encounters are a very, very valuable part of Dungeons and Dragons. What they are and why they're important isn't always immediately apparent to DMs; I'm going to try to explore those issues here.

I'm going to address four aspects of random encounters: the way they relate to player agency; the way they relate to the verisimilitude; how they help the DM at the table; and what makes a good random encounter.

Player Agency and Consequences
I've seen objections to random encounters along the lines that they get in the way of the plot or main quest or are just time-consuming. Partly there's an issue of the type of game people are playing here. If a DM is running a Final Fantasy style series of set pieces with a “cinematic” plot, then random encounters – much like random encounters in JRPGs – might just be annoying. Players want to get on to the cool stuff, and as – inevitably – random encounters will here be seen as further combat challenges, but without plot significance, everyone will want to skip them.

Even for that sort of game, however, I would suggest that there is another way to run the game that you might enjoy more, even if (especially if!) story is important to you and your group. This style will involve random encounters not just as a necessary evil but as an integral part. But it requires killing your darlings.

A digression here: DMs love writing plots. I certainly do. But in 99% of cases, when we heavily invest in writing a plot, our games will suffer for it. We will require players to do the things we want them to, or at least let them exercise only very limited agency.

On the other hand, letting players “decide” the story benefits everyone in the long run, in my experience. They may need some hints and tips, and of course it happens in your world so you'll have created the possibilities for them, but dropping the idea of having a plot or a main quest can reap great benefits for you. You might of course worry that not having a main quest might lead to the characters being unheroic or doing weird things. You're right, they might – and your players will have had fun deciding to act like that! (Also, how much more impressive is character heroism when it's not required by the story – when it's not necessarily the path of least resistance?)

Dropping your (the DM's) idea of a story/plot/main quest also lends more importance to the things that actually happen. Your players might decide to help the revolution or just utilise the chaos to loot shops. They might fight the dragon or side with the dragon. As these choices weren't inevitable, they will matter more to everyone – knowledge of the road not travelled makes decisions mean more.

(Example One: one of my players in Talon's Height snuck away and released the Prince Most Magnificent in Shimmering Smoke, a Lawful Evil Efreet, after the Prince telepathically contacted them and offered a deal. A JRPG-style game wouldn't have involved that possibility; but in this case, the player got to choose. His choice will have consequences, positive and negative. The same would be true if he'd not let the Prince out.)

Example Two: The same with the Dragon's Tooth, the home of my Lawful Neutral Kobolds who have tension with nearby civilised peoples but can make peace – my main group quickly negotiated with the Kobolds after realising they weren't self-evidently evil, whilst another group I took through it got halfway before even beginning to suspect something strange was up. They had already incinerated the Kobold's eggs!)

How do random encounters fit into this? They help in at least two ways: consequences and emergent gameplay. When your players go out into the wilderness, there are risks to them (and sometimes opportunities). If they stay out in the wilderness for long periods, there are more risks to them before they get to somewhere safe. Taking those risks will cost the players – in hitdice, spell slots, potions, etc. And those consequences will directly relate to their choice to go into the wilderness. If my players travel through the Brightwood, they roll against the relative risk of that table (which is 1/6 per hex travelled on the hexmap) and if an encounter occurs they roll on that table, which is moderately dangerous, has several fey encounters, and has encounters relating to certain factions/NPCs. If they're in Cabbage Country, it's 1/12 chance and they'll roll on that table, which is a little less dangerous but has a bunch of weird, mysterious events, and has encounters relating to different factions/NPCs. This connects to “emergent gameplay” - the idea no-one quite knows what's going to happen til the session gets there, with randomised elements helping to produce a unique story for each party in the same environment. One group encounters Goblin foragers connected to Nimthur in Cabbage Country; another meets Pumpkinhead. Their stories are permanently changed by an event no-one could truly predict – and it was, in the final account, due to their decisions that it happened.

(Hint: Make players roll to see if they get a random encounter, and then make them roll on the table you've got hidden behind your screen. They don't know what result they get, but it gives them a sense of investment/agency. The Bard rolled the check that got everyone captured by interdimensional raiders!)

Verisimilitude
Random encounters can also help a sense of verisimilitude – that is, of the world being “real”, being “alive”. Obviously the game is fiction; but players often enjoy the game the more they don't have to explain away inconsistencies or weirdnesses. Random encounter tables – out of the direct control of the DM – give us a way of seeing the world “move”, of having events occur, of having an interactive ecology.

Of course it makes sense that there's a risk of encountering strange things in the monster forest. The players know it's a 1 in 6 chance, but given how dice work, that could be never or often. (Of course, you could add to this by increasing the chance of an encounter if the characters are moving quickly, making more noise – adding more realism and more choice!) This to me seems better than DMs just writing preset “random encounters” for every three days of travel or whatever – things aren't inevitable, the world bites back, and even the DM gets to be surprised sometimes. Additionally, the random (emergent gameplay) combination of elements – location, character situation, particular encounter – give an opportunity for creativity, as the DM works out how the encounter works or makes sense.

An important corollary of this point is as follows: the encounter table shouldn't be strictly levelled, nor should it be an array of combat encounters. In your bit of mythic fantasyland there may well be no high-level dragons or breaches into the Abyss...well, there might be, actually. Why wouldn't demons make a reality breach here, where the locals are weaker, rather than into the high-level Dwarf King's fortress? Wouldn't it be interesting find out how how your 3rd level party reacts when they find something SO dangerous? What if they come face-to-face with an Adult Green Dragon seeking a new home after being chased from its old one by giants? If they can't beat it, could they flee from it? What about negotiating with it? A Green Dragon in your debt sounds useful.

Of course it might make sense to only have one or two super-dangerous encounters on your table – partly because verisimilitude would suggest there's not enormous numbers of high-level dangers running around anyway, and partly because though realism helps, it's not the aim of the game. The aim is having fun, and so a mix of things is best.

Similarly, having random encounters essentially be combat encounters is boring. Not because combat isn't fun, or can't be; but because it will make players understand random encounters are part of the grind rather than part of the world. Virtually every random encounter on your table should be able to run in multiple ways. Sure, maybe one is just demons attacking, and that's going to have to be combat, but could the territorial heron-men be negotiated with? Perhaps some of the encounters should be strictly environmental – a strange circle of standing stones with magical properties, or a sudden lightning storm. Variety adds to a sense of realism, and to the potential interest players will have in the encounters themselves.

Ease of Use for the DM
Random encounters – and generally being able to randomly generate content – help a lot when your players go offpiste. What if you don't have things planned for the direction they're travelling? Dip into your encounter tables and find out what's there! These give you both floating encounters and something quick you don't have to have written out beforehand in detail. Of course, in some cases discretion may be required – when they ask to go to a town you haven't written up yet, you may be a little cautious about dropping the aforementioned Abyssal breach into it, at least if you have other intentions for the town. But bandits ambushing them en route, or them finding a cartman with a broken leg in the road, can provide you breathing space to work out what's happening next.

Designing Good Random Encounters
I don't know if I design good random encounters, and can't entirely describe how to design the sort of encounters I like, though certainly it helps if they are vivid and dynamic. But I can probably point to the sort of encounters I like and don't like.

A limited encounter table can be found in the (very worth reading) 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. It has tables sorted by terrain, but the actual entries tend just to be the name of the creature encountered (e.g., “Giant Weasel”). There are no environmental encounters in the main encounter tables, with any such event presumed to be determined separately by the DM. The City/Town Encounters have a special Explanation section which gives a little more advice, but still no colour. Now, this might not seem a bad thing; this gives the DM the whole job of working out the encounter, which may seem desirable. But in my experience a few sentences to make an encounter vivid, or even just quick and easy to run at the table, are very helpful.

An example of a slightly better encounter table can be found in Tomb of Annihilation, a pretty good adventure from Wizards of the Coast. It again has a number of tables, spread across different terrain types. The encounters even have a paragraph of description each, and some are quite fun and allow for interesting interactions. For instance:

CYCLOPS:A cyclops is journeying toward its home near Snapping Turtle Bay. It isn't looking for a fight, but any sudden moves or hostility from the characters might trigger one. The cyclops knows the region around Lake Luo and the western end of the Valley of Dread quite well, and it's never seen anything like Omu in those areas. Roll twice on the Treasure Drops table to see what treasure, if any, the cyclops has.

You can fight it, but it's probably easier to make friends with it. It can give you information. So it's a decent little encounter – but perhaps not instantly memorable or exciting.

Compare these two encounters from one neighbourhood of Marlinko, the subject of Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, an excellent book by Chris Kutalik available from Drivethrurpg. One of these encounters is entirely trivial, the other is frankly silly, and both are very briefly written (shorter than the Cyclops entry):

Drunken boors: 2d6 drunken boors. Will descend on party and demand they drink with
them. Will not let them talk without interruption.

Maus. A wild-eyed paranoid dressed in the long-robed, woolen hat finery of a rustic boyar.
Maus rants and raves at the characters about the “Axis of Tindrthurn,” a secret postal and
matchmaking service that he claims is trying to kill him. If the Chaos Level is 6 or greater, he
is correct on all counts.

Both of these, to me, are immediately even more engaging and full of possibility than the Cyclops encounter, even though the Cyclops is surely the more inherently dramatic encounter. There's still plenty left to the DM's judgement and imagination; but these are both vivid and full of possibility, all within a couple of sentences.

Conclusion
Go and write an encounter table for the town your players are exploring. Add a wandering monster table to the gigantic dungeon they're descending. Add some weird stuff, add some chances for them to make friends (or enemies), and then let them be the masters of their fate. Use random encounters to make your world more open to player choice, to make it feel more real, and to save you time when your players go somewhere you hadn't expected. I think you'll reap the benefits very quickly.

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