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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