Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 40 - Random Encounters

Episode Date: September 27, 2020

Random Encounters, some DMs love them, some hate them.  In this episode Jeremy discusses strategies for using Random Encounters that still make your world feel alive and active but won't derail your gaming session.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Taking20 podcast, episode 40, all about random encounters. This week's sponsor, science. If you like anything from fire to nanotechnology, thank a scientist. Also, if you like fire too much, please seek professional help. Random encounters are events, encounters with monsters, terrain, NPCs, something in the world around the PCs, that happen sporadically and random as a product of exploring an area of the world or while traveling from place to place. Examples include gnolls returning from a successful hunt, an overturned wagon and stranded family,

a group of bandits who have decided to try to extract tolls from road-weary travelers, eight young men and women from a nearby village tripping balls on mushrooms they found in the forest, a cloud of poisonous gas leaking from a nearby pipe, mudslide due to heavy rains, scattered corpses, all of them missing their heads and their left feet for some reason. A game I recently DM'd had the players encounter a house that had just started to burn. The area was very dry and a wildfire would easily consume the farm and likely spread downwind. The party had to get in, rescue the family before they perished with the house collapsing in on them. As you can see, a random encounter doesn't have to be a fight,

but it's something that happens unexpectedly, again usually between planned encounters and set pieces. Random encounters aren't new. They go all the way back to the first edition of D&D. I remember a random encounter table in a module called Against the Giants going almost back that far. The DM would roll dice for every X amount of time during the day and Y amount of time during the night. If the dice said they encountered something, the DM would roll on a different table to see what the random encounter was. So the first question is, why would you have random encounters? What's the purpose of them? The idea was to make the world feel full, lived in, unpredictable even. These days, sometimes when we're at the local shop or market, we'll run into people we know. Someone's child is running down

the aisle being chased by their parent, an argument between an employee and a customer, someone picking up a melon causing four others to fall to the floor. Think of things like this as random encounters for our world, which is relatively safe and not populated by monsters. Nearly all adventures and a lot of core rulebooks in various systems will include random encounter tables by level, area of the world, universe, plane of existence, etc. If you do a simple Google search for random encounter tables, it will bring up page after page after page of sample random encounter tables you can drop into your world if you so choose. But you don't have to. Some GMs despise random encounters.

The reasons are myriad, but I can kind of boil it down to just a few things. One, it's another thing to keep track of. Oh, it's been four hours. Let me roll on this table to see what happens. Oh, the dice say it's an encounter, so we have to have an encounter here, I guess. Reason number two, they hate it. It adds randomness and chaos to a game session. It's a spontaneous fight maybe the DM hasn't planned. Rolls the dice. Wyverns. Okay, well, that's going to complicate things.

Now I have to find or draw a map. I have to get creature statistics. What's that ability called again? Okay, guys, put yourselves on the map somewhere. What are the tactics of Wyverns? Oh, God. Okay, so yeah, it's been watching the party, and it'll fly by attack from behind. Wait, why would the wizard be in front? Where's the fighter?

What do you mean you don't like wyverns? Yeah, I did say we were fighting wyverns. But yeah, your characters don't know it's a wyvern. Why are you guys spaced out like that? And so on and so on and so on. Reason number three for the hate for random encounters. Random encounters take up valuable adventuring time. Well, that's 45 minutes of our lives we'll never get back

watching you help our family recover from a hobgoblin attack. Well, I think the family's in a good position to be taken care of by the town... What? What do you mean you want to stand guard over the house tonight? The little girl reminds you of your daughter from your tragic backstory? Okay, um, you have to improvise some family interactions. Um, okay. Late in the second watch, you hear the girl cry out from her bedroom. You rush in to see what's going on, and you startle

the girl who's already crying, and she cringes from you and says, I had a bad dweem. It just takes up adventuring time that could be used on other things. Reason number four to hate random encounters. They're distractions from the plot and story. The players are going to Coriander Castle and oops, nope, bad weather is rolling in and it looks like it's a lightning storm bad enough to spawn tornadoes. You need to find shelter. Make me a survival check. Okay, good. You were able to find lowlands with a rock overhang that provides some protection from the elements. You hear laughter over your head and you see air elementals frolicking in the bad weather. But the thing about it is that random encounters don't have to be forgettable, meaningless time wasters. There have been some great random encounters

in computer games and around the RPG table that I'll remember for a long time. I mean, examples include if anyone ever played Morrowind. There's one section of the world where you're walking down the road and a wizard named, I think it was like Tariel or something similar, plummets to his death in front of you seemingly out of nowhere, out of a clear blue sky. When you loot the body, you find a recipe for a massively effective potion of jump that sends you hundreds of feet in the air and gives you the ability to fly. Tempor temporarily. But there was nothing in the potion that prevented falling damage, and that was Tatariel's detriment. Fallout 3 had a flying saucer that would occasionally appear overhead, and I think one of its DLCs you actually got to

investigate the saucer crash and go get laser pistols and other alien technology. A former DM of mine had us run into a New Orleans-style funeral. It's a parade, music, and dancing, and people are playing instruments. And they're taking the deceased to his family farm for burial. We joined in. We're having a good time. We're singing, we're dancing, we're sharing food with everybody. Until we gradually came to realize that inside the coffin was a bandit that we had killed a couple of days ago. We kind of made a quiet exit out of the funeral

celebration before hopefully any of the other partygoers figured that out. Well-built random encounters that are funny, creative, reinforce the story, or have emotional ties to players can be very memorable. Random encounters, by the way, can be used to further the story, not just pull players away from it. I mean, the random encounter could be something having to do with a big bad evil guy. Maybe the big bad is keeping tabs on the players but not being very stealthy about it. Or maybe the big bad has some minions on a different errand. The random encounter can reinforce the events happening in the world. If the campaign revolves around a war, have the players meet refugees.

They're victims of the evil overlord's conquest. It reminds the players that the big bad evil guy isn't just resting on his hands, or claws, or tentacles, or pseudopods, or whatever he has. He or she is actively working to make his or her plans come to fruition. If the campaign centers around the party trying to fight a spreading plague, If the campaign centers around the party trying to fight a spreading plague, maybe they encounter a medical caravan with clerics or healing technology going to remote areas of the empire. A snake oil salesman selling plague cure-all made of snake venom and moose fart. A group of travelers expelled from their home because they have the plague.

It reinforces realistic side effects of diseases spread and things that's happening within the world that the party really needs to help fix. A survival campaign against the elements to return from a ship crash on the ocean or a desert island, you could have random events like corpses being found and they're being feasted upon by monsters, or maybe clues to the reasons for the crash. Now you may be arguing, if it ties to the story, how can it be a random encounter? The randomness comes from when it happens, not what it is. Now, there's a lot of reasons to use random encounters and random encounter tables. The primary reason I'll use random encounter tables is for a creative spark.

Listen, we as DMs, we fall into ruts from time to time. We tend to use the same monsters over and over and over again because we're familiar with them. We may fluff up some stats or give them additional abilities, but oh look, it's ogres again. Random tables can give us ideas of using monsters in situations that we don't use often or maybe haven't used in a while. So we roll and we get giant goats that caused an avalanche. Sure, let's do this. Reason number two to use random encounters is to make the adventure more difficult. It forces the party to make decisions about use of limited resources. Chances are your party has abilities that they can use a limited number of times per day or per long rest or what have you. It should make the party stop and think before pulling out the big guns because they may need that spell or ability later on.

Reason number three to use random encounters. It makes the world feel like it's constantly in motion even when the players aren't present. One of the things that players in my campaigns always hear at least once is Tempus Fugit, time flies, and it does not stop when you're not there. As I've mentioned in other episodes, it's not like a video game where when the players leave a town, that town gets unloaded from memory and everything stays in stasis until the players come back. No, memory and everything stays in stasis until the players come back. No, no. Stuff keeps happening in towns. People get married. People get stolen from. There's a thieves guild that's working to try to better itself. There's a merchant guild within the town trying to increase its influence

and power level. So time marches on. The big bad evil guy has plans and those plans require pieces and minions to be in motion. So while the party's moving, so is the big bad evil guy has plans and those plans require pieces and minions to be in motion. So while the party's moving, so is the big bad evil guy. And that should be part of your plan. Random encounters can reinforce that ability that they will encounter minions. They will encounter a big bad evil guy's plan half finished. So let's get to the crux of it. What are the tips for using random encounters? Number one, have a few random encounters pre-built for your adventures. Drop them in when needed or desired and adjust the level or difficulty on the fly depending on when you use it. You may have built it as a level six encounter, but you wind up needing to use it when the party is level four.

Drop it in anyway and just scale back some hit points or take a few minions off the board. Tip number two, don't worry about having the perfect map. Don't spend 30 minutes drawing exactly where every tree is on the road. Don't go searching through your gigs of map archives to find the perfect road map that you can use. Use what you have, grab a quick map, throw it on the board, and go. Or use theater of the mind like I talked about in a previous episode. Tip number three for random encounters. Make them rare and special.

Don't just throw in random encounters on every trip to the Space Mall. They lose their luster at that point. Not every time you go walking through the woods are you going to encounter a bugbear who just killed a deer. It should be a very rare thing, and therefore, in the eyes of the players, it will be something very special. Four, think of random encounters as problems or situations for the characters to negotiate, not fights. Don't pre-plan this will be a fight or the players will have to talk their way out of this one. Put the events in front of the players faces and you let the players use their creative problem solving skills to overcome the encounter.

Tip five, if you decide to use a random encounter table and you roll on that table and you don't like the result, change it. Disregard the roll. Pick something else. Have an encounter that's not on the table or don't even have one at all. Tip six, don't try to shoehorn random encounters in time-limited adventures. Like one-shot adventures where you're only adventuring for three hours together. That's not the time you want to throw in random encounter after random encounter after random encounter. You have a very fixed time window that you're trying to get the entire adventure completed in. Same thing with adventures at conventions.

Random encounters in conventions should be very rare and should only be thrown in if you need to add additional time or you're scared that you're going to finish early. Tip 7. If you have players that are brand new to gaming, strongly limit the random encounters that you have or remove them altogether. Focus on getting them to buy into the story, the world, the game. Once that happens, now start reintroducing random encounters because it helps them understand that the world does move. Tip 8. Use online generators or pre-built tables to get ideas for encounters But pre-make them instead of having to tap dance around the table making your players wait while you look up a monster. You don't know

tip nine Just because a random encounter happens. It doesn't have to happen directly to the pcs I used the example of the fire at the farmhouse earlier The pcs could see the random encounter in the distance or come upon the aftermath of the encounter. In a game I DM'd a few years ago, I had a random encounter idea that I wanted to use and I stuck it in my notebook and I knew I would pull it out eventually. Excuse me while I whip this out. The players were in a campaign against a faceless big Bad Evil guy, think one of the Lovecraftian great old ones trying to return to the world

and capturing the minds of minions to make it happen. The players were about 5th level and had no idea how powerful the Big Bad Evil guy and his allies were at the time. I wanted to reveal that there were dragons, plural, in league with the Big Bad Evil guy, but if the dragon directly attacked the party, it would have literally eaten them for lunch. So one evening while the party was camping, in the second watch, I rolled the fact that a random encounter happened, and I decided I wanted to pull this one out of the notebook. So I had the dragon do a flyby attack, not on the party,

but on a nearby town. The character who was on watch saw flames erupt in the distance, woke everyone up who quickly packed their crap and ran the six miles to investigate. As they got close, they heard the screams of the terrified and the dying in the small town. They found that the town was decimated, much of it in flames. A doomsayer was in the town square commanding the populace to repent and worship the big bad evil guy, or this destruction will be repeated upon them again and again and again. Cue fight.

Reveal of a nearby cult hideout. The adventure continued on, but the party remembered the town of Thornwood. One of the characters actually painted the town's crest on his shield. The random encounter happened because I rolled it on the dice, but it supported the greater narrative. Tip 10. If random encounters are rare, most should connect to known events, NPCs, or areas the PCs know,

or even very rarely, a PC's backstory. If they don't connect to anything else, make sure the random encounter can tell a self-contained story or the threads that are left unconnected can be tied back up later. Listen, random encounters are designed to simulate a full, lived-in, active world that stays in motion even when the PCs are elsewhere. Use them sparingly and to reinforce the events of the world, show the players how high the stakes have gotten, or make them self-contained stories that can be memorable. Use your random tables for creative ideas, but don't be a slave to what you roll. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening. Once again, I want

to thank our sponsor, Science. Beware of any diet that recommends eating light. Black holes do that, and they're really heavy. This has been the Taking 20 podcast, episode 40, Random Encounters. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.