A lot of adventures seem to incorporate randomized encounters, often implemented by asking the DM to roll dice and comparing the value to a table of encounters. For example, this is a big part of Tomb of Annihilation.
What's the point of the randomness there? Why not just plan what encounters you want the players to experience? This seems like it would make it a lot easier on the DM (they can prepare in advance), and it seems like it could only improve the chances the players will have fun.
A lot of people love the surprise and randomness. And it’s a representation of how long you spend in a certain place. You bed down for the night, set up a watch, the DM rolls a die behind the screen, says “The watch passes uneventfully.” And everyone breathes a sigh of relief because they desperately needed that long rest before any more fights. Or he rolls and concentrates for a second and says “You hear a scuffling in the woods beyond the light of your campfire. What do you want to do?”
Traveling is another time to make good use of random encounters. The trick with random encounters is that not every one should be definitively combat. So the pre-printed table in the adventure, if it only has an enemy for each face of the d6, is not very helpful to making a fun adventure. I like to make a list of a bunch of encounters, and break them into Combat, Blessing, and RP (which depending on how the party responds can go either way.) This is really easy on the road. Takes more creativity in a dungeon or when camped in a forest away from people.
One of my kids’ favorite memories playing with me (and mine as a DM for any group) was when my son and daughter were camped in a forest clearing overnight, and rolled an encounter, which I didn’t have prepared, but I use a combat tracker app that will generate random encounters at the appropriate level. It auto generated an orc and 6 weasels. I just went with it. Told them they heard someone coming, humming to himself. My son, the goblin rogue hid in the bushes, while my daughter, the dwarven bard prepared to bluff her way out of looking worth attacking. So along came this Orc weasel-shepherd, who greeted the bard and asked what she was doing alone in the woods at night. She said she was practicing her music and told me “I want to play so badly he doesn’t want to stick around.” I said “Roll performance. You’re looking for a LOW number on this roll. Your charisma and proficiency will prevent it from being any lower than a 5, but still. Roll LOW.” She rolls a nat 20. The orc really loved the music and stuck around for a couple more songs. When she finished, he told her “when I saw the fire, I was thinking you might have some food for my weasels, but they’ll make do with mice and such tonight. That was a lovely performance.“ He ended up giving her directions to the bridge she was trying to find, and a potion of healing because he was concerned for her safety all alone in the woods. As soon as he was gone, the goblin rogue came out and was like “Well, that was weird.”
Because randomness is fun! I like it because it means I as a GM doesn't know everything that will happen. When used right, they give your world a more "living" feel than if everything is planned and prepared for.
Because randomness is fun! I like it because it means I as a GM doesn't know everything that will happen. When used right, they give your world a more "living" feel than if everything is planned and prepared for.
This right here. DMs like surprises as well - or at least I sure do.
I don't think die rolling in the game represents luck, or chance, at all. It's used to abstract out all the small details that we don't bother to design or model, and acts as a barrier against GM bias ( even if that bias is unconscious ).
Using the example of random encounters: The GM could absolutely decide what monsters are in the jungle, figure out what their paths are going to be through the jungle that day & where they will be at what time, how far away they can sense the Party, how they will react given the time of day ( hungry? scared? sleepy? ), move their markers on a hidden jungle map, etc. You can design and model it all out. Is it worth it for the GM? That's a personal choice, but I would rather spend my energy on making memorable locations, NPCs, plot developments, etc. over trying to model the hunting behaviors of creatures in the jungle.
Instead, we abstract that out, take a swagat it, and say "given the way that the monsters are moving through the jungle, and the way the Party is acting, there's a 1-in-6 chance the Party will encounter something and a 1-in-20 chance that thing will be a displacer beast", and we roll dice.
In the game world, these things aren't random - they're completely deterministic. But the GM knowledge of those deterministic aspects of the world are left deliberately incomplete, so we resolve that incomplete knowledge by rolling dice.
Could the GM just decide, rather than rolling dice? Of course - but human brains are really bad at not being influenced by outside factors. I'll make different decisions about the now-no-longer-random encounters if I'm tired/hungry/cranky/frustrated vs alert/happy/having-fun, even if I'm trying my hardest to be objective. I'm an evolved ape, not a cool and rational artificial intelligence. Plus, if I just decide, then my Players can blame me - even if just subconsciously - for an encounter that goes badly for them. If I roll dice, it's not me, it's the dice that is throwing the encounter at them. Dice are impartial hunks of plastic or metal, and we still blame them ( how many Players change out "unlucky" dice, or have "dice jails" for misbehaving dice? ) - so why would Players not blame the GM?
Your point about the value of a prepared encounter is a good one. Prepared encounters are usually better than impromptu ones, because the GM can polish them and make them more interesting. You can split the difference here by preparing a sheaf of semi-generic encounters, and keeping them in reserve. Then, when the dice dictate an encounter, you can pull it out and drop it into your game. Create an interesting location in the jungle, with interesting tactical terrain, come up with a few complicating events you could throw in to switch up the situation, and file it away. Then, when the dice "randomly" throw that displacer beast encounter at your Party, you use that prepared encounter - and it looks/feels/plays-out in a more interesting manner than a generic jungle clearing. If you end up not using it, that just means you have it in reserve for the next time a Party is in a jungle somewhere.
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1. Random encounters are rarely random or encounters. They are more there to show the world is alive and to be a resource tax on the party. They can also be "used" to get the party "back on track" for those who need that.
2. If the DM is "always rolling" for encounters, in theory the party will not have a meta-clue on if the encounter is part of the story or not.
For example, with a new party, I almost always have their first night "in the field" have a "random" encounter to reinforce the need for keeping watch and "nudging" the benefits of setting up a camp with some forethought instead of just splaying out and crashing. Likewise if a party does not "clear" a dungeon there will be at least one random encounter per long rest they spent away from the dungeon. While "hex travelling" there will be a roll once per X hexes depending on many things, some the party can influence, some they can't. The roll is random on whether an encounter happens or not, the type is less random, coming from a specific sub-table which fits the area and choices made by the party.
3. Random encounters don't give out any practical rewards, neither in treasure nor experience. Defeat a group of "random bandits" will result in maybe 1/10th the reward of defeating the same bandits which is along a story/plot arc. That is my table, not a solid rule.
Plus, if I just decide, then my Players can blame me - even if just subconsciously - for an encounter that goes badly for them. If I roll dice, it's not me, it's the dice that is throwing the encounter at them. Dice are impartial hunks of plastic or metal, and we still blame them ( how many Players change out "unlucky" dice, or have "dice jails" for misbehaving dice? ) - so why would Players not blame the GM?
This is a very good point!
"Oh, so you make camp and plan to take a long rest!" Grab a dice, make a roll - the tension is there (I promise). Lokk at your players: "Roll perception..." It just works, and like Vedexent says, the players can't blame you for making an "evil" desicion.
Plus, if I just decide, then my Players can blame me - even if just subconsciously - for an encounter that goes badly for them. If I roll dice, it's not me, it's the dice that is throwing the encounter at them. Dice are impartial hunks of plastic or metal, and we still blame them ( how many Players change out "unlucky" dice, or have "dice jails" for misbehaving dice? ) - so why would Players not blame the GM?
This is a very good point!
"Oh, so you make camp and plan to take a long rest!" Grab a dice, make a roll - the tension is there (I promise). Lokk at your players: "Roll perception..." It just works, and like Vedexent says, the players can't blame you for making an "evil" desicion.
With respect, I don't really get that one. The DM controls the table that is used when rolling dice, or whatever method is used to translate the dice into an encounter. If something ridiculously OP is an option, such that a TPK is virtually inevitable, that doesn't seem like the dice's fault.
The stuff about (some) DMs liking randomness makes sense. Not sure I'm one of those DMs, but I'm new, so it could just be lack of experience and confidence.
The stuff about not giving the players meta clues about which parts are story-related is interesting.
I think I'll try out the idea of crafting some a la carte prepared semi-generic encounters. Thanks a lot for the thoughts.
It’s the difference of being able to say “I didn’t kill your character, the monster did.” I have legitimately never once tried to kill a PC in any game I DM. The bad guys try to kill them every combat.
To be clear, you don't *HAVE* to use random encounters if you don't want to. If you decide they're not fun/too much of a bother for you as a DM, or if your players decide they don't like having to worry about them, then you are perfectly within your rights to say, "I'm not going to use these in my campaign."
For myself personally, I plan on making use of random encounters once we're further along in the campaign I'm running when my players find out more about the scope of the threat they're really facing from the Big Bad, but for right now the only thing they'd do is bog down the game at a time when I'm trying to introduce things that the players need to know.
Random encounters exist because when all of D&D was contained in three little pamphlets there were no rules for overland travel. To supplement the rules it actually said to go buy a different game (also published by the same company back in the day), and use those rules for overland travel. That game was all about wilderness exploration, and so the entire point was random encounters. As D&D grew up, the random encounters stuck around and we still have them almost 50 years later.
The general purpose of wandering monsters is to force the PCs to keep up a pace rather than having the five minute workday. They don't work very well for that, because they just went back and introduced spells (rope trick, tiny hut) that let you ignore wandering monsters while resting.
(Not to be overly critical, but it sounds like D&D back in the day was kind of a mess...)
Back in the day it was literally nothing but dungeons and monsters. It was all hack-and-slash by design. Nobody needed “adventure hooks” or “backstories.” All you needed was knowledge that a dungeon existed.
Plus, if I just decide, then my Players can blame me - even if just subconsciously - for an encounter that goes badly for them. If I roll dice, it's not me, it's the dice that is throwing the encounter at them. Dice are impartial hunks of plastic or metal, and we still blame them ( how many Players change out "unlucky" dice, or have "dice jails" for misbehaving dice? ) - so why would Players not blame the GM?
This is a very good point!
"Oh, so you make camp and plan to take a long rest!" Grab a dice, make a roll - the tension is there (I promise). Lokk at your players: "Roll perception..." It just works, and like Vedexent says, the players can't blame you for making an "evil" desicion.
With respect, I don't really get that one. The DM controls the table that is used when rolling dice, or whatever method is used to translate the dice into an encounter. If something ridiculously OP is an option, such that a TPK is virtually inevitable, that doesn't seem like the dice's fault.
Hi, I'll try to explain how it works for me :-)
Most random encounter tables, also have a "risk" chance, for instance there's 30% chance for "something" to happen. Roll D100, if it is 30 or less, roll on random encounter table. Back in the "old" days most RPG's where full of such random tables for different terrains, regions etc. I usually use some kind of simple version of this (like rolling a D20 against a"risk-factor", if I roll higher than that, something happens. I either roll randomly (if a table exists), or come up with something.
The thing about the players can't "blame" the DM, isn't about TPK. Often the random encounters are quite simple, and I often also play them in ways that allows the players to solve them without combat (or they can actually be something completely mundane, like a traveling salesman). But if the players are really "drained" after a combat, and decides to make camp in the forest, I often prefer to roll randomly to see if anything happens. That way, the players "knows" it's not entirely safe, but they also know that I've left it up to randomness if anything happens. It's their decision if they want to take the chance.
Random encounters exist because when all of D&D was contained in three little pamphlets there were no rules for overland travel. To supplement the rules it actually said to go buy a different game (also published by the same company back in the day), and use those rules for overland travel. That game was all about wilderness exploration, and so the entire point was random encounters. As D&D grew up, the random encounters stuck around and we still have them almost 50 years later.
Are you talking about Outdoor Survival? I loved that game, I even think I have a copy somewhere around here.
Random encounters exist because when all of D&D was contained in three little pamphlets there were no rules for overland travel. To supplement the rules it actually said to go buy a different game (also published by the same company back in the day), and use those rules for overland travel. That game was all about wilderness exploration, and so the entire point was random encounters. As D&D grew up, the random encounters stuck around and we still have them almost 50 years later.
Are you talking about Outdoor Survival? I loved that game, I even think I have a copy somewhere around here.
I never have random encounters. My players can be doing something and I'll roll dice, look at them all. And go forward.
No encounter is random. They are all planned. If the party is in need of something to happen I just add it in there. If not then no encounter table is needed.
I populate my areas quite well and tend to leave some of it out as it's not needed.
Though I'm all for rolling dice for no reason just to mess with players.
A lot of adventures seem to incorporate randomized encounters, often implemented by asking the DM to roll dice and comparing the value to a table of encounters. For example, this is a big part of Tomb of Annihilation.
What's the point of the randomness there? Why not just plan what encounters you want the players to experience? This seems like it would make it a lot easier on the DM (they can prepare in advance), and it seems like it could only improve the chances the players will have fun.
A lot of people love the surprise and randomness. And it’s a representation of how long you spend in a certain place. You bed down for the night, set up a watch, the DM rolls a die behind the screen, says “The watch passes uneventfully.” And everyone breathes a sigh of relief because they desperately needed that long rest before any more fights. Or he rolls and concentrates for a second and says “You hear a scuffling in the woods beyond the light of your campfire. What do you want to do?”
Traveling is another time to make good use of random encounters. The trick with random encounters is that not every one should be definitively combat. So the pre-printed table in the adventure, if it only has an enemy for each face of the d6, is not very helpful to making a fun adventure. I like to make a list of a bunch of encounters, and break them into Combat, Blessing, and RP (which depending on how the party responds can go either way.) This is really easy on the road. Takes more creativity in a dungeon or when camped in a forest away from people.
One of my kids’ favorite memories playing with me (and mine as a DM for any group) was when my son and daughter were camped in a forest clearing overnight, and rolled an encounter, which I didn’t have prepared, but I use a combat tracker app that will generate random encounters at the appropriate level. It auto generated an orc and 6 weasels. I just went with it. Told them they heard someone coming, humming to himself. My son, the goblin rogue hid in the bushes, while my daughter, the dwarven bard prepared to bluff her way out of looking worth attacking. So along came this Orc weasel-shepherd, who greeted the bard and asked what she was doing alone in the woods at night. She said she was practicing her music and told me “I want to play so badly he doesn’t want to stick around.” I said “Roll performance. You’re looking for a LOW number on this roll. Your charisma and proficiency will prevent it from being any lower than a 5, but still. Roll LOW.” She rolls a nat 20. The orc really loved the music and stuck around for a couple more songs. When she finished, he told her “when I saw the fire, I was thinking you might have some food for my weasels, but they’ll make do with mice and such tonight. That was a lovely performance.“ He ended up giving her directions to the bridge she was trying to find, and a potion of healing because he was concerned for her safety all alone in the woods. As soon as he was gone, the goblin rogue came out and was like “Well, that was weird.”
Because randomness is fun! I like it because it means I as a GM doesn't know everything that will happen. When used right, they give your world a more "living" feel than if everything is planned and prepared for.
Ludo ergo sum!
This right here. DMs like surprises as well - or at least I sure do.
I don't think die rolling in the game represents luck, or chance, at all. It's used to abstract out all the small details that we don't bother to design or model, and acts as a barrier against GM bias ( even if that bias is unconscious ).
Using the example of random encounters: The GM could absolutely decide what monsters are in the jungle, figure out what their paths are going to be through the jungle that day & where they will be at what time, how far away they can sense the Party, how they will react given the time of day ( hungry? scared? sleepy? ), move their markers on a hidden jungle map, etc. You can design and model it all out. Is it worth it for the GM? That's a personal choice, but I would rather spend my energy on making memorable locations, NPCs, plot developments, etc. over trying to model the hunting behaviors of creatures in the jungle.
Instead, we abstract that out, take a swag at it, and say "given the way that the monsters are moving through the jungle, and the way the Party is acting, there's a 1-in-6 chance the Party will encounter something and a 1-in-20 chance that thing will be a displacer beast", and we roll dice.
In the game world, these things aren't random - they're completely deterministic. But the GM knowledge of those deterministic aspects of the world are left deliberately incomplete, so we resolve that incomplete knowledge by rolling dice.
Could the GM just decide, rather than rolling dice? Of course - but human brains are really bad at not being influenced by outside factors. I'll make different decisions about the now-no-longer-random encounters if I'm tired/hungry/cranky/frustrated vs alert/happy/having-fun, even if I'm trying my hardest to be objective. I'm an evolved ape, not a cool and rational artificial intelligence. Plus, if I just decide, then my Players can blame me - even if just subconsciously - for an encounter that goes badly for them. If I roll dice, it's not me, it's the dice that is throwing the encounter at them. Dice are impartial hunks of plastic or metal, and we still blame them ( how many Players change out "unlucky" dice, or have "dice jails" for misbehaving dice? ) - so why would Players not blame the GM?
Your point about the value of a prepared encounter is a good one. Prepared encounters are usually better than impromptu ones, because the GM can polish them and make them more interesting. You can split the difference here by preparing a sheaf of semi-generic encounters, and keeping them in reserve. Then, when the dice dictate an encounter, you can pull it out and drop it into your game. Create an interesting location in the jungle, with interesting tactical terrain, come up with a few complicating events you could throw in to switch up the situation, and file it away. Then, when the dice "randomly" throw that displacer beast encounter at your Party, you use that prepared encounter - and it looks/feels/plays-out in a more interesting manner than a generic jungle clearing. If you end up not using it, that just means you have it in reserve for the next time a Party is in a jungle somewhere.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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1. Random encounters are rarely random or encounters. They are more there to show the world is alive and to be a resource tax on the party. They can also be "used" to get the party "back on track" for those who need that.
2. If the DM is "always rolling" for encounters, in theory the party will not have a meta-clue on if the encounter is part of the story or not.
For example, with a new party, I almost always have their first night "in the field" have a "random" encounter to reinforce the need for keeping watch and "nudging" the benefits of setting up a camp with some forethought instead of just splaying out and crashing. Likewise if a party does not "clear" a dungeon there will be at least one random encounter per long rest they spent away from the dungeon. While "hex travelling" there will be a roll once per X hexes depending on many things, some the party can influence, some they can't. The roll is random on whether an encounter happens or not, the type is less random, coming from a specific sub-table which fits the area and choices made by the party.
3. Random encounters don't give out any practical rewards, neither in treasure nor experience. Defeat a group of "random bandits" will result in maybe 1/10th the reward of defeating the same bandits which is along a story/plot arc. That is my table, not a solid rule.
This video explains random encounters better than I ever could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPZZAavOugo&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&index=18
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This is a very good point!
"Oh, so you make camp and plan to take a long rest!" Grab a dice, make a roll - the tension is there (I promise). Lokk at your players: "Roll perception..." It just works, and like Vedexent says, the players can't blame you for making an "evil" desicion.
Ludo ergo sum!
With respect, I don't really get that one. The DM controls the table that is used when rolling dice, or whatever method is used to translate the dice into an encounter. If something ridiculously OP is an option, such that a TPK is virtually inevitable, that doesn't seem like the dice's fault.
The stuff about (some) DMs liking randomness makes sense. Not sure I'm one of those DMs, but I'm new, so it could just be lack of experience and confidence.
The stuff about not giving the players meta clues about which parts are story-related is interesting.
I think I'll try out the idea of crafting some a la carte prepared semi-generic encounters. Thanks a lot for the thoughts.
It’s the difference of being able to say “I didn’t kill your character, the monster did.” I have legitimately never once tried to kill a PC in any game I DM. The bad guys try to kill them every combat.
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To be clear, you don't *HAVE* to use random encounters if you don't want to. If you decide they're not fun/too much of a bother for you as a DM, or if your players decide they don't like having to worry about them, then you are perfectly within your rights to say, "I'm not going to use these in my campaign."
For myself personally, I plan on making use of random encounters once we're further along in the campaign I'm running when my players find out more about the scope of the threat they're really facing from the Big Bad, but for right now the only thing they'd do is bog down the game at a time when I'm trying to introduce things that the players need to know.
Random encounters exist because when all of D&D was contained in three little pamphlets there were no rules for overland travel. To supplement the rules it actually said to go buy a different game (also published by the same company back in the day), and use those rules for overland travel. That game was all about wilderness exploration, and so the entire point was random encounters. As D&D grew up, the random encounters stuck around and we still have them almost 50 years later.
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(Not to be overly critical, but it sounds like D&D back in the day was kind of a mess...)
The general purpose of wandering monsters is to force the PCs to keep up a pace rather than having the five minute workday. They don't work very well for that, because they just went back and introduced spells (rope trick, tiny hut) that let you ignore wandering monsters while resting.
Back in the day it was literally nothing but dungeons and monsters. It was all hack-and-slash by design. Nobody needed “adventure hooks” or “backstories.” All you needed was knowledge that a dungeon existed.
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Hi, I'll try to explain how it works for me :-)
Most random encounter tables, also have a "risk" chance, for instance there's 30% chance for "something" to happen. Roll D100, if it is 30 or less, roll on random encounter table. Back in the "old" days most RPG's where full of such random tables for different terrains, regions etc. I usually use some kind of simple version of this (like rolling a D20 against a"risk-factor", if I roll higher than that, something happens. I either roll randomly (if a table exists), or come up with something.
The thing about the players can't "blame" the DM, isn't about TPK. Often the random encounters are quite simple, and I often also play them in ways that allows the players to solve them without combat (or they can actually be something completely mundane, like a traveling salesman). But if the players are really "drained" after a combat, and decides to make camp in the forest, I often prefer to roll randomly to see if anything happens. That way, the players "knows" it's not entirely safe, but they also know that I've left it up to randomness if anything happens. It's their decision if they want to take the chance.
Ludo ergo sum!
Are you talking about Outdoor Survival? I loved that game, I even think I have a copy somewhere around here.
Yes, exactly that.
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I never have random encounters. My players can be doing something and I'll roll dice, look at them all. And go forward.
No encounter is random. They are all planned. If the party is in need of something to happen I just add it in there. If not then no encounter table is needed.
I populate my areas quite well and tend to leave some of it out as it's not needed.
Though I'm all for rolling dice for no reason just to mess with players.
It’s the same thing. As long as the players have the perception of it being random, then it works.
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