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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7410475" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>But you can't. Further, trying to do so isn't a very advanced goal. It's a red herring an inexperience GM will attempt when they start to fetishize realism as a solution to the problems that they are having at the table. I mean, seriously, this conversation is like being stuck in the late 80's. By the early to mid 90's people had actually done the things you and the blogger have intended to do and found them wanting. </p><p></p><p>Look, I love encounter tables and I use them a lot - but not in the way you are necessarily thinking. What you want to pack into an encounter table isn't population density or any crap like that, but fun. You want it to help you generate the fun. Brainstorming the encounter table is as important as having one, because the brainstorming itself stimulates the imagination and helps you bring the fun. </p><p></p><p>I mean, this is a huge complex topic, but I'll try to give some examples. In a recent campaign I had an encounter table that potentially generated hundreds of different encounters. However, just as in the experiment where you flip 100 coins and you get runs of 5 in a row, if you use the encounter table long enough you'll get spans of reoccurring encounters. At some point as the GM you have to overrule your dice for the good of the game even if the encounter table is not per se wrong, because randomness alone isn't always bringing the fun. If for example the dice generate an encounter with a band of juju zombie warriors for the 4th time in the last 5 days, you'll probably be as a GM running out of ways to make that reoccurring encounter novel. More importantly, you will have by the third time the zombies encountered already reinforced the point, "There are a bunch of zombies around here." So a good GM will put their thumb on the dice and generate something else, precisely because you judgment may be biased and limited, but in this case it is better than the judgment of a dumb piece of plastic.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7410475, member: 4937"] But you can't. Further, trying to do so isn't a very advanced goal. It's a red herring an inexperience GM will attempt when they start to fetishize realism as a solution to the problems that they are having at the table. I mean, seriously, this conversation is like being stuck in the late 80's. By the early to mid 90's people had actually done the things you and the blogger have intended to do and found them wanting. Look, I love encounter tables and I use them a lot - but not in the way you are necessarily thinking. What you want to pack into an encounter table isn't population density or any crap like that, but fun. You want it to help you generate the fun. Brainstorming the encounter table is as important as having one, because the brainstorming itself stimulates the imagination and helps you bring the fun. I mean, this is a huge complex topic, but I'll try to give some examples. In a recent campaign I had an encounter table that potentially generated hundreds of different encounters. However, just as in the experiment where you flip 100 coins and you get runs of 5 in a row, if you use the encounter table long enough you'll get spans of reoccurring encounters. At some point as the GM you have to overrule your dice for the good of the game even if the encounter table is not per se wrong, because randomness alone isn't always bringing the fun. If for example the dice generate an encounter with a band of juju zombie warriors for the 4th time in the last 5 days, you'll probably be as a GM running out of ways to make that reoccurring encounter novel. More importantly, you will have by the third time the zombies encountered already reinforced the point, "There are a bunch of zombies around here." So a good GM will put their thumb on the dice and generate something else, precisely because you judgment may be biased and limited, but in this case it is better than the judgment of a dumb piece of plastic. [/QUOTE]
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