Wandering Monsters - yea or nay?

[Wik]

Well, in most D&D games, yeah, I'm all for wandering monsters. Hell, I've run entire campaigns based off random encounter tables - there's something great about rolling an out of the blue monster, and then trying to figure out (often based on the informed guesses of players) what the hell it's doing there.

However, in 4e? No. I'm against them, simply because wandering monsters add far too much time to the adventure. Why spend an hour dealing with what are basically goblins out for a jog? I'll really only use them if I'm pretty sure they won't end up in a fight and thus eat up a bunch of time.

 

[Stormrazor2000]

I mostly run Paizo APs which do have WM tables. I will generate random encounters ahead of time so I can toss out ones that make no sense. "What is a Tyrannosaurus doing here?". I can also put structure and a reason behind the encounters that make sense and can propel the story forward, even in minor ways, rather than being just background noise.

For example the party is off searching for a lost city and several other factions are also seeking it. I rolled a wandering monster - a swarm of nasty carnivorous insects. Instead of just having them descend from the sky, I wrote up the encounter that the party sees what looks like a blackened body in the bush. If they investigate it turns out that the dead body is covered with the swarm which now disturbed engulfs the hapless PC. The dead body turns out to be a member of an opposing faction which proves that the rival faction got a head start on them.

I think wandering monsters/random encounters can really flesh out a game if handled properly. Just rolling on tables and getting a bunch of completely unconnected and illogical critters to whack the party with sounds like it would get old fast.

My 2 pennies.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I learned about wandering monsters the hard way...

I DM'ed a group that systematically took down a dungeon and when they realized they there were no wandering monsters, left all the treasure in the rooms while they sent a runner to rent a wagon - they took everything but the walls....

To be fair, I was young, but the impact was pretty heavy - the next time they tried that, they left bloodied...and very, very poor.

Wondering monster's - Yes, yes a thousand times yes!

 

[The Shaman]

I'm intrigued by randomness because I'm always keeping an eye out for potential structure that can help me move things along when I don't have an immediately fantastic idea, or an immediately obvious way in which a situation will play out. Sometimes that structure is rolling a die and then making myself hold to some interpretation of what the die roll means. Sometimes it's drawing in structure from an external source: running a St. Patrick's Day-themed game, for instance, wherein I may have to figure out a way to make something leprechaunish relevant while concealing the source from the players. Or basing villains off tracks on a semi-randomly chosen album and never letting the players know.

Until I slipped a disc in my back just before Christmas, I rode my bike one to two hours pretty near every day; I'm slowly building back up to that, which is good for me both physically and mentally because that's my 'thinking about gaming' time.

I ride with my iPod on shuffle, so tomorrow morning I'm going to take the first six songs that come up on my playlist and turn those into encounters while I spin the cranks.

Call it the Verbal Kint method of GMing, I guess . . .

. . . find some structure in the world around you to act as a skeleton, let the logic of the game world add flesh and blood and skin, and there you go. The extra structure means you're often trying out new things, and adhering to it is good discipline.

Great point - couldn't agree more.

 

[S'mon]

Well, there usually needs to be *some* mechanism to prevent the adventure locale being completely static, if you don't want PCs extended-resting after every fight. Wandering monsters fit the bill. The best ones I think are pregenerated encounter groups, but the time of their appearance is randomly determined. This keeps both GM and players on edge and discourages timewasting.

 

[karlindel]

Depends a bit on how you define wandering monsters.

I voted nay, as wandering monsters to me generally means randomly encountered wandering monsters from a table. That is something that I stopped using early on in 3e. Encounters take time, and I prefer to stick to encounters that will advance the plot or lead to something more interesting than just another combat. If I were to use a random encounter table, it would have few, if any, monsters on it. If I want to showcase the perils of a certain area, I will put together an encounter to do that, which may include monsters that are wandering.

If by wandering monsters you mean that the monsters are not always found in the same location, then I would vote yes. Monsters generally have better things to do than sit in one place and wait to be killed by the PCs.

 

[Umbran]

Only if/when the party is in areas where one is likely to run into hazards.

If they are heading in to monster-infested wilderness, or a monster-infested cavern complex, sure, there'll be random encounters with monsters. Walk into the lands controlled by the Nameless Necromancer, and you're apt to find undead on patrol, and so on. But in a basically peaceful town or settled lands, the chances of having an interesting encounter are very low, so I usually only use planned encounters in such areas.

Even then, I'm not likely to use them, unless the game is intended to be a "kick in the door, kill things and take their stuff" sort of thing, and I'm running a very long session. Any encounter takes up time. Random ones take up time that could be used on more interesting set pieces.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I voted "yea," but it's not that cut and dried for me.

(1) I prefer to use "wandering monsters" to control the pace of the game, so I rarely let the dice tell me when or how to use them.

(2) That said, sometimes it's fun to absolutely let the dice tell me when and how to use them.

(3) I like wandering monsters to make sense, so I like mechanics whereby (e.g.), in a lair that contains 110 goblins, the 2d4 goblins that are encountered randomly are crossed off and don't appear elsewhere.

In general, wandering monsters, used well, increase verisimilitude, IMO.

 

[Dausuul]

Yea, with qualifications. I think wandering monsters are a valuable tool in the DM's toolkit; they can add atmosphere, increase tension, and provide a strategic challenge for a party.

That doesn't mean I think they should be used everywhere, in every adventure, at all times. Especially in 4E, where each fight is a Big Deal, a wandering monster encounter can feel like an arbitrary waste of time if it's used at the wrong time or handled poorly. The encounter needs to fit the situation and add an interesting element; there has to be more to it than "A gang of monsters wanders into the room. Fight!"

 

[the Jester]

I've been trying out an interesting wandering monster mechanism in my last couple of sessions.

Basically, the party is traveling through an area. I set the chance of random encounter (let's say 1 in 10 per day); if there's one encounter, there's a lesser chance of a second encounter that day (1 in 12).

If an encounter is indicated, I roll how many 'elements' it includes (typically 1d4+2). Then I draw from a deck of index cards I've set up for that area.

Each card indicates what it is (and references book & page number when appropriate), how many elements it counts for and whether to make 'further draws'.

So let's say I roll an encounter with 5 elements, and I draw a card that says "Merchant wagon". The card tells me this is one element, and to draw three more cards and keep any humans or halflings. I draw, get "human guards" and add it to the encounter. The human guards card says "1d4 human guards" and that they count for 1 element each. I roll 2 guards; so now we have 3 elements altogether.

My next card is "3d6 Goblins cutters"; it counts for 2 elements (regardless of how many I roll) and has a "Draw 2, keep goblins or wolves" but I don't get any. So my final encounter looks like this:

Merchant wagon
2 human guards
11 goblin cutters

And it's pretty clear what's happening- the pcs have stumbled upon a goblin attack with the harried guards fighting for their lives. So far it has worked out well; giving different monsters different numbers of elements lets me work in solo and elite monsters without ending up with 2 solo monsters in the same fight or something.