Surprising the GM, or, Random Content in Dungeons

[GMMichael]

GM: Ravenshiv, when you peek behind the door, the first thing you notice about the next dungeon room is the smell. It's stale, as if the roasty air from the wood-fires and torches of the previous rooms hasn't reached here. (Rolls on monster table) you get the feeling that no one uses this room.

Ravenshiv: what is it, a broom closet? Empty pantry? Wait, I know. Yoga studio. These orcs look a little out of shape. How big is it?

GM: (Rolls on rooms table) it's too dark to see. Yanniweh's torch is twenty-five meters behind you, and around a corner.

Yanni: And I didn't want you to go alone in the first place.

Ravenshiv: I didn't become a great treasure hunter by needing backup everywhere I went. Anyway, no lock, no creatures, no fire. No reason to trap this room. I'm going in.

GM: (Rolls on traps table) nope. No reason at all. Definitely no reason for a bear trap to be lying on the ground in front of your foot. Roll physical to react!

Ravenshiv: Oh, this could hurt. I'll use Detect to hopefully add some hair-sensitivity to my poor, soft-leather-wrapped foot. (Rolls) 13?

GM: Snap! You gain a Flaw: Bear Trap on Foot. (Rolls on peril table) uh oh. And the noise of the clamp on your foot, whether or not you decided to scream, must have awakened something in the room. Because you...(has to reconcile the appearance of a subordinate BBEG with the no-monster roll earlier) hear some metal scraping, and the sound of rock crumbling from a short distance ahead of you in the dark. Almost like a wall being torn down!

Lend me your experience! I want to put some random generators in a game module. I know they've been around for a while - I still have the loose-leaf random monster encounter tables from AD&D 2e. But have you seen or used a random dungeon generator? Would you run a dungeon crawl without knowing what's in the dungeon?

What if a GM's role changes from planning out encounters to challenge PCs, to rationalizing unknown elements in a dungeon and attempting to keep the party alive in a plausible way?

Let's hear your good, bad, and ugly stories about random generators and GM surprises!

 

[atanakar]

I do it once in a while. You should look at solitary RPG products. They have great systems to generate random encounters in the wilderness, dungeons and cities.

The most famous is the GM Emulator.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

I also like: The Solo Adventurers Toolbox (5e). But usable with any D&D edition.

The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox - Want to travel in a world where the fall of the dice can make things appear randomly? Get completely lost in this book w

www.dmsguild.com

You can use both these products to design interesting random encounters for your regular games.

 

[atanakar]

And with Tables of Doom you can create a completely random adventure: D&D Solo Adventure: Tables Of Doom - 5E Solo Adventuring - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

 

[atanakar]

Here is an exemple of solo play that could have been a regular multi-player game. I explain the system I used to generate the semi-random adventure :

Solo Dungeon Crawl : Rescuing the Mayor

Using FANTASY AGE RPG by Green Ronin Three intrepid heroes have been sent to find and rescue the mayor of Daggenberg. According t...

marccsolottrp.blogspot.com

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I think it's best to have some planned and some random elements. Too much of one or the other and it starts to feel like the PCs are just along for the ride. I routinely include sections in my adventures that I have no idea what's going to happen or how the PCs are going to solve it. And when I'm in a pinch for ideas, I will absolutely grab a book with some random tables and use it in the middle of a session.

One of my favorite DMing stories from the old days was when 2e was still in the progress of coming out. We had the 2e PHB, but the rest was still 1e. I decided to run a completely random dungeon crawl with the 1e DMG's appendix A (I think). It ended with a memorable encounter with a lich that ended up being a recurring foe for the campaign.

The experience made me feel in a lot of ways like I was a player alongside them. I did not know what was coming next, and only had scant seconds from dice roll to implementation to come up with something.

All that being said, I think the main problem with Appendix A is that, depending on the dice rolls, you could end up with a whole lot of "nothing happens." Or worse "Ah, yeah, sorry, the dungeon is just a single straight corridor going on forever." What I want from random generation these days is something that sparks ideas, like The Dungeon Alphabet.

 

[Lidgar]

Shameless plug:

Random Dungeon Encounters

Random Encounters: Dungeon Levels 1-3 - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Random Encounters: Dungeon Levels 1-3 - This series of supplements provides Dungeon Masters random encounter tables for a number of environments. Random Encount

www.dmsguild.com

 

[uzirath]

What if a GM's role changes from planning out encounters to challenge PCs, to rationalizing unknown elements in a dungeon and attempting to keep the party alive in a plausible way?

I'm intrigued by this idea. I wonder if, at this point, it wouldn't be more interesting to share the GM's role altogether. As I read your description (and the quoted passage from another thread), I thought it sounded like more fun as a player than as a GM. So maybe the GM role rotates around the table by encounter or people can just jump in if they experience the creative spark. This might not work for everyone (I know plenty of people who have zero interest in GMing), but I could see it making for a really fun and unpredictable game.

With that said, one of my favorite online collections of random generators (of many types) is donjon and a derivative project intended for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Random Dungeon Generator. While there aren't tools here to generate a dungeon one room at a time, there are some features that could be used in tandem with such a system.

 

[GMMichael]

The experience made me feel in a lot of ways like I was a player alongside them. I did not know what was coming next, and only had scant seconds from dice roll to implementation to come up with something.

All that being said, I think the main problem with Appendix A is that, depending on the dice rolls, you could end up with a whole lot of "nothing happens." Or worse "Ah, yeah, sorry, the dungeon is just a single straight corridor going on forever."

Good to hear - the chance to feel like a player might be a way to entice people to master games. I enjoy standard GMing, but an added, player-perspective element of "what could be next?" sounds like a fun addition.

Too much "nothing happens" is bad, but some "nothing happens" is just enough to be scary. And I have to say, the corridor-that-goes-on-forever sounds pretty cool, in a weird '80s movie sort of way.

I'm intrigued by this idea. I wonder if, at this point, it wouldn't be more interesting to share the GM's role altogether. As I read your description (and the quoted passage from another thread), I thought it sounded like more fun as a player than as a GM. . .

With that said, one of my favorite online collections of random generators (of many types) is donjon and a derivative project intended for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Random Dungeon Generator.

Passing the GM conch is a bit too much for me. Once you do that, you need to have rock-solid agreement amongst players that everyone has the same goal (and hopefully the same theme), or you need rock-solid rules that each new "GM" has to follow. My approach to random dungeons is more of a time-saving tool for GMs ("oops, forgot I had to make a map for tonight!") than a style of play. But yeah, as I mentioned above, it might help the GM feel more like a PC.

I've been to the donjon. Seen its depths. No one comes back the same from that.

 

[Reynard]

Random encounters are the perfect sure for the GM ruts. We all do it, leaning on the same tropes and cliches because they are comfortable for us. We choose the same monsters and villains and themes and repeat the same descriptions. Adding random generators to the mix not only allows us to be surprised along with the players, it forces us out of our comfort zones and to be creative on the fly. I think ALL adventures -- no matter how much of a railroad adventure path -- need random elements thrown in and fairly regular intervals.

Note that those elements don't have to be, and in fact shouldn't be, just lists of monsters to fight.They should include descriptions of places and things and trappings. They should include personality quirks of NPCs and eccentricities of monsters. They should include events, both mundane and magical. They should happen in the dungeon,on the trail, in the wild and in the town.

 

[LordEntrails]

I created my own dungeon room description generator. Originally designed for FG, I created a XLSX version that allow you to generate a room description with click.

Dungeon Room Descriptions (PDF/XLSX) - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Dungeon Room Descriptions (PDF/XLSX) - Need a Room descripotion? Need a Door? Need dozens and dozens of them? Then this product has you covered. This contains

www.dmsguild.com

I'm not a fan of random generators, and even less of random encounters when used "as is". BUT, I think generators are great for spurring creativity and keeping things from going stale. I created this one because I am working on an old school version of Undermountain. Fully detailing each and every location, thousands of rooms. I quickly found myself reverting to a few different generic rooms, this keeps generator helps me keep things fresh. And allows me to tweak what the generator gives, or roll up two or three and then mix and match.