I mean, you're walking through the city streets -- I presume there's other people all over the place -- and then there's an "encounter" with a goodwife (or is she a harlot?).
"Gud day, me Lairds, wuld you like to buy somethin'? I've got some sweet goodies in me basket! Fresh and hot! Surely strong men such as yurselves have an appetite?"
Sure, I can sit and come up with an interested encounter with an otherwise mundane person. But having to come up with one every 3 turns, randomly by roll of the dice? Are we playing a game or is this an exercise for the DM's off-the-top-of-his-head creativity?
Often there is very little difference. I often find random tables extremely useful for jump starting the fun when my creativity is flagging.
Half an hour later there's an encounter with a laborer (what, do they cat call at the magic-user?).
Sure. Or the Sorceress (high charisma). Why not?
"Oh your ladyship, I got a wand for you."
"Let's make some magic together!"
"Come on over and I'll show you my fireballs"
Crawling on knees like a begger, "Dominate me, Madam. Dominate me."
"Show us your orbs!"
"Half an hour later there's an encounter with bandits (in the day they just look at you)."
And when these bandits ambush you outside of town, they'll look familiar.
Interesting encounters with normally mundane people (whom the PCs see all over the place, all day long in the city) shouldn't be controlled by random rolls many times a day.
And if you have a plan, they probably won't be. But random rolls give a setting some organicness and vibrance that I find is very hard to pull off otherwise.
Did/does anyone actually use this random chart for city encounters?
That one? No, it tends to generate too many high level NPC's. Something like that, sure.
What did/do you do when you roll an encounter for a pilgrim or a tradesman?
Any number of things, depending on my mood. The pilgrims could be from an exotic cult. The pilgrims could be celebrants of the same diety as the party cleric. The tradesman could be offering a good or service interesting to the party. The tradesman could be a lawyer serving some notice to the PC's (if they've recently made an enemy in the city). The tradesman could be part of a group of mummers from the same guild, celebrating the guilds holy day with a parade and he gives the PC's some small token (a copper coin, a string of beads). Maybe the tradesman is being harried by a creditors, who've hired toughs from the theives guild to harass him, and he stumbles into the PC's in his distracted state - is he a tradesman or a pick pocket? If the PC's follow this suspicious looking, fearful, distracted fellow, perhaps they become involved?
One of the things you are striving for here is making a world that is organic enough that whenever something happens, the PC's don't immediately interpret it as the DM out to get them. One thing that you can run into is if every event in your campaign is a major plot point and part of some vast conspiracy, that the players every suspicion is justifiable. I've ran into group where if the PC's were given a copper coin by a strange man on the street, they'd immediately throw it down and cast detect magic/evil on it - and possibly tackle the person on the assumption he was a member of an evil cult.
How did/do you make this random encounter stand out from every mundane person on the street, such that the PCs actually interact with them? And then do it again for the druid or gentleman encounter 30 minutes later.
It doesn't always have to necessitate a long interaction. It isn't always possible. And eventually you might generate so many thread ends that you don't feel the need for random encounters, because you've got too many plot points and loose threads to tie up as it is.
And there's something in this list that just cracks me up about some things in AD&D1: so much is random chance -- even the odds for a random chance are determined randomly. "A beggar has a slight chance (1% to 8%) of knowing information..." Can't just say "A beggar has a slight chance (5%) of knowing information..."? (Not to mention "knowing information" is pretty darn vague.)
The way I would interpret that is that some beggars are just drunks or are not really there mentally, and so rarely no anything helpful. And, some beggars have their ear to the street and really know things. If the beggar knows something, then there is a good chance he might know something in the future. The PC's can form a relationship with the helpful beggar who knows something useful 8% of the time, and over time when they want to 'gather information' you don't roll randomly, you RP them interacting with Giotto the Lame who is so frequently useful as well as other contacts that they've made in the city. These are NPC's we are spontaneously creating.
