Does Your Game Have Random Encounters?

[Retros_x]

IT is not map and key but closer to @SlyFlourish's secrets and clues but applied to encounters.

Isnt that almost like a random encounter, just you choosing from the table instead of rolling a dice?

I personally love creating random encounter tables for dungeons/areas that represent the factions, monster type, environment etc. You can do a lot of worldbuilding in random encounters and I am always a bit sad when people dismiss them, because they think of the random encounters of pokemon or Final Fantasy that are just fodder, grind and stretching time. Some of our game favorite moments stem from random encounters, new allies and nemesis enemies were born from them.

And in a dungeon they are necessary IMO to put a sort of indirect time pressure on the party.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Isnt that almost like a random encounter, just you choosing from the table instead of rolling a dice?

I tend to think so but may here appear to disagree.

I personally love creating random encounter tables for dungeons/areas that represent the factions, monster type, environment etc. You can do a lot of worldbuilding in random encounters and I am always a bit sad when people dismiss them, because they think of the random encounters of pokemon or Final Fantasy that are just fodder, grind and stretching time. Some of our game favorite moments stem from random encounters, new allies and nemesis enemies were born from them.

And in a dungeon they are necessary IMO to put a sort of indirect time pressure on the party.

 

[Retros_x]

I tend to think so but may here appear to disagree.

Can you elaborate? Because I have the feel your table and my table could look quite similar except I have numbers in front of them that represent dice rolls.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Can you elaborate? Because I have the feel your table and my table could look quite similar except I have numbers in front of them that represent dice rolls.

Apologies, I meant "Many here appear to disagree".

First off, I do not use it often because, in general I tend to take the party from their current location to the other location they want to go to, and each location is a traditional map and key situation.

If I want to make more of the a journey or exploration of an area, I usually ask for various checks, survival, perception, stealth and so on and depending on what failed or succeed pick the appropriate entry from my list. The list is often just an aid memoire as it will include stuff like a change in the weather, terrain or an interesting location that I can improvise off but since I am paying on a VTT any encounters are fully prepared and floating in the ether until I need it.

 

[dbm]

I voted ‘rarely’. When I am running it tends to be one of Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds ‘plot point campaigns’ which are a loose structure where there are typically ~8 plot-based adventures and maybe a dozen non-plot adventures all provided in outline. Typically these adventures may be in a sandbox location and the concept is that you as GM can mix in plot or non-plot adventure outlines depending on what the party is doing. This is kind of a ‘road map’ style rather than fully sandbox or linear. What I mean by ‘road map’ is that you want to get from A to Z and touch on points E, J, M and so on but there are many ways to get between those points more quickly or circuitously depending on player choices.

Additional to that, first party Pinnacle campaign books also include adventure generators for each of the worlds / campaigns. There are usually several of these, based on major regions with the campaign scope. They involve drawing three cards (Savage Worlds uses cards for a few systems, so GMs will have them on hand) to generate: objective, obstacle, and complication. Both the suit and value of the card are significant to the result.

This card-based system is great for quickly generating the focus for a random encounter or even a whole adventure, and this is what I was thinking of when I voted ‘rarely’. While the campaigns have enough pre-defined adventure skeletons to populate a full campaign (still needing the GM to put meat on the bones of them) these can be used to very quickly generate new content as required.

There are also pacing mechanisms, for example you pull cards based on an in-game timer when the party travel or rest in dangerous circumstances and when you pull a face card that indicates a random encounter, while the suit determines what kind of random encounter that should be (which leads to different tables, one for each).

So, I use this sparingly but it is great when I put it to use.