Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Von Ether" data-source="post: 9572545" data-attributes="member: 15582">As a continuing note, I went to ignoring random monster charts for decades of D&D, to new found respect for them in OSR, to loving them in DB:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In D&D, they were just entries of what/how many wandering monsters with no clues to Mr. New GM (me) on how to use them beyond challenges to the party's resource (and famously a result of "vampire" in a dungeon was Ravenloft's origin story.) And retroactively, the answer of "But Morale rules!" doesn't impress me much.*</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">With the OSR explicitly stating these random charts can be short hand for the surrounding ecology or a theme you want to reinforce in the game, I got it. (While acknowledging TSR did a mediocre job with that concept.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">With DB, the smaller Journey tables offer adventure hooks and single encounters in the random entries, with at least one being a direct lead into the adventure in the area.</li> </ul>Even my players are on the edge of their seats to see what calamity comes their way next.*An excellent example is a DB entry where you meet two skeletons still walking a patrol long after their death. The extra information prompted me to present them differently and the encounter never became a combat. Oddly enough in AD&D, it was probably would have been a guaranteed hostile encounter as it would have been just "1d6 skeletons (who never fail morale checks.)"</blockquote>

Verification