D&D 5E Easy Encounters? Don't take them for granted

[pemerton]

It's not about impressing me as a player with your creative genius. It is however about convincing me that I'm having more fun playing D&D than I would be playing WOW.

Are you meaning to imply that there is no difference between an RPG in which world creation is driven via player-GM collaboration + play (eg Fate, Burning Wheel) and WoW?

If you are, I very strongly disagree, almost to the point of bafflement. There is no necessary connection between degree of consistent backstory with which the players can engage (via their PCs), and the sort of world creation you described in your post upthread. For instance, there is no general connection between giving an NPC a motivation and pre-planning or world-building. That sort of backstory can be authored during play as part of the process of adjudicating player action declarations.

Personally I would never have assassins on a random encounter table, or at least not ones aimed at the PCs.

Fair enough. Gary Gygax does, though, and random encounter tables are generally recommended as a standard tool by advocates of "living, breathing worlds".

 

[Andor]

Are you meaning to imply that there is no difference between an RPG in which world creation is driven via player-GM collaboration + play (eg Fate, Burning Wheel) and WoW?

No, I'm not sure how I could have conveyed that impression. In fact the successfull collaboration between the GM and the players is key. Or rather the characters. The world advances on it's own agenda, as influenced by the PCs actions. If your preplanned story arc had the Duke plotting to take over a harbour town and the PC actions cause him to change course even though it disrupts the intended plot, that's fantastic. If you stick to the original plot even though it no longer makes sense then....

My ideal campaign world would be a sandbox where several key figures have plans and agendas and they continue on with them in the absence of the PCs. When the PCs are on screen they should have the agency to change things. Whether that be by disrupting plans, helping them or just killing the plotter is up to the PCs. They can also ignore everything around them and drink themselves into an early grave if they really want to, although at that point you probably do want to ask the player why he's playing D&D.

I'm not saying there are no meta-game concerns or decisions involved. I'm sayng that they should never visibly intrude into the game. In WOW I can watch the mobs respawn and the game reset, erasing all of my agency as a player. That was the point of the comparison. I don't want the world to ignore my actions. Conversely I don't want to feel as if the entire world just sits there on hold waiting for my special snowflake of a character to accomplish everything. NPCs shouldn't just sit there with blinking exclamation points over thier heads. If I ignore the guy who wanted me to clean a band of orcs out of a mine for two weeks something should have happened in the mean time. Antoher group killed the Orcs, or they moved on, or forted up and now have three times as many in a defensible position, or stuck a deal with the guy and now work as guards and miners for a cut of the profits. Or they killed him when he tried to negotiate and now are shipping ore to the Orc warlord. PCs actions should have consequences even if the action was ignoring a plot hook to chase a barmaid.

Likewise in the context of this discussion, which is about pacing and 'easy encounters' if my party is seeking to bring down an Orc warlord who has gathered a great warband of goblinoids then I should bloody well have to deal with scouts, patrols and guards. Whether that dealing involves combat or invisible flight is up to us as PCs. On the other hand, if the entire army forms a corridor to let us saunter up to the final encounter which is exactly balanced to be the level appropriate XP total for our party as a "Hard" encounter...

Fair enough. Gary Gygax does, though, and random encounter tables are generally recommended as a standard tool by advocates of "living, breathing worlds".

Random tables are useful tools to add verisimilitude when used properly. Sometimes plans are wrecked or altered by pure chance. An invasion fleet sunk by a freak storm for example.

A random encounter table that serves to illustrate the local setting is fine. Random weather is fine. Bandits trying to rob the PCs randomly is ok, that's what bandits do. Having someone try to kill the PCs specifically just because a table said so? If the assasins are competant that should be an unprovoked and campaign ending TPK. You could fairly accuse me of metagaming by designing an encounter table that will not randomly TPK the party, and that's fair enough. It is metagaming to never have an Ancient Red Dragon just swoop down and destroy a first level party. But it's not intrusive metagaming unless the party has sent him a long and insulting message and then sauntered down the road dressing in barbeque sauce and bacon. I'd probably have them eaten then, but it wouldn't be at random.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Personally I would never have assassins on a random encounter table, or at least not ones aimed at the PCs.

Fair enough. Gary Gygax does, though, and random encounter tables are generally recommended as a standard tool by advocates of "living, breathing worlds".

I think the idea isn't that you don't use random encounter tables but rather that the random encounter table doesn't exceed the bounds of its purpose. You can have a random encounter with an assassin (maybe rolled on a "folks you find skulking about a thieves' guild" table), but an assassin who deliberately targets the party isn't a random encounter because by definition, it's not random. It's intentional. That assassin has a specific agenda. Meanwhile, "assassin wants to kill the party. Place an Assassin on every random encounter roll as Uncommon." might be a good result on for a roll on a "how do the bad guys react to the heroes' success?" table.

And both contribute to the sense of a "living, breathing world" because the table you roll on is independent of your control, so it is not you deciding that this is what happens (though of course on some level it is), it is the world telling you what happens, metaphorically. It contributes to the sense of the setting as independent of any one creator, and instead as an semi-autonomous entity with its own agenda in the game.

 

[practicalm]

You might have bandits or orcs, but the only way I could imagine a random assassins table was if the PCs had made so many enemies that it wasn't worth tracking who wanted them dead this week.

My players are working on this. Right now they have a Black Dragon, a Warlock Mindflayer, an insane Druid and a Dwarven Vampire all wanting them dead along with a few minor henchmen of former villains. Mostly due to the villains having good exit plans and the party not quite getting the killing shot in. It's fun tying in past villains to their latest shenanigans or even just the rumor of a past villain being active nearby scares them a bit.

 

[TarionzCousin]

My players are working on this. Right now they have a Black Dragon, a Warlock Mindflayer, an insane Druid and a Dwarven Vampire all wanting them dead along with a few minor henchmen of former villains. Mostly due to the villains having good exit plans and the party not quite getting the killing shot in. It's fun tying in past villains to their latest shenanigans or even just the rumor of a past villain being active nearby scares them a bit.

Where can we place bets on which BBEG offs them first?

 

[pemerton]

an assassin who deliberately targets the party isn't a random encounter because by definition, it's not random. It's intentional. That assassin has a specific agenda.

I'm puzzled. I've always assumed that the "random" in "random encounter table" is a metagame descriptor, not an ingame one. Ingame, all those NPCs generated by random encounter tables have an agenda, and are not just wandering the gameworld acting in a random fashion.

For instance, in a traditional dungeon, if I roll an "orc" random encounter, and the PCs have just finished beating up on some orcs, then I (as GM) would present the randomly encountered orcs as relating in some way (tribal allies or tribal enemies, depending on what seems like fun) to those earlier orcs.
[MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] had some interesting posts on this issue a month or two ago, in a thread about GMing OSR-style.

Random tables are useful tools to add verisimilitude when used properly. Sometimes plans are wrecked or altered by pure chance. An invasion fleet sunk by a freak storm for example.

A random encounter table that serves to illustrate the local setting is fine. Random weather is fine. Bandits trying to rob the PCs randomly is ok, that's what bandits do. Having someone try to kill the PCs specifically just because a table said so? If the assasins are competant that should be an unprovoked and campaign ending TPK.

I don't use random encounter tables in my current 4e game, because I prefer a Burning Wheel-style approach to my game: every encounter is conceived of by me, in relation to the unfolding events of the game, and deliberately placed.

But in the past, when I have used random encounter tables, they've included everything from assassins to demons to zebras.

I don't see why assassins are any more problematic as encounters - random or otherwise - than demons or zebras. If they will lead to a game-ending TPK that's an issue of encounter balancing or action-resolution mechanics, not the basic encounter concept. When Wolvering is attacked by ninjas, for instance, it isn't a TPK; and Conan survives surprise attacks too.

if my party is seeking to bring down an Orc warlord who has gathered a great warband of goblinoids then I should bloody well have to deal with scouts, patrols and guards. Whether that dealing involves combat or invisible flight is up to us as PCs. On the other hand, if the entire army forms a corridor to let us saunter up to the final encounter which is exactly balanced to be the level appropriate XP total for our party as a "Hard" encounter...

There are such a multitude of ways that this scenario could arise and unfold that I am not confident to say anything of a general nature. For instance, in LotR (in both film and book, though the film exaggerates it more), Aragorn comes up with a plan to distract the bulk of the army so that Sam and Frodo can sneakt through a corridor to the final encounter.

There are also a multitude of ways the "scouts, patrols and guards" aspect could be handled - from a whole swag of individual "easy" encounters, to being rolled up into a single Stealth or Survival check.

No, I'm not sure how I could have conveyed that impression. In fact the successfull collaboration between the GM and the players is key. Or rather the characters. The world advances on it's own agenda, as influenced by the PCs actions. If your preplanned story arc had the Duke plotting to take over a harbour town and the PC actions cause him to change course even though it disrupts the intended plot, that's fantastic. If you stick to the original plot even though it no longer makes sense then....

A Fate-style or BW-style game doesn't have a pre-planned story arc, nor a world advancing on its own agenda, so I'm still not sure how it fits into your conception of TTRPG vs WoW.

That sort of game has PCs built with rich story hooks for the GM to be dragged along by; and the plot is not pre-planned but emergent from choices made by the GM about encounters that will speak to those player-authored hooks. Much of the gameworld backstory is generated at the same time as the game unfolds, in order to maintain the pressure on the players and as part of narrating consequences in the course of action resolution.

In this sort of game, it would make perfect sense to have the orc army form a "corridor" through which the PCs can pass to the final confrontation. If the ingame explanation for this is not obvious (eg "Lord Throg has been expecting you!"), then discovering it can become part of the game play. (A variant on this second option is that, because of a session break, or something else becoming more interesting, everyone just forgets about the mystery of the orcish corridor, and an explanation never gets authored. My 4e game has plenty of these dangling, unresolved plot threads. The Burning Wheel Adveture Burner includes advice on how to catalogue them and then use them to kick-start new scenarios and campaigns.)

It is metagaming to never have an Ancient Red Dragon just swoop down and destroy a first level party. But it's not intrusive metagaming

This particular tangent was started by a remark that a certain approach to encounter design and world-building was GM metagaming, and that this was objectionable.

If, now, we are ony talking about "intrusive" metagaming vs "unobtrusive" metagaming, does that mean the objection has evaporated? Because what is intrusive is surely in the eye of the beholder, and up to each individual GM to manage as suits his/her table.

 

[Dausuul]

Some things just aren't worth fighting. Like kobolds.

I have a pet theory that the whole reason for enabling move-attack-move in 5E was to provide rules support for Tucker's Kobolds.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm puzzled. I've always assumed that the "random" in "random encounter table" is a metagame descriptor, not an ingame one. Ingame, all those NPCs generated by random encounter tables have an agenda, and are not just wandering the gameworld acting in a random fashion.

For instance, in a traditional dungeon, if I roll an "orc" random encounter, and the PCs have just finished beating up on some orcs, then I (as GM) would present the randomly encountered orcs as relating in some way (tribal allies or tribal enemies, depending on what seems like fun) to those earlier orcs.

The part about the random encounter is that it is by definition unintentional. That's the purpose the mechanic serves: you roll it when you want to create an encounter without much context. It was called a "wandering monster table" for a reason back in the day! This contrasts to, say, a dungeon room, where the encounter is deliberate and serves a specific purpose ("bandersnatches live in this room, and they guard the vorpal sword").

A room full of orcs is a planned encounter. A random orc meanwhile isn't planned -- it's not seeking the party, the party isn't seeking it. Part of what a random encounter does is allow interaction to spring organically from the situation: if you just finished beating up on some orcs, does this orc know about it? Is it happy you beat up its rivals or angry that you killed its friends? Is it willing to smuggle you deeper into the lair in exchange for gold? These are all interesting gameplay questionst that arise from the encounter being unintentional on both sides.

Meanwhile, an orc in the next room who heard the fight and came to investigate isn't a random encounter, because it doesn't emerge unplanned from the environment, it comes in response to a specific stimulus, as planned as "if someone opens the doors, the orc attacks."

To maybe put it in some more meta-terms, a random encounter has no agenda determined for it until it enters play (where the agenda is determined then by its immediate context). A monster with an agenda before it enters play is not a random encounter, it is a planned encounter.

"I meet an assassin" is a random encounter and it triggers questions (Who is this assassin? Why are they here? What are they doing?). "The assassin comes to kill the PC's" is, without other context, not a random encounter, it is a planned encounter (the Assassin tries to strike at night when the party is asleep, and knows all about the habit of the wizard to take first watch), because it has an agenda before it enters play, there is a conflict it deliberately invokes.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Unless the DM decides that the Assassin showing up randomly means that somewhere in the world was someone who decided a PC needed assassinating. And so now, it develops that the stranger that Hobart the Muddy (Ftr 7) beat in that card game six months ago was actually Lord Fowl-Eye, in disguise. And he obviously hired this half-orc assassin that just showed up to kill Hobart out of petty revenge.

 

[Iosue]

@Iosue had some interesting posts on this issue a month or two ago, in a thread about GMing OSR-style.

Uh-oh! Name check!

I would totally include Assassins in a random encounter table. And I would have absolutely no idea what they were doing there until I rolled them up and had to decide what they were doing there. They might be targeting the party, or maybe someone else, or whatever. I dunno. It's going to depend on the world and game state. Do the PCs have an enemy that might hire an assassin? Then the assassin might be coming after them, or one of the party. If the PCs have no such enemies, maybe the assassins is searching for someone else. Heck, it might simply be an NPC with the assassin sub-class, without any specific job at the moment.

The random encounter table expands the world. It's my job as DM to interpret the results. By no means am I bound to treat the random encounter as actually happening in the game only as random chance.