NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6375805" data-attributes="member: 2067">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.</blockquote>

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