Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7022400" data-attributes="member: 6796661">I do a mix of both. I run a home brew campaign in which I write many of my adventures, but also re-purpose published material. I have a number of random tables that I've created for different areas or specific adventures that are basically lists of skeletal event outlines. They require a lot of improvisation, but since I made the world, it isn't too hard to come up with situations and characters that fit the locations. Where I do have issues improvising is names. With some areas where the cultures are loosly based off of real cultures I can't usually come up with something on the fly, but I based the Dwarven and Elvan languages on Tolkien's...so I also need random tables for names of common cultures. Especially Dwarven names which I've made complicated as hell (based on the Dwarrow Scholar's excellent blog posts and You Tube material). But for specific adventures or locations, I enjoy taking the time to craft random encounter and rumor tables. It is fun to prep and adds a lot of flavor to the game. For those tables where I put in a lot of time an detail, I try to make them re-usuable. One thing I like to do is if I have a particularly fun NPC I created, I'll have him appear in multiple random tables across adventures and locations. That way it is more likely that the party encounters him and if they encounter him multiple times, that's fun as well. I've tried using tools like Inspiration Pad for random encounters, but it ended up being just another thing to deal with during the game. Now I just put them in Realm Works as static tables, but with the benefit that things are cross linked. If the random encounter is bandits ambusing the party along the highway, I click on the link for bandits which brings me to the entry on bandits and I can push the bandit info into HeroLabs. YouTuber "DePlunk" has some videos on how he does random encounters in Realm Works an how he integrates Hero Labs content, if you are interested.  The reason why I like using RW and HL with random encounters is that I prevents having to have all the possible outcomes printed out and leafing through them, or leafing back and forth through one or more bestiaries to run the encounter.</blockquote>

Verification