How many "random encounters" is too much?

[Oryan77]

As a player, how often do you enjoy random encounters while traveling to your destination? You may think I'm asking about your real-life commute to your gaming location, but I'm actually referring to your PC adventuring in-game.

Regardless of how long the trip takes a PC, about how many random encounters are you comfortable with when going from point A to point B? If you prefer to answer this in number of gaming sessions spent doing only random encounters, that is also informative. I say that because maybe the amount of encounters are not important. Maybe it is the amount of sessions spent playing random encounters is what matters?

Please think of a "random encounter" as being something fun & meaningful. I don't typically roll randomly for an encounter and I prefer to plan these encounters out in a way that they will be entertaining/interesting events. I'm asking this question because I'm curious to know the breaking point of a player. When does he start to think, "Ok, enough of these, lets get to the main event."

 

[MatthewJHanson]

One.

There is some entertainment to be have from random fights, but I'm primarily in it for the story. One random encounter is to represent that the journey is long and fraught with danger. More than that I get impatient. What I really hate is a session full of nothing but random encounters. By the end of session I want to advanced the story in some way or another.

 

[Kingreaper]

This depends on what the significance of them is. I don't like filler-episodes where nothing relevant happens; but if they often tie into the main plot in some way then I'm happy to have up to 2 sessions of them.

 

[Morrus]

As a player, I shouldn't be cognisant of random encounters. If I know it's just a random encounter, I'm not interested in it.

 

[JamesonCourage]

As a player, how often do you enjoy random encounters while traveling to your destination?

As often as it "makes sense" for the setting. Which leads me to...

Regardless of how long the trip takes a PC, about how many random encounters are you comfortable with when going from point A to point B?

It entirely depends on how long the trip takes for my PC, so I can't adhere to this bit. If we're walking from a small village a few miles outside of a major city to the major city, I'm probably okay with less interference than if we're talking for a month to get from one location to another. It's basically just a verisimilitude issue at this point, though.

As far as "progressing the story" or whatever, that's what I consider playing the game. With your caveat of "fun and meaningful", I'm okay with random encounters with pretty much any amount of frequency, as long as it does not become too contrived or make the setting seem too incoherent. I don't mind changing goals for my character as he receives new information, so these encounters can definitely lead me to change my intended course of action. With that in mind, I see that as "progressing the story", and would have no problem interacting with the world as it unfolds around me.

Hope that helps. I can't really give a number. If the random encounters are just unrelated stuff that don't matter much to my character along the way, my answer would change, and I could probably conjure a number for you. But, as long as they're fun and meaningful, bring them on; I mean, that's why I play the game, after all. As always, play what you like

 

[Razjah]

As a player, I shouldn't be cognisant of random encounters. If I know it's just a random encounter, I'm not interested in it.

I feel the same way. In a dungeon environment I expect roving monsters and the like. In a city, I can expect and ambush from the smuggling ring the party is breaking up. But most of the time, it seems like a waste. I really dislike random encounters in 3.5/Pathfinder where the combat can take a really long time, 4 hours of gaming with 1.5 hours wasted on a 36 second in-game fight that doesn't add anything to the story.

 

[Bob the Destroyer]

I want a different number of random encounters depending on how often the we game. If I'm in a weekly game, I am more than happy to spend an entire session on random encounters when travelling between locations, but in a monthly game, I pretty much want every encounter to move the plot along in some significant way.

 

[Morrus]

I feel the same way. In a dungeon environment I expect roving monsters and the like. In a city, I can expect and ambush from the smuggling ring the party is breaking up. But most of the time, it seems like a waste. I really dislike random encounters in 3.5/Pathfinder where the combat can take a really long time, 4 hours of gaming with 1.5 hours wasted on a 36 second in-game fight that doesn't add anything to the story.

No, you misunderstand me. I didn't say there shouldn't be random encounters; just that in a well run game I won't realise that's what they are.

 

[Razjah]

No, you misunderstand me. I didn't say there shouldn't be random encounters; just that in a well run game I won't realise that's what they are.

No, I understand. I was making two points and didn't space them appropriately. The dungeon and city were examples of random encounters that are hidden. The wasted time is when a combat feels like a combat simply to have a fight scene. No story elements are gained, the plot doesn't move forward, time is simply spent waiting for a turn to come around. This is when a random encounter feels like a random encounter.

Does that clarify things?

 

[Gilladian]

I think "as many as appropriate" is the closest answer anyone can give.

Examples: in my 3 hour per week game, where the megadungeon is 4 miles from town and the "real action" is the dungeon itself, I rarely have random encounters "to and from"... because it just drags the story down. Now, if the PCs are coming home injured and vulnerable, and having them get attacked on the way home would make an exciting coda to a great adventure, it may well happen. But not just "oh, we're headed to the dungeon, what attacks us on the way?"

Now, a slight variant of this campaign, in which we play 5-7 hour long sessions, instead of 3 hours, and where there's an added plot of "monstrous humanoids are invading the countryside, trying to seize the dungeon", would make "random" humanoid ambushes on the way to the dungeon a necessary plot point. And it would also mean I'd be thinking a lot more about why and how the humanoids were acting that way. And soon, the encounters wouldn't be random, they'd have a source, a motivation, and I'd expect the story to eventually involve a PC reaction to them as an ongoing threat.

If a group of PCs in either campaign were suddenly to decide to travel long distances, to say visit a major city 3 days travel away, there'd be a couple or so "random" encounters on the way, designed to demonstrate the shift from semi-civilized borderlands to settled countryside to "urban danger zones".

But they would have at the VERY least flavorful meaning, if not plot points. I don't do totally random, anymore. And I wouldn't plan on having them take up more than 1/3 of the time spent on the excursion. If it was going to take 3 sessions to get to the city and back again, no more than 1 session would be "spent" on such encounters - probably broken up over "coming" and "going", if that makes sense.