D&D General Possible or possibly terrible? wildly different approach to random encounters

[J-H]

I think this could work, or it could flop. The devil's going to be in the details and how you handle it with the players. I think it's worth discussing with them and giving it a try.

Having some mechanical benefits helps, also. "You remember picking up a strange spear wielded by the thri-keen leader. It's probably still in your bag of holding where you left it."

 

[MarkB]

The main issue I'd have with this as a player is that, in filling in their memories for them, you are essentially telling them the story of what their PCs did, with them only able to provide the broadest strokes of their approach. Aside from removing a lot of agency, it eliminates any chance of being able to be creative in coming up with solutions to specific problems.

I'd instead approach this as being a spiritual journey as much as a physical one. Don't do the time-jump, play out crossing the desert, but minimise encounters with hostile creatures in favour of supernatural challenges to the mind, spirit and perseverance, with the possibility of losing something of oneself in the process.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

The biggest question is what is the ultimate goal. If you're looking for a way to hand wave away random encounters, there's better options. If you want to have a mystical desert that drains away memories, I'd have it require the occasional save to take away actual memories the characters have. In such a place almost nothing could live long, or else be drained of all memories, thus you could ignore random encounters.

I second this. If you want to do away with random encounters, then just eliminate them. I've never heard of anyone using random encounters in 5e DnD although you tagged the thread DnD General so presumably you're playing an older version where they are common. If you eliminate random encounters and only provide pre-planned encounters that fit the story you're trying to build, it will improve your game greatly (in my opinion)

If you want cool narrative flavor with the desert draining peoples' memories, then do this but unrelated to encounters. I had a DM once who made an island where we had to make saving throws every X hours and failing would make you lose a childhood memory - the consequences were completely unrelated to gameplay but oh my god we hated that island and were scared to go there unless we absolutely had to.

 

[Piperken]

One thought: would the table mind being collaborative and narrate what happened during their journey through this mythic desert?

That is, use whatever tables you have in mind for the bones; once the players can access their recollections, have them craft the story of what happened at the table.

 

[Shiroiken]

I second this. If you want to do away with random encounters, then just eliminate them. I've never heard of anyone using random encounters in 5e DnD although you tagged the thread DnD General so presumably you're playing an older version where they are common. If you eliminate random encounters and only provide pre-planned encounters that fit the story you're trying to build, it will improve your game greatly (in my opinion)

It really depends on the type of game. I use random encounters all the time in 5E. It has a twofold purpose: it encourages the players to not waste time and it drains resources from the party. Of course, standard 5E doesn't do this second part particularly well, since the party can often long rest between these encounters. The other downside is that it can create a slog of unnecessary combats.

I use a system with gritty realism that helps speed things up tremendously, while still fulfilling the twofold purpose. The party is assigned a number of 2d6 damage dice, but can spend daily resources to reduce them (2d6 per spell level is the baseline, with other abilities as DM judgement). After choosing to spend resources, the party then divides up the damage dice, and each player rolls their own damage. I'll need to reassign the numbers with 5E revised, since healing got a lot stronger, so I might move to 3d6s.

 

[Aethmud]

If you're mainly focused on outcome rather than a series of tactical or roleplaying decisions, best resolution should be either (1) a single roll on a table of random events, or (2) a skill check that leads to branching outcomes.

I'm in the middle of listening to Dune on audiobook, and I wonder whether that setting has any relation to the mystical desert environment & timey-wimey shenanigans, but maybe a psychedelic spirit quest or a past/present/future-timespace revelation nexus is an appropriate frame for what you have in mind, with random events as narrative paragraphs, rather than encounters in the traditional sense?