I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with using random encounters in my role-playing games. All the way back in my early AD&D days, random encounters seemed like just another intrinsic part of the gaming experience, like clerics turning undead or wizards casting fireballs. Later however, I found random encounters to be a little silly, as they were often inappropriate for an adventure. Of course, one could just pick something appropriate off the table in the old DMG - but then is the encounter truly random?
Now that OSR gaming has an influence on the RPG community, I know a lot of GMs, including myself, that can’t imagine running a session without random encounters popping up. Despite my few misgivings about them, random encounters seem to be a necessary part of any OSR style gaming experience.
Purple Duck Games have been releasing a series of supplements for Pathfinder, focusing on creating massively huge and varied random encounter tables for almost any campaign setting. Their most recent release, RANDOM ENCOUNTERS REMASTERED: World’s Edge and Beyond, offers up huge tables for six strange and outré locales, with all manner of encounter possibilities for Pathfinder campaigns!
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS REMASTERED: World’s Edge and Beyond
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS REMASTERED: World’s Edge & Beyond is a supplemental Game Master product for use with Pathfinder RPG under the Open Game License. RER:WEaB contains random encounter tables for six unusual terrain types, which might be encountered in a Pathfinder campaign. The random tables include hundreds of monster, NPC, and hazardous encounters, ranging from CR 1/2 to CR 22. In addition, there are nearly a dozen dispositions and more than thirty terrain features, which can be used to change the nature of the encounters in new and unique ways.
Production Quality
The production quality of RER:WEaB is fair, with a basic two-column design layout, and a no-frills presentation of the contents. While I enjoyed the writing quality and the author’s creative talents, the unrelieved “wall of text” layout design made it tiresome to read through the material. And when the supplement got to the tables, they were so large that they spanned three to four pages. While this in itself is not a problem, the lack of section headers/footers made one wonder which table they are consulting.
The PDF of RER:WEaB had both a table of contents as well as bookmarks, but the latter did not work at all, at least in my copy. Luckily, the relatively short page length made perusing the supplement not too difficult.
The cover art was plain and uninspiring, looking more like a cover from a high-schoolers book report than anything else. The interior art consisted of some decently rendered black-and-white drawings, but there were only six of them in the entire book. This made the artwork in RER:WEaB seem more like an afterthought or filler than a true act of illustration for the supplement.
Where the Random Things Are
Random Encounters Remastered: World’s Edge and Beyond is roughly divided into two sections: the first one discusses random encounter design and other considerations, while the second section has massive random tables for encounters CR 1/2 to CR 22. The tables are divided into six different locale types: Abyssal Rifts, Beshadowed Backwoods, Elemental Oases, Historic Battlefields, Misty Morasses, and Summer Otherworlds. As one might surmise from the supplement’s title, all but one of these locales are very unusual lands, although not unknown to fantasy RPGs, where some non-mundane realm is infringing on the campaign setting. Whether it is the Abyss, the plane of Shadow, the elemental planes, or some realm of Faerie, these places have been altered a bit and are now home to some strange and dangerous creatures. In the case of the Historic Battlefield, these tables create random encounters that heroes might meet if they were crossing a no-man’s land during wartime, wherever there is a large scale conflict.
RER:WEaB opens with some thoughtful advice on How to Use this Book, in which the author looks at how random encounters can be used to further a campaign plot, as well as some considerations that need to be considered when using random encounters. Then the author introduces some factors that can make an encounter more memorable and unique, even if it is just random.
Dispositions are eleven different attitudes and purposes which affect how the NPCs and monsters encountered will act when faced with a heroic band of adventurers. These dispositions can range in temperament from a typical Guardian pose, to being Disguised for some reason or other, or even Scheming up some plan or plot when they are surprised by the heroes. Each disposition offers a new twist for the encounter, rather than the expected kill-or-be-killed scenario, and it offers GMs some innovative ways to make a unique experience. And some dispositions actually raise or lower the CR of the encounter, so their use needs to be carefully considered before initiative is rolled.
Under Terrain Features, the author lists off thirty-one different terrain types that might appear in an encounter. These can be mundane terrain types such as fog or rubble, or more bizarre types of terrain such as a planar vortex or quicksand. Each terrain type is fully discussed, including minor rules which might be imposed during the encounter, and how the terrain might change the CR level.
Finally, the bulk of RER:WEaB is taken up with six massive tables with all kinds of random encounters in them, and of every CR. The listings on the random tables are all monsters (and templates) found in the d20/PSRD, and are generally appropriate for the type of locale. There are around 3 to 7 encounters listed per CR, and some CRs have even more listings than that, so repetition is not likely to be an issue. Not all tables go up to CR 22, but all of them top out at CR 18 or higher.
Each table also includes the frequency percentage that an encounter will occur, and suggested roll ranges for the minimum and maximum levels. The encounter tables use d% dice, and a range of CR can be used at any point on the chart. For instance, using the Misty Morass chart, if I wanted to roll a minimum of CR 4 for an encounter, I’d be adding 120 to my d% roll, giving me a CR 4 giant dragonfly to face my heroes on a 01, or a very nasty CR 8 grey render if I rolled a 90. Obviously, one does not have to use the tables randomly, but can pick and choose among the wide range of encounters of an appropriate CR.
The author also includes with each encounter table a listing of possible dispositions that the opponents might have and a list of possible terrain features. Both of these are on random tables, so an interesting and unique encounter can be created with as few as three dice rolls!
All in all, a very handy set of charts to have on hand when GM-ing a gaming session – particularly when the players take their heroes off the rails and into unplanned areas! I should also note that Purple Duck Games has previously released other locales such as cities, mountains, and so on, in other supplements.
Overall Score: 3.7 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
Despite some disappointing production flaws, there is some decent content to be found in Random Encounters Remastered: World’s Edge and Beyond. The writing is quite good, and the author has created some interesting encounters in those random tables. And the opening section discussing handling a random encounter, and how to spiff it up by using the disposition factor and appropriate terrain features, is really some very good advice for Pathfinder GMs of all skill levels.
While the presentation style and lack of art detracts from the overall aesthetics of RER:WEaB, the price point is a steal when one considers all the contents in the PDF. It’s well worth a look or two for any Pathfinder GM who wants to enjoy using random encounters in their campaign. With a book like this, it’s nigh onto impossible to have the same encounter ever in a campaign – or possibly even in multiple campaigns!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary copy of the products from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
Now that OSR gaming has an influence on the RPG community, I know a lot of GMs, including myself, that can’t imagine running a session without random encounters popping up. Despite my few misgivings about them, random encounters seem to be a necessary part of any OSR style gaming experience.
Purple Duck Games have been releasing a series of supplements for Pathfinder, focusing on creating massively huge and varied random encounter tables for almost any campaign setting. Their most recent release, RANDOM ENCOUNTERS REMASTERED: World’s Edge and Beyond, offers up huge tables for six strange and outré locales, with all manner of encounter possibilities for Pathfinder campaigns!
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS REMASTERED: World’s Edge and Beyond
- Authors: David Nicholas Ross
- Illustrations: Gary Dupuis, Brian Brinlee, The Forge
- Publisher: Purple Duck Games
- Year: 2013
- Media: PDF (35 pages)
- Price: $4.50 (available from RPGNow)
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS REMASTERED: World’s Edge & Beyond is a supplemental Game Master product for use with Pathfinder RPG under the Open Game License. RER:WEaB contains random encounter tables for six unusual terrain types, which might be encountered in a Pathfinder campaign. The random tables include hundreds of monster, NPC, and hazardous encounters, ranging from CR 1/2 to CR 22. In addition, there are nearly a dozen dispositions and more than thirty terrain features, which can be used to change the nature of the encounters in new and unique ways.
Production Quality
The production quality of RER:WEaB is fair, with a basic two-column design layout, and a no-frills presentation of the contents. While I enjoyed the writing quality and the author’s creative talents, the unrelieved “wall of text” layout design made it tiresome to read through the material. And when the supplement got to the tables, they were so large that they spanned three to four pages. While this in itself is not a problem, the lack of section headers/footers made one wonder which table they are consulting.
The PDF of RER:WEaB had both a table of contents as well as bookmarks, but the latter did not work at all, at least in my copy. Luckily, the relatively short page length made perusing the supplement not too difficult.
The cover art was plain and uninspiring, looking more like a cover from a high-schoolers book report than anything else. The interior art consisted of some decently rendered black-and-white drawings, but there were only six of them in the entire book. This made the artwork in RER:WEaB seem more like an afterthought or filler than a true act of illustration for the supplement.
Where the Random Things Are
Random Encounters Remastered: World’s Edge and Beyond is roughly divided into two sections: the first one discusses random encounter design and other considerations, while the second section has massive random tables for encounters CR 1/2 to CR 22. The tables are divided into six different locale types: Abyssal Rifts, Beshadowed Backwoods, Elemental Oases, Historic Battlefields, Misty Morasses, and Summer Otherworlds. As one might surmise from the supplement’s title, all but one of these locales are very unusual lands, although not unknown to fantasy RPGs, where some non-mundane realm is infringing on the campaign setting. Whether it is the Abyss, the plane of Shadow, the elemental planes, or some realm of Faerie, these places have been altered a bit and are now home to some strange and dangerous creatures. In the case of the Historic Battlefield, these tables create random encounters that heroes might meet if they were crossing a no-man’s land during wartime, wherever there is a large scale conflict.
RER:WEaB opens with some thoughtful advice on How to Use this Book, in which the author looks at how random encounters can be used to further a campaign plot, as well as some considerations that need to be considered when using random encounters. Then the author introduces some factors that can make an encounter more memorable and unique, even if it is just random.
Dispositions are eleven different attitudes and purposes which affect how the NPCs and monsters encountered will act when faced with a heroic band of adventurers. These dispositions can range in temperament from a typical Guardian pose, to being Disguised for some reason or other, or even Scheming up some plan or plot when they are surprised by the heroes. Each disposition offers a new twist for the encounter, rather than the expected kill-or-be-killed scenario, and it offers GMs some innovative ways to make a unique experience. And some dispositions actually raise or lower the CR of the encounter, so their use needs to be carefully considered before initiative is rolled.
Under Terrain Features, the author lists off thirty-one different terrain types that might appear in an encounter. These can be mundane terrain types such as fog or rubble, or more bizarre types of terrain such as a planar vortex or quicksand. Each terrain type is fully discussed, including minor rules which might be imposed during the encounter, and how the terrain might change the CR level.
Finally, the bulk of RER:WEaB is taken up with six massive tables with all kinds of random encounters in them, and of every CR. The listings on the random tables are all monsters (and templates) found in the d20/PSRD, and are generally appropriate for the type of locale. There are around 3 to 7 encounters listed per CR, and some CRs have even more listings than that, so repetition is not likely to be an issue. Not all tables go up to CR 22, but all of them top out at CR 18 or higher.
Each table also includes the frequency percentage that an encounter will occur, and suggested roll ranges for the minimum and maximum levels. The encounter tables use d% dice, and a range of CR can be used at any point on the chart. For instance, using the Misty Morass chart, if I wanted to roll a minimum of CR 4 for an encounter, I’d be adding 120 to my d% roll, giving me a CR 4 giant dragonfly to face my heroes on a 01, or a very nasty CR 8 grey render if I rolled a 90. Obviously, one does not have to use the tables randomly, but can pick and choose among the wide range of encounters of an appropriate CR.
The author also includes with each encounter table a listing of possible dispositions that the opponents might have and a list of possible terrain features. Both of these are on random tables, so an interesting and unique encounter can be created with as few as three dice rolls!
All in all, a very handy set of charts to have on hand when GM-ing a gaming session – particularly when the players take their heroes off the rails and into unplanned areas! I should also note that Purple Duck Games has previously released other locales such as cities, mountains, and so on, in other supplements.
Overall Score: 3.7 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
Despite some disappointing production flaws, there is some decent content to be found in Random Encounters Remastered: World’s Edge and Beyond. The writing is quite good, and the author has created some interesting encounters in those random tables. And the opening section discussing handling a random encounter, and how to spiff it up by using the disposition factor and appropriate terrain features, is really some very good advice for Pathfinder GMs of all skill levels.
While the presentation style and lack of art detracts from the overall aesthetics of RER:WEaB, the price point is a steal when one considers all the contents in the PDF. It’s well worth a look or two for any Pathfinder GM who wants to enjoy using random encounters in their campaign. With a book like this, it’s nigh onto impossible to have the same encounter ever in a campaign – or possibly even in multiple campaigns!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary copy of the products from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 2.75
- - Design: 2.5 (Lackluster layout; PDF bookmarks broken; but there’s good writing in there)
- - Illustrations: 3.0 (Uninspired cover art; decent interior illustrations but very few)
- Content: 3.75
- - Crunch: 4.0 (Great primer for encounter design; Awesome terrain rules; exciting encounter designs)
- - Fluff: 3.5 (Imaginative locales; evocative descriptions of terrain and encounter dispositions)
- Value: 4.5 (It’s a great price for all that contents!)
