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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7194291" data-attributes="member: 996">The "NPCs' Random Encounters" are purely hypothetical, no actual NPC has to actually have a random encounter rolled by the DM, in play.  For actual play, a random encounter table is a tool for generating random encounters (circular, yet tautological, buy I don't think controversial), but for purposes of world-building, a random encounter table is a set of demographic statistics, painting a picture of what the diversity of the local hungry-for-humanoid-flesh community is like.So you can look at it and see that adventurers frequenting the Howling Wood are likely to get attacked by wolves.  So when the party meets a retired adventurer from the area, he tells them how he lost his leg to a pack of hungry wolves.  (And they're left wondering who applied Oil of Sharpness to the wolves' teeth.) Preference would be enough, but no, it's purely hypothetical.  Not a question about the specific world, but about the interaction of world and guideline in general, and you might, as a DM, deal with it.  If the world is a done deal (and I don't see how it could be, if nothing else, the world can change), and that done deal done don't allow for multiple encounters in a certain place on a certain day, but the guidelines do call for multiple encounters, who blinks?</blockquote>