Tarts, Trollops and Vampires: Random Encounters in the City

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Tarts, Trollops and Vampires: Random Encounters in the City

From the ancient text of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, 1st Edition, comes such inspiration…The streets of any large city are always dangerous, or potentially so….do you have a favourite system for random encounters in your cities? Are there any favoured encounters that you enjoy using? In your campaigns, have you developed any sort of “trademarks” that your players recognize and have come to “love”? Have you used random encounters of vampires in the mist, as the players wander through the streets of the big city? The use of random encounters can at times spawn or inspire whole new adventures.
There have been times where I have used random encounters on the fly, and the players ran with it, and before long, the players were fighting this character, questioning that character, interacting with these two trollops over here, and in a short time, I had some weird cult on the edge, a vampire society lurking about, and plots uncovered with an evil slave ring under the city—all from an evening’s random encounters in the misty streets of a large city. There have been some occasions where we never did get to that night’s “planned” adventure!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I don't use random encounters too much, though I do like random encounter tables, if for no other reason than to give some flavor to an area - what sorts of things might one find in a city, and so on.

My favorite city random encounter table was from the Free City of Haven, a very old (1981-ish) city product. Its encounter tables were sometimes weird ("wanna buy a duck?"), but often drew on the roleplaying opportunities in the rest of the product - a random encounter might involve a detailed NPC or two from somewhere in the city. The encounters were generally fairly detailed, being several sentences, or even a paragraph or two as needed.

 

[Whisper72]

I never use random encounter lists 'as written', but use them for inspiration, either choosing something suitable that catches my eye or rolling on the table until something appropriate is rolled.

As such I do really like to have manye tables to choose from, depending upon mood, culture, type of area etc. etc.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Good thread title.

I don't use random encounters.

 

[sckeener]

I stopped using random encounters when I started trying to have more story to my games.

Admittedly I still use them for inspiration typically when I am needing to bridge scenes.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

If you want to meet a trollop, you need to go to one of the local troll bars.

 

[Voadam]

I've run a vast planar city based adventure for over a year now. Random encounters have been all done on the fly, not even using the ones from the adventure I'm running except as inspiration that was heavily modified.

 

[Thurbane]

There are some very interesting NPCs and archetypes in Cityscape, that I'm going to be using in my campaign...

 

[Melan]

My favourite city encounter system is Judges Guild's charts in City State of the Invincible Overlord. It is reasonably easy to use, but has enough subtables and attendant tables (e.g. "Questioned by Guards or Constables" or "Craftsman Profession") to provide a lot of variety. In the City State, there is always a chance to meet a golem on the rampage, get a sexual proposition from a mind flayer (yeah, you can roll it up, and I once did) or be harrassed/insulted by a god.

That's how I like my fantasy cities!