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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 5823527">To some extent, your issue feels more like a bone to pick with lazy DMs who just want to run an "out of box" campaign.  The problem you lay at 4e's feet isn't a problem if a DM takes the time to create their own adventure or at least puts a twist on an existing one.And when you speak of randomness, I think of the real world, but the real world is ANYTHING by random.  It's very, very predictable, that's why even in the most "unpredictable" environments such as the battlefield, people are still able to make educated guesses about what they're reasonably going to run into.Wandering monsters is always something that has bothered me.  Monsters don't "wander" for starters, they live in specific environments and only leave them for absolute necessities(or in the case of more intelligent creatures, boredom or mayhem).  When wandering through the forest, the chance that you're going to run into anything more spectacular than a pack of wolves is fairly low.  Giants, dragons, oozes, ect... these things live in specific places and are usually fairly keen on staying there.  It's far more likely for YOU to wander into their territory(which is often well marked by primitive signs or natural indications), and in such a case your more nature-savvy character should be able to give you a fair warning of where you should or shouldn't wander in the woods.  Even the most unmapped forests are likely to have rumors and stories about them, which a party passing near said location is likely to pick up.  It is even more unlikely to be walking down a well-used path and run into anything particularly monstrous, you're more likely to get robbed than attacked by a Hag or something.Metagaming is such a silly term because it so much of it actually isn't, players are going to be genre savvy, if they're not, they're noobs(and that's fine), but they'll learn quickly.  Anyone who's genre savvy or played the campaign for more than a few nights will quickly get a hang of how the DM likes to swing things and start checking for that.In short: reality, which your randomness is trying to imitate, is anything but random(which is why we resort to fantasy in the first place!)  Sure, you could have the players mapping an unknown forest in an isolated location with no surrounding civilization, but even then aside from breaking all the rules through hand-waving and saying "well it's magic, so there!" even a cursory glance at the forest will give them some expectation of what to find there.  Are there fae?  Is it swampy and dank?  Is it tall and overgrown?  It is cold and snowy?  This will quickly give any savvy player a good idea of what they might run into, and a vague idea of even the wildest threats they might encounter.Honestly, I don't favor a "random" world, I favor a predictable one.  It's much more fun to watch the party prepare for the possibility of fighting the green dragon that supposedly lives in the forest and yet never come across it, but instead just get dicked around by the dragon's magic.  I would rather my players prepare for a wide range of events that COULD happen, rather than be caught off guard by the Frost Wurm that's wandering through the desert because I rolled 99 on my table of random events.Random is often no more fun than totally railroaded.  Things should be fairly predictable in what DOES happen, but less so in what COULD happen.</blockquote>

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