By Kevin Mathis, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Initiative Round
The Mother of All Encounter Tables from Necromancer Games fills out the 141-page hardcover with tons of tables to off-load the busy DM. Cover art by Ed Bourelle continues the tradition of making the book look like an armored tome. Interior art credits go to Heather Hudson. Retail price is $27.95.
Upsetting my expectations that a Contents page comes first, the Introduction launches directly after the title page. You must wait until Page 10 to find the “Index”. As the first few sentences of the Introduction state, this book is nothing but tables upon tables for the DM to use to create encounters randomly. While this is not a new concept – even the DMG has random encounter tables – this book takes it to at least the next level. The bulk of this first “chapter” is an explanation of the methodology used to determine a random encounter with this book. While it is not a laborious process, it is not simple either. Ten examples over four pages make sure you understand the system. Basically you’ll be needed a lot of d10 or d% dice!
The Achilles’ heel of this product is navigation and page layout. Page 10 is labeled as the Index. Unfortunately, it is more of an outline than even a Table of Contents. Nowhere are page numbers referenced, so finding the next needed table requires considerable page flipping. You may see this Index page as a sample PDF directly from Necromancer. Every page of the book is burdened with a vertical banner that quickly looses all aesthetic value and just takes up space. This can also be seen on the sample Index page linked above. Much better use of this space would have been to provide “virtual section tabs” (I don’t know the official printing terminology – shading the edges of the page such that you can tell where one section begins and ends even with the book closed.)
On Pages 11-12, we find the Master Tables. These provide the starting point for any encounter check. Roll d% (or 2 d10s) and look on the table for your general area - Overland, Urban, Trade Route, Overseas, Underwater or Subterranean encounters. Two of these six Master Tables have area specific differentiations that alter the result of your d% roll.
Up to this point, the layout is in “Portrait format” – meaning it reads like a normal book, opening left to right with text running horizontally left to right. However, the Master Tables end this layout pattern for approximately one hundred pages. The intervening sections are in “Landscape format” – the majority of the table text is rotated to the left/counter-clockwise by 90 degrees. While I imagine this change in layout style allowed for a more readable font size and the longer row length needed to fit, I find it extremely frustrating to use at the gaming table. No other book that I own has such an odd layout. This shift also adds to the difficulty in page flipping to find things needed next.
Section 2: Creature Encounter Tables is subdivided by climate, terrain, and time of day. Choose the correct table and roll three d10s (or a d1000 if you have it!). In addition to the creature randomly selected, the table provides a column for Challenge Rating and Number Appearing. This section absorbs the majority of the page count of the book – 99 pages in all! One should not want for varied encounters in any terrain at any time of day!
Creatures are pulled from several sources including the official Monster Manual, from the Necromancer’s own Tome of Horrors, and from Sword & Sorcery Studio’s Creature Collections 1 and 2. All of the unofficial entries are marked with “or DM’s choice”; this notice along with the “Source” column makes finding the statistics relatively easy.
Even with the layout issues, this section alone makes the book. The DMG provides only a handful of pages of such material; In Mother of All Encounter Tables you will find more than 100 pages!
Section 3: Weather and Terrain Encounters breaks this topic down into four subcategories: Arctic and Sub-arctic, Temperate, Subtropical and Tropical, and Weather at Sea. While it limits itself to the Open Game Content from the DMG on weather encounters, this section does make random selection much easier. The new focused environment titles take random weather to a much more refined detail; however, Mother provides enough for a mild diversion.
Section 4: Unusual Encounters is called a “grab bag of unusual encounters and strange situations”. That is quite the understatement with entries like “Anti-magic zones” to “Thief on the Run”. Thankfully the d% rolls are well planned out, so you will NOT get caught with an “Overturned cart” in an Underwater area, for example. Still, this section breaks with the pattern of the other sections. It provides more “plot stimuli” than random encounter.
Section 5: Traveler Encounters provides three pages of comparatively small tables. Much less content is found in these three tables. While this is probably appropriate for the type and frequency of this type, the large amount of white space gives the impression that these entries were not of primary focus during development.
And finally, Section 6: Miscellaneous Tables fills out the remaining 22-pages with an NPC Adventurer Generator, Caravan Generator, Sentient Races, Unusual and Unique Creatures, and Mineral Resources tables. The Caravan table (6-2C) seems to erroneously take the vehicles’ empty weight as its cargo capacity.
Critical Hit
The Mother of All Encounter Tables does live up to its name. Not even the older editions of the DMG can boast anywhere near this variety of encounters, particularly not creature types. The relatively simple artwork does lend the product a “First Edition Feel” (part of Necromancer’s motto).
With a handful of ten-sided dice, I can generate a suitable diversion for my party. For a busy DM that wants to inject a little randomness, this is a great tool.
One element that you will notice missing is any reference to Encounter Level (EL) in the descriptions of these tables, because it is not touched at all. The authors chose to make these tables truly random, without effort to tailor them to the party’s ability. Nothing assumes that each encounter is a “fair” combat because not everything needs to be combat. If the DM rolls up an Ancient Dragon encounter for a 1st level party, the DM is expected to handle this correctly based on his group’s expectations and dynamics. Personally, I find this aids my efforts to make my campaign world seem “real”; it’s always been odd to me that adventurers never seem to run into challenges vastly outside their current skill levels (high or especially too low).
Critical Fumble
I would very much like to give a lower “Presentation Rating” in the “Review Scores” below due to the poor navigation aids within this hardcover. Additionally, the “lost” Index is almost no help. No page numbers are referenced anywhere in the book, only section or table numbers. Each table varies widely in size making it very difficult to find what you are looking for.
Random encounters should be generated quickly during a pause in the DM’s activities; this book should make that as fast & easy as physically possible. It doesn’t live up to its full potential in this regard.
If you don’t use the additional source books’ creatures, you will have some gaps in your tables. The Introduction suggests writing in your own encounters, but in the space available that is not practical.
While I understand that table layout suffers from the vast amount of information they needed to pack into those landscape sections, I really dislike it. Everyone at the game table knows when I’m rolling up a random encounter because I crane my head to the left or knock over a bunch of stuff as I rotate the book to read it. Players shouldn’t be “telegraphed” that something isn’t pre-planned.
For this reason, many DMs do not use randomly generated encounters. If you agree with this style choice, don’t buy this book. Likewise, those not in the role of DM have little use for this title.
Coup de Grace
For someone that likes a completely random, this book does the job. I recommend it for any DM too busy to generate your own encounter tables. You won’t find a more extensive and well thought out set of creature encounter tables anywhere else.
It isn’t always easy to use at the gaming table. I would greatly prefer it without all the landscape styling. Simply adding page references would improve it greatly. If you buy this book, grab a set of stick-on page marker tabs to go with it, and you will be fine.
In this format the tables are not as easy to reconfigure, as the authors would like you to think. Personally, I think this product would be ideal in a different media (i.e. not a book). As an electronic product (editable PDF or even just a text file) I would completely adore it!
The later sections seem to attempt to provide “plot stimuli” instead of “just” a set of random encounters. I believe AEG’s Toolbox does a better job in this role. But Toolbox is best used during game planning; it doesn’t provide the random table set of the Mother of All Encounter Tables.
Even with its shortcomings, the quality of the material within those tables is strong. I sought out other products from Necromancer Games after buying this title (my first from them).
I use this book at almost every session that I run. While it might not enjoy a strong presentation, the material itself is very good. I do recommend it!
Final Grade: B-
