Where are the best Random Encounter Tables?

[Sword of Spirit]

I know that Monstrous Compendium Volume 2 has the basic ones for Vols 1 and 2. Vol 3 had ones for prehistoric and pleistocene as I recall.

But I've also heard that MC Annual volume 2 consolidated or gathered some.

Are the ones in the annual the same (or expanded versions) of the tables, or are they dumbed down versions?

Is there another location that consolidates the tables, or a few such locations?

I'm making my own (5e) encounter tables, and I'm going to study the encounter tables of all of the previous editions for inspiration on how best to do it. The 2e Monstrous Compendium Volume 2 was my first love for random encounter tables, but I want to make sure I am getting the best ones 2e had to offer.

 

[vonmolkew]

Have you checked out The Mother of All Encounter Tables from Frog God Games?
http://froggodgames.com/mother-all-encounter-tables

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The best encounter tables are not "kitchen sink" encounter tables, but ones that are created to cover a specific area of a specific campaign world.

 

[vonmolkew]

He asked about Encounter Tables. I gave him someplace to look. I guessed he was making specific tables. TMoAET is an interesting place to start

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Probably should have explained my response in greater depth. I have the MoaET too, and 1E tables and more. But I find those tables aren't all that useful because they want to cram every possible monster into every possible terrain and climate - the "kitchen sink" approach to encounter tables. I was trying to suggest that smaller, uncomplicated tables that provide a more limited range of possibilities for a given area of a given campaign will work far better and thus are "the best" tables.

Encounter tables don't need to champion every monster you can scrounge up from source materials - they need to give a representative selection of monsters that will A) give an adequate picture of the kinds of monsters/NPC's that will be found in a particular area, and B) allow the DM to generate encounters ON THE FLY (because otherwise RANDOM tables are not needed, only the details of sets of encounters that will occur on a schedule as the PC's travel through, which can be prepared in advance and selected as needed and desired rather than randomly assigned). Some monsters and types of encounters are, after all, much more conducive to random generation than others, and can be geared as the DM sees fit to the levels and capabilities of the PC's and players.

I don't have many monster sourcebooks. In fact I keep close to just the 1E MM along with a very light smattering of other stuff. There was one, however, (I think it was something from the 2E era) that actually started suggesting that something other than the kitchen sink approach worked better. It described possibly assembling percentiles lists (like 1E and MoaET) but also mentioned other possibilities like tables numbered from 3-18 or 2-20 to provide a bell curve of results that would list rarely encountered creatures at the upper and lower ends with commonly encountered creatures in the middle of the bell. It would then give DM's a much more manageable range of possible encounters to have to work up on the fly while still having a variety of results. Meanwhile, when practical, the DM could simply prepare more elaborate encounters ahead of time that use complicated monsters and detailed locations for them to unfold in. Random encounter tables then don't need to encompass every exhaustive possibility.

But, to each their own.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Have you checked out The Mother of All Encounter Tables from Frog God Games?
http://froggodgames.com/mother-all-encounter-tables

Hmm. Looks interesting, but I'm not sure if I want to go 3e. More and more, I'm preferring the 2e monster roster.

Probably should have explained my response in greater depth. I have the MoaET too, and 1E tables and more. But I find those tables aren't all that useful because they want to cram every possible monster into every possible terrain and climate - the "kitchen sink" approach to encounter tables. I was trying to suggest that smaller, uncomplicated tables that provide a more limited range of possibilities for a given area of a given campaign will work far better and thus are "the best" tables.

Encounter tables don't need to champion every monster you can scrounge up from source materials - they need to give a representative selection of monsters that will A) give an adequate picture of the kinds of monsters/NPC's that will be found in a particular area, and B) allow the DM to generate encounters ON THE FLY (because otherwise RANDOM tables are not needed, only the details of sets of encounters that will occur on a schedule as the PC's travel through, which can be prepared in advance and selected as needed and desired rather than randomly assigned). Some monsters and types of encounters are, after all, much more conducive to random generation than others, and can be geared as the DM sees fit to the levels and capabilities of the PC's and players.

I don't have many monster sourcebooks. In fact I keep close to just the 1E MM along with a very light smattering of other stuff. There was one, however, (I think it was something from the 2E era) that actually started suggesting that something other than the kitchen sink approach worked better. It described possibly assembling percentiles lists (like 1E and MoaET) but also mentioned other possibilities like tables numbered from 3-18 or 2-20 to provide a bell curve of results that would list rarely encountered creatures at the upper and lower ends with commonly encountered creatures in the middle of the bell. It would then give DM's a much more manageable range of possible encounters to have to work up on the fly while still having a variety of results. Meanwhile, when practical, the DM could simply prepare more elaborate encounters ahead of time that use complicated monsters and detailed locations for them to unfold in. Random encounter tables then don't need to encompass every exhaustive possibility.

But, to each their own.

One reason I like there to be pretty much every monster that isn't supposed to be limited to a specific region, is that there are tons of monsters I'm never going to think of using, but that a robust enough random encounter might throw at me. So I get to be surprised and try something new as a DM. That's one reason that I generally am not big into DM as storytelling (I do it sometimes for theme adventures, but not on long campaigns), because I don't get to be surprised by what the party runs into (or where they run off to) if things are staying within a plot canvas.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

I know that Monstrous Compendium Volume 2 has the basic ones for Vols 1 and 2. Vol 3 had ones for prehistoric and pleistocene as I recall.

But I've also heard that MC Annual volume 2 consolidated or gathered some.

Are the ones in the annual the same (or expanded versions) of the tables, or are they dumbed down versions?

Is there another location that consolidates the tables, or a few such locations?

I'm making my own (5e) encounter tables, and I'm going to study the encounter tables of all of the previous editions for inspiration on how best to do it. The 2e Monstrous Compendium Volume 2 was my first love for random encounter tables, but I want to make sure I am getting the best ones 2e had to offer.

You can make your own encounter tables, 2nd edition is very helpful in that, each monster entry has a terrain type and a frequency and that tells you where on the encounter table to put the monster.

You roll encounters with a d12 and a d8 and that gives you a range of numbers from 2 to 20 and the frequencies are as follows:

1d8+1d12
Result
2 Very Rare
3 Very Rare
4 Very Rare or Rare
5 Rare
6 Rare
7 Uncommon
8 Uncommon
9 Common
10 Common
11 Common
12 Common
13 Common
14 Uncommon
15 Uncommon
16 Rare
17 Rare
18 Very Rare or Rare
19 Very Rare
20 Very Rare

if you have more than 19 encounters you make another table just like the first and you role a simple die roll (d4, d6, etc) to determine between them.