Bringing Back Random Encounters 

One of my all time favorite sessions was when my ~level 6 party was traveling into the wyrmsmoke mountains and I rolled up a random encounter. 20. Adult Blue Dragon. I could tell by the look on their faces that I must have had a terrified expression on myself. I decided that the dragon was flying overhead and hadn't seen the party yet, which gave them a chance to hide. Warlock even casts an illusion overhead to disguise them. Dragon rolls perception. Natural 20. It instantly spots something and starts to circle in on them. I'm freaking out which in turn makes the party realize just how dangerous this is. Spell casters and Dwayne, the NPC friendly Galeb Duhr start magically digging a tunnel, hoping to bottleneck the dragon. I'm looking up info on blue dragons in the meantime trying to figure some reason that he might not toast the whole party only to learn that these bastards burrow as fast as they fly! At this point, I am expecting nothing short of 3 deaths. Rogue attempts to distract while others dig. Barbarian has resorted to burrowing with his bare hands in desperation. Lightning breath. Rogue is unconcious. Galeb Duhr literally dragging his body behind him. In the end, they end up digging tunnels in 2 separate directions and throwing voices down the dummy tunnel. I'm rolling Evens or Odds right out in front of the players to determine which path he takes and man was it intense. He takes the bait. They didn't see what happened to their Galeb Duhr companion but they know it didn't take long for the dragon to be back on their trail chasing them down the mountainside with lightning strikes as they rolled DEX saves to avoid tripping for the last time. They all made it out. Emergent indeed. Rogue has a nasty scar. I never in a million years would have thought to put an adult dragon in their path if it wasn't decided for me.

4:15 I have not had nearly enough random encounters where the creatures are partying 😆

Your videos are great. Perfect script delivery, not over or under written, and they move at a solid pace so I don't feel like I'm having my time wasted. Here's hoping you blow up. More in this format!

My friend and I play DnD together without a DM. All our adventures are generated through dice rolls, yes/no questions, and lots of encounter tables. This type of emergent gameplay is a lot of fun and we are having a blast.

I rolled a "00" on a random encounter table: desert, and the result was "red dragon". The party was not prepared for it, and neither was I. I ad libbed a tense negotiation, and the bard managed to convince the dragon that they were on their way to a dungeon to recover great riches. The dragon bullied them a little and let them go. Luckily, he wasn't hungry. Two players told me that was a very memorable encounter.

Some of the random encounter tables i've seen have included a couple of story related encounters, like meeting the Druid that they will have to visit later in the adventure! Not all encounters need to be beatable by the party.

Expansive random encounter tables were incredibly useful in developing my DM improvising ability. It takes some skill to quickly create a scene from whatever is on the chart that we probably didn't study or pay close attention to.

Random encounters are wonderful tools, but if you find them slowing you down or you're not sure how to tie something into the moment, consider making the rolls during your prep time. That gives you extra time to chew over the options... But don't reroll! If something is weird or dangerous, keep it! Don't fall into the temptation of just rolling again for something more mundane or you'll defeat the purpose.

I think I have fallen into the trap of "encounter" = combat encounter and this video helped me see that. Thanks for the vid!

In our Forbidden Lands campaign, we typically roll 2 or 3 random encounters in a two hour session. The results are invariably entertaining for PCs. As an exercise for GMs, random encounters make for a wonderful challenge, infusing on the fly improvisation with completely unpredictable outcomes. Manage this single aspect of running a game, and you shall indeed gain many levels!

Reaction rolls have created some of the best moments at my table. My current 5e campaign originated as a Moldvay D&D game from the early 00s. My players still approach almost every encounter as if they could talk their way out of it. I love it!

A simple thing I have used for reaction tables is giving the encounter a modifier to their reaction. Orc war band? Maybe give them a -2 (2d6 table) to their reaction so they are at the very least unlikely to be friendly. Traveling merchant? Maybe give them a +3. Wild beast? Just leave it unmodified.

Honestly I love the idea of massive amounts of monsters or npcs just traveling within the world. Using them as set dressing is always a nice touch as well, or even for some foreshadowing

The moment when a Questing Beast video gets posted right when you sit down to have breakfast. Ah, perfect timing!

As an old shcool DM, I do use random encounters. Indeed, for me, not envery one is combat. Also, closer to civilisation, they encounter merchants, soldiers, knights, soldiers and pilgrims more often than monsters. The futher away they go, the more monsters they meet. Including playfull fey, curious extra-planar traveler, unicorns, cloud giants merchants, etc.

Ran a campaign in a setting inspired by the sahara/sub-saharan africa. Used random encounters to incorporate some fun homebrew creatures that I didn't want to contrive into the plot. My personal favourites were "Hecklers," fantasy hyenas with the nasty ability to teleport like blink dogs and harass their prey for days on end...

I generate overland adventures based entirely on the random encounters. I will roll a handful of times and have them function as a series of loosely related encounters. In my Tomb of Annihilation game, I was rolled grungs, a large goblin band, and a triceratops. The players got stuck between the two factions hunting the dino. It made the journey an adventure in it's own right. Random encounters are great to roll ahead of the game.

Another important point to BX style encounters (in the dungeon and the wilderness) is *encounter distance.* In the wild, the "encounter" can be up to 120 yards away when the PCs become aware of it. That can give a lot of time to hide or prepare or flee. Also, there is a whole "Dragon" encounter subtable that includes a bunch of fun dragonlike things, such as Hydras and Wyverns. :-)

the best thing about random encounters is that it makes the game fun for you as GM. the excitement of wondering what the players will encounter, inevitably being surprised, and improvising the parameters of the encounter without knowing the outcome is what gives me a thrill as a dungeon master! let the dice be your god and bow to their will!

I've been thinking a lot about a potential underwater campaign (where the PCs are all sea people, adventuring in a sea full of monsters and the ruins of past civilizations). The idea of threats scaling with what area you're in I think works very well when comparing traveling by seabed or by swimming higher, in more open waters. Because if you're traveling above it all and in open water, it's much more difficult to hide, and much easier to see things coming. Meaning the kinds of creatures that _choose_ to swim out in the open will tend to be more powerful and dangerous, because they feel less need to hide. This serves to give very real weight to the decision to engage with wilderness travel near the surface, versus hugging the seabed and navigating its obstacles. Sure, sticking to the bottom may take longer, but it's generally safer, because the creatures are smaller/weaker, and there's more opportunities to hide. Whereas swimming in open waters is generally faster and gives you a better look at the landscape, but you're more likely to bump into a colossal sea monster or army of sahuagin warriors. By that same token, the more powerful the party gets, the more they'll be able to get away with swimming in open waters, because they've _become_ badass enough to hang out on that level.

This type of content is my favorite. I love learning about how different rulesets tackle the same topics and how to apply them to any game. Thanks for this one!

The original Warhammer Quest from the 90's had great encounter tables. I had a group that ran into the same encounter twice, bandits who kidnapped townsfolk. I had to figure out why, and hence the magical sacrifice that was needed to summon a demon became the next chapter of the game.

Great video! I don't often put together "real" random encounters charts .I usually just plan an encounter or two and then put them in the game if things start to slow down.

Another advantage to random encounters is their ability to reinforce a campaign's themes and Central Tension. The Curse of Strahd, for one example, has a bunch of random encounters just built around being moody, grim, or sinister, like finding a corpse that has one of the PCs' faces (or seems to at first glance). All for playing into the Gothic Horror literary tradition, where mood and tension are established by uncanny happenings in the world, grim portents and omens of the things yet to come. The Central Tension is especially useful to establish with random encounters, as they can set up forces in the campaign world that will pay off later. If the PCs have made an enemy of a powerful person, they may start randomly encountering spies or assassins out to get the PCs. If there's a strong "Order vs Chaos, Civilization vs Wilderness" tension, the PCs might encounter dryads tearing up a newly laid road, or stumble onto fairies and other fey creatures dancing in a glade. If the PCs are intended to fight a powerful dark knight later in the campaign, have them encounter them alongside a war party, and the dark knight ignores them because they are beneath his notice (at the moment). If there's a mad alchemist churning out monstrosities somewhere, have the PCs run into an escape creation.

It's well worth checking out 1st edition modules for how they did wandering monsters. The best example I can think of is what Dave Cook did in A1 "Slave Pits of the Undercity", a module which I have run several times. The wandering monsters are very well done in that one, integrating seamlessly with the setting. They help create the impression that the players are trying to infiltrate an ongoing slave trafficking operation. The encounters give the players a range of options; while there may be some things they have to fight or flee (e.g. the undead), if they meet humans, half-orcs and orcs, there is certainly scope for the players to attempt to bluff their way through. There were a couple of specific points about the way the wandering monsters are implemented that are interesting. First, there is the concept of a "wandering monster roster". This is a list of the total number of each type of monster in the ruined temple compound and its dungeons. When characters encounter and kill wandering monsters, they are subtracted from these totals. Players can never encounter more monsters of a particular type than are remaining on the list. Obviously, if the players leave, there is the possibility of reinforcements being brought in. Second, a few of the wandering monsters are the same creatures found in particular rooms. For instance, there is a wight that has its lair in one room, but can also be encountered as a wandering monster. If it is encountered away from its lair, the players will not then subsequently find it in that location.

Really happy I found this series. Random Encounters not equally combat was really crucial for me to learn. It takes some training from the players part as well. I try to ensure ~10% of my random encounters are strictly positive in nature with ~30-40% pretty neutral - with the rest split between different types of negative (combat, traps, hazards). You need a decent ratio of not-horrible encounters to get the players in a more open mindset. One of my favorite ones recently was I had a small bird like creature be attracted by the bright colors of the party's dragonborn. It aggressively would attack another PC to create distance (for 1 damage) and then dart off into the forest. It proceeded to dance at him and the parties druid and ranger desperately tried to convince the others to not murder the poor thing. The whole thing turned into about 30 minutes of great roleplaying without a single skill check or roll being made.

My encounter tables include an entry for "projection". That means look around for nearby keyed encounter and have it be the encounter. So if there is an orc camp nearby maybe you run into a patrol. The patrol may harass the group but will send a runner for back up. Maybe instead of a patrol you come across an orc camp site that was abandoned only a few hours ago with a trail leading to the main camp.

Great ideas. I like adding other adventuring parties. Generally, these can add rumors as they may be traveling the opposite direction. Or they can be enormous monsters, like dragons, or perhaps a stampede in a tight space like a gully. Not everything needs to be combat oriented. They could find pieces of an artifact, then another piece, finally the dead or dying body of the person who stole it. Enter the people sent to recover that artifact. It's the GM who can make or break random encounters. Get ideas from the blogs. People are willing to share ideas.

QB is slaying with all this OSR advice recently

It is funny that you title this video Bringing Back Random Encounters. I have been playing since 1974, and for me Random Encounters have always been a part of my games. Since they never left, I can not bring them back. However, you give good advice for making encounters fun and meaningful. Also, great explanation of how the story emerges from the random encounters and players and the GM start piecing things together. Good mention of the 300 Orc encounter as well.

I developed my own random encounter system to reflect the fact that I want to run a "living world". A Living World is one, I feel, that has no "level" or "CR". It is based on the terrain and the creatures that live within it. Dungeons have a level. Mountains and lakes do not. Sharks do not care what level you are when you're swimming in the sea. My system breaks down like this. I figure that random encounters could occur ever hour of dungeon crawl, or every 4 hours of overland travel. Also, should the players stop for any sort of rest, there's also another roll. Every player rolls a single d10. The DM rolls a D10. If the DM matches any number, there's an encounter. If the DM matches two or more numbers, the danger goes up. Why this system? The larger the party, the more noise they generate. Rests usually have campfires and conversations. They may be cooking meat. These will all attract possible threats. That said, If I feel that the party are already on the back foot, their "random encounter" might be a ruined column with a cryptic message, or the remains of a creature that's been defeated and possibly partially eaten. I might have illusions triggered that depict an event, or message from a spirit, god, patron (etc) occur. Random encounters need not always be monsters. However, should the players be careless, the chance of a monster showing up should also go up. The worlds of fantasy are dangerous places in the wild places of the world.

I took an example from Tolkien, and Bilbo's troll encounter. Remember all the weapons and stuff they got from that? Yeah. Sting, Glamdring The Foe Hammer. Plus some cash. Serious lunch money. So, when I have a major artifact, or a legendary quest to put out, I drop it onto them during wandering monsters. I once dropped an artifact Djinn ring -Early Human wizards in Greyhawk trapped elemental lords in magic rings, and divided up rulership that way, but then they [supposedly] destroyed the rings (I'm old gamer, and know strange errata) - and this ring had an ancient Djinn lord with a scar over his heart, where it was removed and bound to the ring. He was nutz. He would prank the party and their NPC friends. He would start trouble for fun, and he was so delusional that he didn't understand reality anymore. His name was Margandil Kinslayer. Janni Lord, and ancient King; Lord High Marshall of Jackson Creek; Master of kitty-kitty Bubbles, the Death or winged rats. Being subject to the ring drove him insane, because he could't die, and the ring couldn't be destroyed (nobody knew how yet), and he had a lot of stuff that he didn't want to remember (many regrets). Even with the pranks, he couldn't let anyone else get hold of the ring, and would never admit that he was bound to it. Sometimes he would kill random encounters, throw the guts at everybody and say, "That's HOW you do it - VOLUME!" Then magic a female voice that said, "Hayelp! Hayelp! The Alcalde stole all my Monkeys!" and leave to save a fake "damsel in distress". So, the party thought that they were being followed by a mad Geenie. He was crazy but would do what he was told, without admitting that he was compelled. "Oh? Like this, maybe?" (strange and dramatic rant included "What an eccentric performance"). Auguries eventuall gave them clues to the ring. In other cases, I keep a list of how many creatures are in the area, and leave things for the characters to find. For Ravenloft, I left the texts on mist control, lighting and weather control, and Sidh shadow magic. Even key items can be placed into random encounter drops, like a part to the sun sword, or a Strahd skeletal horse that rides through the area at 9AM every morning (Eerie screeching, and hoofbeats, then the tavern keeper moves the minute hand to his clock forward two minutes). One of the players (A shaman) worked out some of each, including how to map the mist portals to get to various parts of ravenloft, and to summon and control shadows, or travel through shadow, like it was the fey wild, using a dimension door variant. Ravenloft was made for all of this to happen. Books on legends, with maps of the area, as with "Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan" collapsed areas, and top of the pyramid. Potion substitution and mixing and miscibility (some mix well). The thing with keeping a KNOWN number of creatures in an area, for wandering encounters, is that an area can be temporarily cleared out, or give them a prisoner that knows information on nearby dungeons. Maps, passphrases, letters and messages, or just a gush of bad information and clever lies. One party even picked up a Kobald witch doctor as a party member, because he charmed the ranger, and the ranger is kind of dangerous. Being "lawful" it earned it's keep in many ways, in order to keep the ranger on his good side (attacking the party might have broken the spell, and he needed protection from other tribes, including Hobgoblins and berserker Orcs). Yeah. Some become party members. How about a semi-intelligent Owlbear wearing a champion wrestling belt worth serious duckets? [Owlbear gestures at belt and indicates a larger party member]. Yeah. Random encounters are a good time to put out the strange and magical. Strange creatures, and odd magic items, or masterwork folding cots, and army kitchen sets, with burnable pellets? Dried rations? Pickles and Hobgoblin kimchi? You can be stingy with the treasure, if there are wandering encounters with stuff like that. A raven with a wand and the command word??? An injured pack of bugbears that have just gotten lucky with some loot, and have a few technological items, sunrods, thunderstones, or tanglefoot bags? Lost wizard researcher, willing to do a few favors? A spell book with spells from the underdark (Menzoberranzan)? Yeah, throw them in with some wandering monsters. Drop dungeon maps. Drop treasure maps. Stage a kidnapping plot. These can be side treks, for getting to and from an adventure area.

Random encounters help break people out of “expecting to be told what to do” they start to feel worried and prioritize what to do next.

I'm drooling on that wallpaper of Sigil

Great video. Another possible reason to use random encounters: they can be a system that players/PCs can interact with eg if the PCs assault an orc encampment and destroy it, then cross off all the "orc patrol" encounters from the table for that region. If the PCs open up a cursed tomb, then undead encounters get added to the table. This is an expansion of the "living world" reason that you give. Good random encounter tables can also be incredibly useful for stocking a region or dungeon, and for creating encounters on the fly if the PCs go "off piste".

I’ve fallen into the trap of random encounters being a combat slog, too. I’ve taken to preparing random-ish encounters that fit in with the theme of the adventure and are more purpose or plot driven where it’s incumbent upon the PCs to read the situation correctly to have a positive outcome. Remember the monsters aren’t always looking to eat players and the BBEG may have plans for them to further his machinations

My level one players had to pass a door with a sleeping dragon. They were lucky the wizard was not around or he could have woken it up with thunder clap. One player named Karen spoke to the first enemy and using a home brew feat was able to order the creature to get his manager. So they killed the mad mage in the first room.

Back in the day I wasn't using random encounters because the same reasons you exposed in the video. Nowadays I do use random encounters thanks to listening to the principles you teach us in this channel. The note about the dragon really reminds me to the feeling of playing Dark Souls. I know it's a videogame but it exposes so well a great variety of the core OSR principles learned in this channel. I would love a special video comparing DS to the main OSR principles :3 PD: This is the kind of video I mostly like to see rather than the video reviews altough I really like them, please keep making more content like this :)

Back in 2nd Edition the Monstrous Compendium binders had extensive tables for this. Each update released added new ones for new creatures. I still pull them out and use them sometimes.

+1 “…I think there should be way more dragons in the game…”

Hi Ben, when running my fantasy city-state campaign, I use a Hex Flower for faction and city-wide situations like faction-related events, martial law, famine, riots, weather events, etc.. Using a Hex Flower helps to connect overall mood or situation to events. PC's can influence the trends. For each city area and certain streets, I have random encounter tables. And I include flavor-like lyrics sung by drunks. Also, who or what the city guard is hunting or dealing with at the moment. Keeping the city busy and full of normal seasonal activities. My goal is to keep the world moving with/without relation to what the players do.

In the old BECMI material, there is often separate encounter tables for patrolled regions versus uncontrolled Wilderness. Patrolled areas had significantly less dangerous encounters and generally followed roads and stretched for two hexes away from any sizeable settlement. It created those bands by default. I once had a campaign go off to a truly mad start when they party of six first level characters on their way to the first dungeon a day's travel from the Wizard's Tower that served as their home randomly encountered a wyvern. With the encounter tables I was using that was a 1 in 6,000 chance encounter. And then I rolled Snake Eyes on the reaction table, making the wyvern hostile. Rather than reroll, I decided to let it ride. One player character died, two henchmen were killed, as well as an entire team of war dogs. However, with clever tactics they managed to bring down this Beast even though it was far more powerful than they were. (Weaponized grappling hooks.) The survivors of the party went limping home to rest for a week before they were all healed up. Rather than go back to the dungeon, the campaign became about finding the wyverns' lair and claiming its treasure before someone else did... and discovering why is it comes so close to settled lands. I ended up improvising a story of goblins being pushed into the mountains and displacing other monsters thanks to an aggressive new Dwarven Warchief. The players both praised and cursed me, and assumed that because the wyvern led them to a complex series of Adventures, that it had been part of the plan all along

My favourite variant on these is "The Fibaroo," Whilst you're doing the rest of your GM prep, set up an encounter or two that happen to be outside. Find good monsters that synergise well. Think about how the terrain might benefit players or enemies. Consider options that aren't just fighting, and how you can weave in story hooks. Then, in game, as your party travels, ask a player to roll a dice. Respond with "oh dear. Yeesh," as you loudly roll some dice (d12s give the best noise) behind the screen and then run your encounter. If you arrange things so that your players *think* there"s a random table, you can have all the narrative fun you'd think you'd get from a table , with none of the problems.

Am still working through episode 2 - I think this is a great thing your doing. It's very interesting to see how the game has changed and has definitely helped give more inspiration as a DM. I hope you work through more old edition books, maybe an analytical view of a module would be interesting

Awesome video! I'm actually prepping to roll some random encounters for my Tomb of Annihilation game, and it's notorious how a lot of this insight and know-how on how to set up random encounters has been lost over the years in newer editions. Rolling for disposition/reaction is exactly what the tables in the book need to make them that much more varied/interesting. So I'm definitively adding it to my prep procedure.

Random Encounters really help keep you (the GM) from falling into a rut, assuming you've installed enough crazy into your tables. Events, omens, obstacles, and traps should be included for variety. You really need to use die rolls for surprise, encounter distance, and reaction with creature-based random encounters, otherwise it will often be just another fight.

Just this afternoon, I started a new group of characters on their adventures. Caught outdoors in the dark, they were properly nervous as they headed home. After a busy afternoon of investigating the death of a sheep, they encountered their first random encounter with a four-pack of Pseudodragons. I've never run out a Pseudodragon before so I was game. These little guys aren't much for combat, but they have powers that allow excellent defense. They emitted colour pulses, glassy sounding notes of music and used some of their illusory powers to depict moods and emotions. Some charades and repetitive actions got the players just to the point of discovering how to communicate, when one of the PCs tried touch a P-dragon! It was unexpected and the Pdragons immediately went invis and left the area. The PCs tried for about 15 minutes to lure them back to no avail. Perfect timing too, as it ended the first session. Afterwards, the paladin said to me, "You always come up with the most unexpected and interesting encounters." Heh, all I did was roll on a table, do a quick read of a monster entry. The rest was played in reaction to the PCs actions. Never a boring moment to have in this brilliant hobby!

A great non-OSR example of random encounter mechanics is in Ironsworn's supplement Delve. With those rules, an entire "site" (which could be ruins, caverns, a forest, a stronghold, …) and what you encounter there as you delve deeper is randomly generated. (It's not the usual "room-by-room" description as in a classic OSR dungeon, though, but rather a more abstracted environment, as it fits better into Ironsworn's general narrative-oriented mechanics.)

The bands of danger for over world travel is a good idea. I'll have to use that in the game I'm running.

What I personally like doing is finding ways to make the choices players make during random encounters have real consequences. My personal favorite was a watchtower that I got to use three times. The first time, the players raided the tower and ended up fighting some giant spiders that had set up shop. But, after looting the place, they neglected to extinguish a burning spider corpse. The second time, after returning from a mission, the tower was now a raging inferno, that my players had to figure out how to contain to prevent the surrounding forest from burning up, and was of course made more challenging by the fact they had previously broken the stairs leading up. The third time, some ashen zombies had moved into the burnt remains and ambushed the party when they decided to go poking around in the ashes. That was three random encounters in three different sessions that all landed on the same result. That tower became a permanent landmark of that particular trail from there on, although not surprisingly the party decided it was best to leave it alone in the future. Another time, I had the party encounter a hill giant fighting some rock golems. They opted to just hang back and watch the show, at least until the giant noticed and started chucking the golems at them. Then they decided it was best to just leave, easily outpacing the hill giant in their wagon. They then opted to ignore a swarm of stirges they knew were likely carrying a body-corrupting disease, choosing to hide under an illusion instead. On their way back, they encountered a wrecked caravan, and in tracking the cause found the same hill giant, now infected with the aforementioned corruption and covered in stirges, was now attacking their home village. That was the product of three separate random encounters that interwove to create a story that was a direct result of the player's actions (or inaction, in this case). It also completely changed the main story, as it went from "Let's make a bunch of money doing bounty work to get strong and defeat the bad guys" to "Lets team up with the bad guys to find a cure for this horrific disease before it spreads". That was not how the story was suppose to go at all, but I think it was an improvement.

Im working in my onw tables right now. Im using hexplora and d30 sandbox companion tables as templates for my own.

I use Worlds Without Number for my more traditional fantasy campaign. As such I found the book "Those Outside the Walls" very helpful. The way the book is structured is that it usually has several creatures linked to a group. For instance there's several different kobolds. And it often has one random table for wilderness and dungeons. When generating my overworld maps, using the WWN rules, I will often get a "story" that emerges - which tells me what monsters I should be using. I then just "populate" my encounter table with these. For instance there might be a band of cultists who are battling kobolds in a hillside. Thus the closer to said hillside the players are, the more likely they will be to encounter either cultists or kobolds. My players first ran into a dying cultist who had ran away from an attack - here the encounter wasn't combat - but rather to help. Then later on there were sneaky kobolds trying to steal their stuff, but the party had set up a watch rotation through the night and noticed them. (I usually roll an appropriate dice to see which character during the night notices a night time encounter like that) I love controlled randomness like this. It tells a story of a place, without being part of the actual quest the characters are on. Sometimes I also use the WWN locations of interest as "random encounters" especially those where "something is happening here" - I might not trigger them at the players first visit to a town etc. Just so we avoid every new town being a quest of it's own. I think that also generated a bit of a feeling that the world exist by itself - and isn't just there for the characters to trigger the script.

One of the things I like to do is roll random encounters before travel. Then things like an army of orcs can be integrated into the talk of the local town.

i am developing a excel sheet to "calculate" and randomize the type, difficult, threats and rewards of random encounters, considering the terrain around the party. I personally do not like the concept of waste time in boring random battles and i just dont have criativity to make things on the spot. I am thinking in resume a random encounter in describe it to the party, let them make decisions and ask for a d20 roll based on the encounter difficult and situatonary factors that could help or hinder the party and/or the monsters in question. My goal is concentrate in narrative elements and details that a random encounter can have, and, like you said, the imprevisibility of its conclusions.

Loving these aspects of game play videos. I have done a similar thing with my random encounter setup for my latest game based on the Fever Swamp, the main table is all the different factions of humans and dangerous animals they could encounter, not many monsters above ground around here. But Instead of a sub reaction table for each entry, I give each a 1, 2, +, - modifier to use on a generic 1D6 reaction table, 1 bad and 6 a good reaction with a few examples for each level. This lets me steer a bit the initial reactions between the two groups, there are some that would not be initial hostile to adventures like the the town patrol, then there are those with a more dangerous intent like the Gator Boys. If I need more than that for an encounter I will usually roll on a couple Maze Rat tables and go from there.

Man, these video's are great. When ever I feel like I'm getting into a rut, these refresh my inspiration and immediately have to start writing down my thoughts!

I fully prepare my random encounters with lavish maps and CR calculated stat blocks for various party levels, etc. The random part is whether or not the party encounters them. Generally, over a 1-2 year campaign stretch, they encounter 6/10 which definitely feels like it's enough without getting in the way of story.

Random encounters pressuring the players is a good thing to remember and keep in focus. If you are doing wilderness exploration, I would pick three landmarks the players need to find that guarantee an encounter of some kind. Then figure out how many days it will take to accomplish this, then adding encounters for each day if you rolled for them. If players want to avoid threats, I’d probably require Stealth checks to hide them Athletics to outrun if they fail that. If they fail that, combat. You will probably find an imbalance between short rest and long rest classes, especially if combats go long. You’ll need to tweak this to your party as necessary.

I use a table for encounters and a table for combat. Encounters are wonderous and strange, fleshing out the world. Combat is more weighted towards violence but when used with reaction tables, it serves the same function as the encounter table. I also have a escalation table for combat. So if you roll a certain number on combat 1, they escalate to combat 2. Combat 1 might drop 30 orcs on you. Combat two might drop 3 chromatic dragons fighting 3 metallic dragons.

I like using dragons to the extent that they are not the encounter but the cause of it. White dragon causes a blizzard in its wake, skill challenge to survive and save your supplies. Any dragon, could be causing a herd of beasts to stamped. Bronze dragon has a party going and everybody is invited.

Remember you don't need to fight everything.

I played in a MERP game where the designer jumped up a chart that included the Witch-King of Endor as a random creature,.

My own way to get around the vanilla reaction table for creatures or parties that would normally be hostile: roll the dice twice (or more if it would be something really hostile normally) and take the worst result.

Ugh random encounters lol. Rolled a black stag the shows up with a crown of thorns that gets attacked by a werebear. Now I have a min max loxodon monk were bear, and a owl aarakocra druid werebear and a cursed paladin who's king of stags

always use them. i still often change it up between pre-rolling and writing them before a session vs rolling them at the table. when i roll at the table i still have the encounter fully made, including tactics, terrain, rp cues, etc. when i roll, i always include things that force you to improvise... 'a far off scream' or 'you hear music playing' etc.

"One common objection to the idea of random encounters is that a system like this can easily drop very powerful threats on your players when they're not ready for it..." I mean, yeah. That's kind of the point. The world is a big place!

I try very hard to fit random encounters with the plot and progress of my campaign. I once rolled a wereboar, for example, and immediately it became a spy for an important NPC the party would soon meet. This also set up the theme of lycanthropy in my campaign, which while unexpected career together great as things developed. A little thought opens up surprise for the DM as much as the players.

I like running overland hexploration. I generally roll a few d6's in each hex, like: people, monsters, game/food, special location, etc. Each "6" is a hit, and I then roll another d6, with each "6" bumping the result up to the next category of difficulty/specialty/rarity. I believe "exploding dice" is the term. It does slow things down a bit, but it builds tension/interaction as PC's eye up a merchant's "guards" to make sure they aren't bandits, rustling undergrowth is really a deer, etc. Also, I always have the option of rolling a lot of dice just to mess with them ]:D

Christ, I'd hate to play in a system that checks every two turns in-game. I'm running newbies through a BASIC Fantasy hexcrawl, and we check every hour (Morgansfort intentionally checks every three hours, which is nice for newbies.) Always a great video! As someone who champions the OSR to a fault, it's nice to see such an accessible channel for those of all experience levels in the hobby, while staying system-neutral and meta-focused.

I used to use random encounters when I started. Was pretty fun, had a couple of ambushes and strange whimsical characters that I had to make up on the spot but definitely ended up adding value to the campaign. In the end though, I decided to move more towards a story-focused campaign, with max 1 or 2 encounters per session. Players really loved that change, so I I don't think random encounters will be making a return any time soon.

I like the idea of the reaction roll. Generally if I know if they're going to overland random encounters I go over the list and mind map out hooks for the encounters or even find a way to have it loosely connect to the larger narrative. Example my current campaign the party has befriended a Bronze dragon wyrmling. They rolled a random green dragon encounter and now the green dragon is demanding the players turn over the wyrmling or else.

Hey! I love the Time Bandits map! A classic! Also, I gotta say I like the new format. I appreciate you taking the time, expense, and effort to maintain a clean lineup with your barber! Looking good, sir!

1st Ed AD&D DMG has great random encounter tables for both wilderness and dungeons by level. I use a 1d10 outdoors and a 1d6 in dungeons for encounters plus a 50/50 roll to determine if the encounter is creature or mundane feature discovered i.e. Flora, fauna, mineral,deposit, weather change, NPC etc. great video, I subbed.

Great Sigil Map!!!! Love planescape!!!

For initial reactions, I just use FUDGE/FATE Dice. They give me a varied reaction between overwhelmingly positive (++++) to neutral (oooo) to overwhelmingly hostile (- - - -)

I always include social encounters in my random encounters it adds a chance for the extra lore and world building

The game I'm running right now is pretty rp heavy to the point that we play through nearly every might watch and nearly every day of travel. To facilitate that I've used several random encounter tables to help me guide the players into those rp moments and help spark a conversation. Sometimes that means throwing and stone giant at the along the road, and sometimes thay means the orc player notices an ancient orcish burial stone in the clearing. The players will often bring those moments back up, either on the road or during their night watches when they came out and it sparks a lot of fantastic conversations. I will add the caveat that this group and I have been playing together for nearly 3 years so we are both incredibly comfortable with each other and very practiced at the randomness running a game through tables allows, so it wont be as easy for new games I'm sure. The amount of improvising I do now as opposed to when I started has probably tripled and I wouldnt be able to handle it if i haven't dmed for as long as I have. I still highly recommend it especially if you need som "filler" content to really get the use out of play time in a game and you didnt have enough time to plan before hand.

I'm really liking these videos. I've been playing Maze Rats solo (which by the way, Maze Rats is very popular in the solo RPG gaming community) a lot lately, and now I'm thinking about creating my own random tables!

Fantastic work. I’m impressed but not surprised.

My experience with GMing a random encounter is to scale the encounters accordingly to plot and the players overall might. Of course though, there would be that interesting bell curve of encounters being a bit higher than the players' paygrade but these are usually encounters you can resolve by alternative means beyond combat. One bit this played into was when the party got flushed out of the Big Bad's fortress via the drainage system. The party had a rough time charging in early into the Big Bad's lair and decided to roam around the world to get stronger. The party wanted to get their bearings back first and decided to walk across a desert... I did not expect them to this since there's a friendly military outpost nearby that can provide them with stuff get back on their feet but eh. So I had to calculate how far until they can meet back up to civilization in the direction they were going. 3 days of travelling the desert, 1 day up a grassy hill leading up to a fishing port town. So I had the random encounters rolling. For 2 days, they were assailed by Gargantuan Sandworms. With the party makeup, yes they should be able to take them on since the Sandworms were Neutral Hungry. They eventually decide to travel the next day hovering slightly off the sand the next day using the Psionic player's ludicrous object manipulation abilities (he didn't need to carry much since the party consisted of a smug human bard and a arsonist chicken sorc, who was tiny.) But I rolled 100 on my d100 for day 3. A Sand Dragon emerges from the sand. The Sand Dragon is hungry. He wants to dine on the psionic pigman and the chicken sorc. Thankfully, dragons are intelligent creatures, therefore you can reason with them. In an amazing Bluff check (nat 20+high CHA), the human bard manages to convince the Sand Dragon to go hunt for Sandworms for food. The party eventually makes it to civilization as the 4th day was uneventful. This is a showcase of how resourceful players can be and how tense situations can get. Random encounters don't have to be boring and monotonous. None of the intended mechanics have to be, it's up to the GM to make it interesting and for the players to find ways to resolve an encounter.

I like the Video a lot, you did a great job addressing the critique of the random encounter system and I love your approach to examining why rules are there without throwing them out... The one thing I don't get is your conclusion: If you do not like planning a way in a way that is setting the party up for victory, then you don't have to... you could just place stuff there when you think it is appropriate for the situation, I don't see the need for this amount of variance and additional prep work.

Personally I have random encounters quite check marked on way things to do list. 1 1/4 experience gained per instance. Morale failure potential. Morale emboldened potential. Divine intervention. Extra dimensional encounter. Nature occurrence. Severe weather occurrence.

I've never used the random encounter table. All the meetings I improvised or had them prepared on a separate sheet. I mean, the secret to random encounters is that they're not totally random. It's like they don't go down a road where I was planning to put an npc. I'll put it anyway on the other road if I think it's convenient. After all, for them it will remain random. That's the magic of master's power, isn't it? Also the masters with which I played, always summarized what happened on the journey until we reached our destination which is what mattered. I am more in favour of what gives life and what remains in the mind are those journeys. I'm Spanish and I don't master English, I'm sorry if something doesn't get it right.

I know that's not the way mano people do Random Encounters but I do it this way: I prep them, all of them. I use Roll20, so I have a folder of Encounters, divided in sub folders with every type of encounter, forest, travelling on road, montain, sea, city etc. The encounters are prep because I have many social encounters, little misteries, little hooks etc that a like to prep. I have combat (possible) encounters either and I think them not by ND but by logic. - How a Wyvern lair would be and how the monster dominate that region? What are their minions if it had it? - What is the intentions of the Gnoll band that are ravaging the road? - How the orcs built the tunel that made possible for them to ambush a caravan? So, for me, this encounters are pretty much all social. There is possible combat but the players can work it out IF I know the intentions of that specific monsters and how they operate. I like the "Potion wagon" type encounters too with a very nice NPC selling overpriced potions. Anyway, when I have time I prep like 10 encounters and add them to my tables, so yeah, it's random when they occurr but I pre prep them so it can be a very nice flavor to the world.

My group and I have been off and on playing "Out of the Abyss." In doing so there is a random encounter table I have to roll on when they are traveling around in the Underdark. This was alright, but it started to get a bit stale. To spice things up I took a idea I found on RU-vid and implemented it. I got it from Zee Bashew in his video time stamped here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vKQv4GC0N9Q.html. He calls it the Path. To simplify it, its more or less just putting some scenarios/encounters into a hat on small pieces of paper and having players help make up said encounters with the catch of having to have good scenarios and two bad scenarios to accompany them. This worked out pretty well. We have had some pretty fun adventures using this method and we still will go with the random encounters in the book from time to time as well.

I'm loving the random encounter tables for Dolmenwood currently! Like I love the randomness of Dungeon World even though I've merely tried it out a bit.

I was inspired by more fun Random Encounters, More Non-Combat ones, more like Finding a UFO crash landed, Wild Magic Storm, Eccentric Traders, An Old Fridge with a Skeleton inside, Ruins of buildings, Potentially an old Temple, or Dungeon, or Wizard Tower. Just fun encounters that aren't too intensive but require the DM to either roleplay, or describing the scene. Fallout 2 had an interesting Random Encounter, early in the game you can meet Frank Horrigan as he kills a family of 3, This helped setup BBEG, and introduced the player to how brutal the world was. When you're making your game try foreshadowing elements. Part of a Non-Combat Random encounter, is world building. Your PCs are just above average people going about their lives in a living, breathing world. When you go to the gas station, you're not harassed by wolves, or beset upon by bandits ( I hope not ) such encounters can add fun and help build the world you craft. Coming across a bunch of monks lead by a paladin and talking to the Paladin to learn X about X Group doing X Thing is cool and would interest the players. Also encounters within camps, nothing like ambushes, simple dangers that can occur at a camp site, fire potentially being blown onto a pack setting it ablaze, a snake making his way into camp and making his way home in the Fighter's sleeping bag. Stuff like that would keep the party on their toes and have them like put out a fire before sleeping, or putting a heavy pack on your sleeping bag while eating or something. When your party is resting they should be subject to danger, lesser dangers tho. Don't wanna drop an Ancient Black Dragon on your level 6 party when they're just trying to rest and eat. That's not fair, or fun. But remember have confidence in your abilities, your confidence influences your players' confidence.

Friendly orc army could be coming back from a raid, heavy with loot and trophies and with large numbers of wounded. No reason to tussle with the party when they have all the swag and food and drink they could want.

This is a great series Ben, you really succeed to clarify aspects of D&D that have been mostly neglected by 5e. Topic I'd love to see you cover is Skills.

A great adventure need to be meangful. The moment D&D become an MMO with "Full HP Recovery" after long rest, small and detailed encounters like the one provided by randomness lost their weight. I feel sad

Very good advices and tips.

Yup. You can't do a proper campaign without it. Good show.

I’m planning on picking up a copy of OSE just for these reference rules.

Excellent. Thank you!

Aha! Here's what makes your random encounters not boring: the encounter isn't always just fighting a monster or people. The ones I've seen in most random encounter tables and run by DMs in games I've played have been undoubtedly a meaningless combat, and sometimes wildly imbalanced. Adding variation on the disposition of the creatures makes a huge difference, and can create funny or strange moments. A dragon that is in the middle of feeding and thus unalerted by the party is tense and interesting, where a dragon just attacking randomly is just "oh fuck we're either dead or about to spend all of our resources."

Just getting into D&D as my kids wanted to play the stranger things game pack, so glad I discovered your advice before getting into it.

I got *out* of the practice of using random encounters, and I think my game is predictable because of it. May be time to do old school 2d6 tables again.

I gotta ask: you never reference the art that showcase the video, is it possible to have it mentioned somewhere in the description please?

I like the idea of random encounters, but I *don't want my players to die*

I've always loved the huge random encounter tables found in ICE's Rolemaster Treasures & Monsters supplements. Improvising the whys an wherefores of what turns up is always fun and can lead to huge unexpeced plot arcs - the encounters also include environmental effects, structures, vehicles and more mundane 'encounters' (merchants, peasants, prey and predator animals...) They are quite useful to roll up in advance, too, and can provide intriguing adventure/plot seeds, especially if you roll up posessions and treasure in advance, too. Just how did that band of ghouls end up with a powerful magical relic or artefact? Random 'encounters' make it all more like a game and less like a pre-planned, fated storyline. I also agree with you - ther should always be more dragons!