How to Use Wandering Monsters 

An undead battalion on an eternal patrol along the edges of an old battlefield sounds fun.

Thank You! Customize your wandering monster lists people!

Love it when you help newbies understand staples of the Old School and help us oldsters think of new points!

Dude. Your content and insight is incredible! As a professional DM that was introduced to this hobby through 5e, it's so refreshing to hear about tools, mechanics and ideas from the previous, more game-y, more dangerous, editions.

Man, this was the single best ad I've ever seen! The amount of sincerity made it so very different

I'm glad you brought up multiple d6 tables and the bell curve. It's something that not a lot of people think about.

Really appreciate it Daniel. I think wanderers are some of the most fun parts of the game. The OD&D tables are so evocative! Wonderful monster names, much more than later sets. The module B10 has non-monster encounters that the DM can use eg a corpse of a trader with some loot, from memory

You commented that in hex crawls things can get more wild the further out you go. I have, for a while now, giving dungeon like levels to however hexes out from a castle or other bastion of law that the party goes. I also turn up the weirdness. Talking animals, fairy rings, etc. Currently my games lean heavily Moorcock, so lots of law and chaos mixed in. I also love procedurally determining the contents of a hex, but I let that weirdness factor play a high role. If you have read the Chronicles of Amber by Zelazny, The further from Amber (The one Real place), the closer to Chaos (All potentiality). That too plays a big part in my thinking. If you go far enough "into the east" Magic gets harder to cast and technology is more stable. That is my justification for wizard towers btw. They can 'raise" the wizard into a higher chaos zone. Well enough rambling about my campaign. Great video as always. Happy to support this kind of work on Patreon.

I think the 2=wizard and 12=dragon comes from Nick LS Whelan over at Papers & Pencils. Good blog.

Hotsprings Island has a lovely little system for "motivation", which is a 3d6 table for what creatures that you encounter are doing. I love this because the most common results are eating or walking or whatever you might expect, the rare ones include territorial displays, defecating performing a ritual (the tables vary by monster type). There are also asterisk entries, which like combat*, chasing* or fleeing*. Which tells you to roll again to determine the other party involved. If you roll that the high priest is fleeing from the zombies you'll need an assload of zombies and a plausible reason why they have turned (possibly schism in the dark priesthood?) These tables create so much emergent narrative and take a lot of burden off the GM

Nice! A perfect topic that is well known. However well know Random Monsters are I love hearing alternate ways of using them!

I like the idea of the 2D6 table where it’s a monster and what they’re doing

I’m so glad you’re mentioning VTT I only use roll20 so that’s what I’m looking for

Another suggestion of dice roll is (1d12+1d8). I see in a old d&d book this type of roll for a enconter.

Hey man: I recently discovered your channel & am enjoying your videos. You run your game VERY differently from how I do, but I like your presentation style, and it’s good to hear differing views expressed well; makes me re-examine my own ways. Great job!

Random tables makes it feel more real and unscripted. As a DM it makes it also more exciting.

This is so inspiring and helps so much!! Thank you

Great video! One thing I always do when using a VTT is just represent all NPCs and players with letter tokens. Then all new encounters can just be a question mark token. This way my players never know what was planned long ahead of time, and what was randomly rolled at the moment. It's not as pretty, but it gets the job done.

Great stuff! Thank you for making this video.

Thank you for this!

i love using the random encounter tables and using them to stock future encounters. If I roll goblins a few times then I'm going to place a goblin warcamp nearby and add rumors about how people have been seeing more goblins lately.

Good stuff...truly...

I've been doing d12 for my encounter tables

Great video. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the OGL situation

Many decades ago, it seemed fine that dungeon rooms had random monsters inside. Heck, a lot of those early modules in AD&D were written that way. The game has shifted for most groups into a narrative rich experience. where it doesn’t make sense that a Wizard is just hanging out alone in a horrible dungeon room along with a bunch of other random monsters. Making sense of the monsters that appear during the campaign is important DM work ahead of time.

Wandering monsters tend to attract those who don't pay attention and begin to stack dice.😊

Very nice video, thanks for sharing. I define my wandering monsters along the same principles but I like the 2d6 method (I love the d12 and use it normally) to "normalize" the curve and reduce the probability for high level (or unusual/"out-of-context"?) monsters.

Really like the idea of making tables 2d6. What I might try is having a bad encounter on 2 and a good encounter on 12. So a hostile dragon on a 2 and a friendly or neutral wizard on a 12. But I also like your idea of rolling for the disposition...

What is that thing in the thumbnail?

27:33 exactly like this

I’m having trouble understanding when to use random tables. Like I’ll make a map with encounters but should I roll to see if they’re moving around or to see what they’re doing? Or should I roll to see what monsters are also near by? I have so many questions

What do you mean by Gonzo?

here's the way I handle random encounters. every day there are two random encounter rolls. one for teh day of travel, and one for the rest period. on each of these random encounter rolls, roll 2d6. on a 6-8, nothing of note happens. 3-5, a normal random encounter of hostile creatures or negative events occurs. 9-11, a normal random encounter of neutral or friendly creatures or positive events occurs. on a 2, rare negative event or random hostile enouncter occurs. and on a 12, a rare posite event or random neutral or friendly encounter occurs. roll 1d12 to determine WHEN during the day of travel occurs, adding the die result in hours to when the party started their journey. or roll 1d8 instead of 1d12 if it's for an encounter during a rest period, adding the resultin hours to when the party started their rest. each day is broken up into three time segments. 4am to noon is morning, noon to 8pm is day, and 8pm to 4am is night. each encounter roll uses a different encounter table for each of these three time segments.

Oh no! Not an Ogre Jelly!

I cannot stress how important it is to make sure the threats in your adventures/dungeons have a REASON to be there. It is so awful having to hack your way through random, nonsensical creatures that feel like they're only there to eat away your resources, slow you down, and force you to roll dice just for the sake of rolling dice. In my mind if an encounter doesn't have a narrative purpose that pushes the story forward, or makes sense for a particular situation, why even bother?

Cool video! I believe it was PapersPencils who popularised the "2 is always a dragon, 12 is always a wizard" style of 2d6 tables.

Awesome stuff, one of the things players like is "realism" in the imaginary world's 'life'. NPCs and monsters have agendas and needs that may or may not have any impact on the "party goals". Also consider going for a consistent feel: In a dungeon with multiple wandering Jellies all the other critters are worried about encountering wandering Jellies. In a town with a Thieves Guild crimes will be happening that have no connection to the party. In wilderness, a random magical beast is probably hunting? The defeated NPC party trying to find their way out of the dungeon makes for awesome plot hook insertion.

I do all of the rolls ahead of time, what turn/hour, what monster, number appearing, surprise, distance, direction, and even their disposition toward the encounter/reaction roll. If in the wilderness, I even have my own table for the encounter....that way sometimes a natural event or location trumps having yet another monster.

Great video :) Another option for low/high rolls (2/12) is to have monsters from other levels/areas wandering in. For exmaple if you roll a low number you reroll on the table for the next lower floor. On the other hand if you roll high then the encounter is from the higher floor. The encounter is then automatically a bit harder or easier. I saw something similar in regards to hexcrawls with encounters from nearby regions wandering in your area. Can't remember which one specifically.

I find you very likable and interesting. Awesome D&D channel. I find your enthusiasm and knowledge of the game very compelling and inspiring, just wish I could play a lot more than I currently do!

Don't forget about rival adventurers.

This is certainly a legitimate way of doing it but I find I don’t like the bell curve as it takes some of the “randomness” out of random encounters. You end up rolling 6-8 an incredible ~43% of the time. I’d prefer a method suggest by Baron de Ropp. Roll a d6 for level 1, d8 for level 2, and d10 for level 3 and then factor your encounters list as so: 1. Giant Rats 2. Skeletons 3. Zombies 4. Skeletons & Zombies 5. Ochre Jelly 6. Evil Priest 7. Wight 8. Mummy 9. Wraith 10. Evil High Priest This way your encounters a truly random, level appropriate, and you’re not stuck facing the same encounter almost half the time.

My personal method for these random monsters is rooted in using the Giffyglyph Monster Maker for homebrewing all my creatures. When building a region or dungeon, I roll 3 random creature types and 3 random damage types, the 3 rolls representing a primary, secondary, and tertiary for each of those. I don't include humanoid or beast or bludgeoning,slashing,piercing beause those are just assumed to exist pretty much anywhere. I then combine this with Baron deRoth's (can't remember his actual YT channel's name) video he put out about sliding encounter tables where you may only roll a d6, but you have more than 6 choices on the table that you can slide where the d6 falls depending on the needs of the random encounter. I make a table of 13 choices. 1 is a wandering boss monster, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 are all non-combat encounters, and 3,5,7,9,11, and 13 are all combat encounters. The encounters will all be themed to the region/dungeon based on my rolls: Primary Creature + Primary Damage, Primary Creature + Secondary Damage, Primary Creature + Tertiary Damage, Secondary Creature + Primary Damage, Secondary Creature + Secondary Damage, and Tertiary Creature + Primary Damage. The wandering boss takes traits of all 3 creature types and all 3 damage types. The Giffyglyph monster maker uses party level for creature levels, where as long as the creatures are within 2 levels of your party, they don't affect the encounter building / they all have the same "weight" in the encounter that they normally would. Then the encounter itself is trivial, easy, normal, hard, or deadly depending on how many combatants you slot into the encounter. The exact table I use looks as follows: 1) Wandering Boss (Hard Encounter) 2) Trap/Hazard (Negative Non-Combat) 3) Combat (Normal, Party Level +2) 4) Trap/Hazard (Negative Non-Combat) 5) Combat (Normal, Party Level +2) 6) Some sort of Neutral Non-Combat encounter, like a social encounter that could go either way depending on how the party interacts with it 7) Combat (Normal, Party Level) 8) Neutral Non-Combat 9) Combat (Normal, Party Level) 10) Positive Non-Combat like an Ally, Reward, or extra knowledge of some sort 11) Combat (Normal, Party Level -2) 12) Positive Non-Combat 13) Combat (Normal, Party Level -2) I then take each of those creature type/ damage type things and pair them with beast or humanoid depending on what flavor makes most sense for the encounter. I slot them into the 6 encounters based on where I think they fit best. An example region I made for this, I rolled Primary - Undead, Secondary - Dragon, Tertiary - Giant with Primary - Lightning, Secondary - Poison, Tertiary - Acid. This meant that the wandering boss of the region was a dracolich (Undead + Dragon) that wielded runic magic of the giants. Its main forms of attack were lightning based, but it also had poison and acid attacks as well. The encounter tables featured Undead + Lightning, Undead + Poison, Undead + Acid, Dragon + Lightning, Dragon + Poison, and Giant + Lightning combinations. For that last one, as an example of how I incorporate beast and humanoid, I had the Giant + Lightning encounter be a wandering band of lightning based troll scouts that had beasts with them that they were hunting with. This allows me to use a sliding scale. Do I want them to encounter the boss? Cool, any 1 roll will do it. Do I want them to not have combat at all? Well, there are non-combat encounters. Do I want them to have a mix, but keep it on the easier side because they're in a safer area / rolled well? I can roll the 8 - 13 range to give me the easier / more rewarding results. It's worked well so far and has honestly helped me come up with some interesting regions and dungeons that I'd never have come up with on my own simply from seeing the random combinations that the dice roll. Has made some very interesting, thematic zones for the party to adventure in for sure. I have been recently wondering about moving to a multiple dice roll table system instead of my just flat, single dice system where everything has the same chance of showing up, however, especially for creature types. Just seems better to have a bell curve of results where I can slot in the rarer creature types into the ends of the results, with the more common ones in the middle, and would allow me to add humanoid/beast into the table so I can just make them part of the encounters as well. And I can shift where in the table specific creature types go based on how common they are in the region, while maintaining a general, world scale chart of "here's how common these creature types are overall" for when I'm not really sure what the biodiversity of the region they're going to is.

Ahhh ask the players to roll for random monsters 🤔👌 this changes nothing for me, but is much more dramatic🍻⚔️

I asked for this one! Big thanks Daniel, can’t wait to watch!

Curated encounters----yes! Using distance in encounter----yes! 2d6 bell curve----yes! Nice sponsor too; it's a really good product. An extra step in security is always good. You showcased it perfectly.

Wandering monsters random roll, .. My DM started us all as 4th-level PC without any multiclass restrictions. Then using 3e .. So my PC was rogue/aristocrat/bard/expert1. my Bluff skill was at 16ranks. with no attack bonus. So when random wandering monsters came up as being Hill Giants, my chaotic neutral PC ran from cover and roll for a Con Job to b.s the hill giants into going back to the last creek side village that had a bunch of tents. I told them they are willing to pay workers tents/ clothing cloth in helping to build a new bridge and do some road work. The DM given me a I hate you evil eye zhity look. The other players thought I just handed the group a TPK at the start of the game. I passed my Bluff with high roll. So as a turn about, the DM had the group roll up more PCs as to who is from the village and who was going to PC the hill giants. So the mini game broke down into two groups, first group of trouble makes that the nobles send out to deal with the humanoids, the second group of human/hill giants doing bridge and road repairs. All because the DM lets us power game for max skill ranks.

Your final points (about making players aware of noise, not everything being hostile, using distance, and asking yourself about scenes/situations) are great. Note to new DMs: this level of thought demands more of you as a DM -- it requires you to do more than just look at a table in a book and roll a die. You can get in the habit of a anticipating the "opening scene" of an encounter by playing it like a brief movie in your imagination (think reel or tiktok video length) . If you already do this without realizing it, great. Over time you will develop the skill of creating these "opening scenes" on the fly.

Another great video, I missed you saying it but the 1981 Basic guide says to make a wandering monster table and then stock your rooms from that table except for any Special monsters the DM particularly wants. So the table is consistent with the denizens of the dungeon

Your content is amazing, I use so many of your tips in my games and I'm playing 5e. We home rule a few things and it's super fun. You also really helped inspire some of my dungeon design. Thank you Daniel!

thanks