Running Random Encounters 

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"The best way to do a random encounter is to create a planned encounter."

Doors are monsters they are the greatest enemy of an adventurer. Forget about demons, monsters and eldritch abominations. Doors are the boogeyman of all true heros. If you ask an adventurer what they fear most and they don't answer "DOORS!" be suspensious

Remember, there's no right way to do it, but here's how you should do it. Okay... I, personally, think a random encounter can be "Oh, a bunch of orcs show up to fight you" as long as it seems likely to happen. If you're passing through an area where orcs wander, you might run into some and they'd be angry to see you there. As long as there's a reason for them to be there, it's fine. Random encounters can be more interesting than that, but their primary reason for existing is for resource depletion. To burn through your player's resources and make them weaker against the boss monster. As for wanting to redirect players from the villain, you should come up with this before you start the adventure, I think. I have an adventure where I introduced my villain early on, and the way I keep them from fighting him right away is 1, I have both the players and the villain going after the same objects which could make either of them theoretically have amazing draconic powers, and 2, the main villain is hidden away. They have no idea where he is, so they can't just go and fight him. They have to go after the artifacts that the villain is after in order to have any chance of getting closer to him. With a spider familiar, the spider can find cracks or gaps to crawl through. So the dungeon maker should make sure that there are no spaces at all for bugs to slip through. Make that dungeon air tight. Actually, it's quite easy to put doors in a forest... They're useless, but you can put them there. Well, I suppose you can have the doors placed onto the trees to make the trees have interiors to explore, or you could connect the doors with walls of force, if you like.

When I introduce a bad guy, I often have the players find out that it's a secret/framed/misunderstood good guy and that the guy who sent them on the quest is the real bad guy

What if a spider was able to bypass the door by going through a crack in the wall or something? Also about doors; If I don't put a door, its because that sh!t's a trap. Maybe a tripwire that activates an explosive glyph of warding, or a flaming/psn arrow trap. Be creative with it. My goal in that case would be to say "Sure there's no doors, but you still can't barrel through the dungeon" without literally saying it, thereby catching them off guard.

...Were I a DM, and I rolled on a random encounter table, and I rolled, say, a dragon for a low-leveled party, I’d have the dragon be injured and not initially hostile. That said, I’ve never even played, let alone DMed, so...

Im a rookie DM, currently my table has no random encounters, I wanna have it but with a good reason, something is going wrong with the world and the creatures are getting uneasy and attacking more often. Im about to start the random encounters

New DM, still learning the ropes, mostly no idea what I'm doing, but funnily enough, I kinda already do these. My Group is all newbies, except maybe one (who introduced me to DnD) who is more familiar with 3.5e. It was planned as Oneshot, then extended to become its own little homebrew campaign, set in a parallel Version of the Forgotten Realms. The first villain I introduced to them, I planned to become a major villain, a priest of a new dark god, who tried to brain control people. They played right in my hand with giving him a reason to hate them personally, by hacking off his arms and legs. And the first random encounter I had for them to, well, encounter, was a Drowned Maiden from the Tome of Beasts, pretendeding to be drowning to lure them in, so she could drown them. Didn't work exactly as planned, as they killed her instead of catching on to the (admittedly kinda bad) clues I threw them to try to negotiate, but I can just let her come back again and again until they help her solve her problems, giving them some (hopefully) moral dilemma to sort out. Also gave out some possible future plothooks in that encounter, with them saving some magical creatures from a sinking smugglers cart. Until now, they said they enjoyed what I gave them, and I hope I can keep this up. As sidenote, does anybody know of something like a wild magic effects table, but for, like, surroundings instead of for spells? I'm still working on it, but I had an idea for maybe something like a Convergence happening towards the end of the campaign, screwing with the rules of physics and reality itself, maybe somewhat like at the end of Thor The Dark Kingdom? I think that could be interesting.

Naww. Naww. Even an encounter with orcs stampeding over the ridge line is an opportunity to roleplay and allow the DM to judge your alignment. You can slay captives, spare lives, release survivors, interrogate prisoners, recruit orcs as henchmen, etc. etc. Not every encounter has to make sense or be interesting. Hence the term “random”. Don’t listen to this guy. He’s only been DMing since high school. And why is he screaming “It’s a big horse!” At the camera? Do all mounts have to be horses? Why not an Umber Hulk?

We've gone for Dungeons and Dragons to Dungeons and Doors.

Not to mention the Paladins steed would trigger every trap it encountered.

Dude was thinking his steed was like the one in tangled lmao sword fighting people and being generally smarter than the part lol that could actually be pretty entertaining

Counter-argument: Random Encounters don't need to be cute little "interesting" stories on their own right. Even though I love the sentiment, that could often distract from the main quest or story with endless little sidequests actually padding the lenght of the game even worse than "generic combat from a table Nr. 4". In the OSR philosophy, wandering monsters; rampaging orcs, prowling direwolves, etc. are not pointless, they are a tool to apply pressure on players. If a system focuses on getting to the gold hoard rather than getting XP from killing stuff, players will want to avoid penniless monsters showing up by the hour that will just drain their ressources. This is intented to pressure players to move forward, take less rests, use stealth, find shortcuts, focus on their objective. Etc.

An entire campaign can be looking for the BBEG: "Where's Francis?"

If you just kill the big bad , the underlings all just got a promotion, they don't just stop villaining...

Thumbnail had me thinking: “random encounters suck unless you drop Moloch, the maligned demon prince, on your unsuspecting party.”

just write some fun things and do them when the game goes slow and you feel like you need something to shake it up. Seriously, just take a memo of every random idea you get, no matter how stupid, write it down, make a voice recording, just note them down. My last random encounter i put into my game was literally just a woman who ran to the party and cried ogres stole her sheep, and it turned out the sheep was her boyfriend, cursed by a necklace she made him wear for cheating on her. Didnt even end up in combat, our bard convinced the ogres that one wanted to poison the other one and they took the sheep while the ogres were fighting each other.

"There is no right way to run a module" *Looks at every 5e adventure* Damn it, he's right...

I hope this doesnt come off as annoying, but you mention how "Orcs Attack" isnt a good random encounter, when the first in your Random Encounter List is literally an Orcs Attack, does the Wall of Disease intruige carry into the encounter?

Reasons your dungeons need doors: Familiars, wildshaped druids, invisible rogues, echo knights and arcane eye. Unless you prefer to hand your players the map before they step inside, you should really put a door on it.

When the rant about the horse started, I couldn't stop laughing as I was reminded of John Mulaney's "horse in the hospital" skit.

There are some things that you can have happen to make a "Random" encounter, work as well as a "Planned" encounter. 1) As the DM you need to make the players think it IS a planned encounter. If you can't think of a way to do that. Just don't do it. As soon as the players know it's "Just a random encounter" they will lose a certain amount of investment in the session unless they are simple murder hobos. If they ARE murder hobos its probably fine to do away with the entire adventure and just roll on a table to determine the body shape and tone of green of their next victims. They won't care... 2) Prepare your "Random" encounters in advance. This sounds a bit contrary to the nature of "random" but its not. Depending on how you select what random encounters you will use there will some sort of list for you to refer to. So, refer to that source before the game and have the various results already rolled up and noted down on a card or sheet of paper or document on your computer/device. They take very little time to do, they take up very little space in a folder, throw a quick map in there and by the time you have finished stat blocking it all, you will normally have evolved a more thorough idea of what the encounter actually IS... And a pre planned "Ambush" works ten times better than "Suddenly, a goblin archer takes a shot at you from behind a rock/tree/dead horse, roll for surprise/initiative/lack of interest..." Depending on what system you use for mapping, knocking together a "Road with some trees" is not a huge task. Even using things like Dungeonfog and roll20, these can be cobbled together in 5 minutes along with a description of the "Encounter" and saved for when needed. Make it feel planned and the party will act accordingly. (Eventually, if you as the DM appear to treat all encounters the same way, you may even get them into that sweet spot that players can sometimes reach where they don't think in terms of "How does the DM want/expect me to react to this", and just have their characters realistically react to whatever is in front of them without thinking about whether or not this is "Part of the adventure".) 3) Do NOT allow the players to hear/see you roll the dice then start flipping through pages, accompanied by a "Sigh"... and for Gods sake don't do something dumb like apologise that the dice have decided that they have met a random encounter. If you are annoyed at having been forced to run the encounter because "Dice rule the world," then guess how they will feel when they know that the thing they are about to risk their characters lives over is a trivial distraction to YOU, and that you are already shifting the blame for their potential demise away from yourself in a world where you are literally more powerful than the Gods in terms of their character's life and death! 4) Don't allow them to be just random death squads of self sacrificial lunatics. Treat them the same as any other monster/NPC. If you do that, so will your players. There are lots of ways an encounter can be "Not a fight to the death with some ugly creature hell bent on killing you". If the players have missed bits of the plot that impart important information have a group of travellers happen upon their way... given the right approach and interaction, THEY may be able to give this information to the players... Merchants, rival adventuring parties, military messengers who might want the safety of a group for a while as they themselves are being pursued... loads of possibilities. 5) Remember there is a difference between a "Random Encounter" and a "Wandering Monster" (whatever the terminology being used in the adventure decides to use). A Wandering Monster is something that already exists within the planned adventure area, it's purpose and goals will already be understood. They normally exist in game terms to keep players on their toes in a dungeon type situation to avoid them just parking their butts in a room and taking a rest and occasionally throw a spanner in the works of their carefully laid plans. Random Encounters are usually there to break up travel sequences to avoid them becoming stale. Treating them this way in terms of choosing when to use them will help you a lot. If the party are on their way home and have just had a big fight, and are happily role-playing between themselves, then it's up to YOU whether you even want to bother rolling for a "Random" encounter. Most Important Rule that, if you run games anywhere near the way I do, applies to pretty much EVERYTHING in the game is this... Do NOT let the dice ruin a perfectly good game session! Remember YOU are the DM, YOU tell the GODS what to do!

Stupid Orcs?! My Orcs would shoot arrows at the party horses until the horse died then run. That leaves the party on foot, easy horsemeat when the party moved on, and slow heavily armed parties could be attacked via missile weapons if the Orcs wanted so sometimes the Orcs demanded tribute to leave the party alone!

"Orcs stampeding over a hill" Easy, they're having a running competition.

Fey wild forest in the material plain could also act as an "outdoor" dungeon of sorts. The forest is too dense to move through and it's alive enough to create it's own corridors, rooms and doors. Vine doors :P

As someone who grew up around horses, I disagree with the idea that a horse cannot manipulate a doorknob...

7:42 "You can make an interesting encounter, it doesn't just need to be orcs stampeding over a hill" No, of course not. You'd rather they come screaming from a copse of trees.

The horse issue: This is no different than using familiars to scout ahead. Sometimes they die...

My Big Bad, an archmage, needed to have a conversation with the party (Level 3s). They listened, then attacked, even though he was clearly out of their league. Round 1: Hold Person on the fighter. Round 2: Sleep on the Warlock and Ranger. Round 3: He looks at the elf Druid, the only one still able to do anything, and says, "I was being polite. Do not push my courtesy further" and uses dimension door.

I started watching and thought "why is this sounding super familiar" and then I remembered I actually caught this stream live 😄

I thought that same thing with the mad mage. My solution was he started to become more coherent the more damage he took. This got my players to think oh something isn't right with this guy and did cartoon logic if we hit him enough he might go back to normal. And I liked how my players came up from a non-murderhobo solution so I went with it

How about an entire dungeon made of doors and only the creatures who live there know which ones lead anywhere

Eh Phandelver’s encounter table at least came with a corresponding list of descriptions. Depending on how they’re played, they didn’t need to all end with fighting.

Hey Luke, big fan, but you might wanna double check the properties of find steed. Not only can the paladin make his Mount disappear at will (as an action), but they can also communicate telepathically for up to one mile. So one could send the warhorse to scout, have the horse alert them when they see enemies, and then promptly disappear. Sure, the enemies might be alerted that something is up, but the players would be aware of what’s ahead without technically being seen. Using find steed to scout isn’t such a bad technique after all!

Respect on the redhead pick Kevin :)

You could make a forest a confined space by making it magical, as the trees was "moving" and making a strict path. I took this idea from LOTR, when the Hobbies goes through the Old Forest between Shire and Bri.

Our Dm let our paladin take a grizzly bear as a steed. At like, level 5, or whenever you get the spell. It was BROKEN, doing more damage than the barbarian every turn, and the DM never had a problem with it. Eventually the paladin player just stopped using it because he could tell the rest of us were getting pretty annoyed that he was usually doing 3-4 times more damage than anyone else.

I'll be honest that if the situation was laid out the way you assume with the find steed then sure you are right... But you know not all situations are as you assume. (A halfling oath of ancients paladin named Tacis Obaltoe uses his find steed to summon his Mastiff mount(reflavored German shepherd) and plans to ask him to slooth along the outskirts of a bandit camp and comeback with the number of enemies that are on guard.) This is the kind of situation i thought of when I heard the question as I assume the best of the players.

13:57 I actually burst out laughing when you just looked at the camera and just shouted ITS A BIG HORSE!

The question was about the mount scouting in a forest

And yet, sometimes, the entire purpose of random encounters IS just to fight and drain the party's resources - of healing potions, spells, HP, etc. ahead of the BBEG or mini boss encounter. Sometimes the drain of resources forces players to think more strategically about the boss encounter - either with better tactics or avoiding combat altogether.

My favorite random encounter I ever rolled was three giant badgers stumbled apon the players camp. They were completely non-hostile, just scavenging for supplies. So the players actually decided to go out of their way to scare away the animals WITHOUT violence. They used a spell to cause harmless tremors after a few failures.

I introduced the main villain of my campaign to my players very early. They tried to take him on, and a few of them got one shot by the villan (down, not dead). This villain wanted to emiminate the group because he saw them as a potential threat to the organization (cult) he leads. My players in an epic escape leaped off the side of a cliff, and all managed to dodge the pointed rocks at the bottom, landing safely in the water. They know there are several other cities they can go to, and defeating other bad guys there will weaken the big bad enough to where he is fightable at the level they will be (if they dont conquer each town he will have a much larger army). Thats how i dealt with my players meeting the big bad. Not sure if its the most effective, but my players really enjoyed it.

In the outdoors, I feel random encounters demonstrate how dangerous or not the area is - a random encounter with a chimera swooping down and snatching up a pack horse is a totally different encounter than a random encounter with a naiad arguing with a beaver about damming her stream. Inside a dungeon, they represent things like patrols and beings that live there actually LIVING there, and the way I run it, if a given encounter happens, it's removed from the list, and a reroll of that number means no encounter. An outdoor encounter doesn't even need to know the party encountered them. In the BOOK form of The hobbit, they see a pair of stone giants off in the distance, tossing boulders together for fun.

What I do with random encounters is have the players preroll 4 or 5 times during session zero. Then type up the encounters and shove them into an envelope. So when the random encounter pops up, I say, this random encounter was brought to us by Bob. So if you do die. Blame Bob. Random encounters are combat pools to strange in world people.

took a cab to a new dms place and was ready to play along with the other two people. We fought a monster from a random encounter that the DM made us fight cause he and I quote said "I'm bored now." (our first action in the game was to leave the village for some reason...) He rolled on the chart and got a monster that was to strong for our three man party so all we did was sit around as the DM downgraded the monster til it was a challenge but not a tpk.

Over the last 15 years, we have mostly ran adventures outdoors. It is not a real problem. We've ran from level 1 all the way up to 20, fighting anything from Moon Rats to the Tarrasque. In most cases it does not matter if there are walls or a roof. I actually find that dungeon crawls need a lot more artificial limitations, or players will just use magic to bypass most of the dungeon.

New video title: "Why Dungeon Doors are OVERRATED!"

Spiders can get through gaps in doors. They are rather pesky like that.

Dungeons need doors because you don't just walk into more-door.

As a GM I always feel that there should be some kind of rewards when I throw random encounters (RE) at my players... Sure, you kan spice up the game with RE but it might feel pointless to the players if it doesn't move the story forward or give them any reward other than XP. I might be completly wrong but for that reason I find it very difficult to throw RE at my players for just no reason. What's your thought about that?

A bigger problem with random encounters is it how it fails with the adventuring day. You frequently get all your abilities, spells, and hp back on each side of the encounter.

Sometimes, a random encounter of.... say... orcs come screaming over a hill to attack the players... is to thwart players propensity to take too many rests, or sit around in a deadlock unable to make decisions. Kind of like a consequence of not taking an action. A slap in the face bit of action to get their adrenaline pumping. Besides.. some of my best friends are orcs.

random encounters are great for buffering your prep (don't let them know you haven't prepped Rivendell yet)

Soooooooo…. When the horse returns from scouting can the horse talk like Mr. Ed from the 60’s show and relay what’s going on in the orc camp? 😂

That thumb ring completes you

7:48 well i sometimes use random encounters for a grind, to weaken the party a bit while their going through the dungeon or whatever

Here’s how I keep my players away from my villains; “Law states you can’t do this or that” “You can’t pass through here without a license” and “HALT YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW, PAY THE COURT A FINE OR SERVE YOUR SENTENCE” alternatively “You have to make a survival check to know which direction your heading” followed by “You glance up through the dense trees but the time of day is too unclear to you, you assume the direction you look in is north” and then sending them the opposite direction for a few hours before they come across a lake or something not on their map and go “wait a second where are we?” And then obviously the “You don’t know where he is” works as well

There is no reason to think a model of adventure is the "best model". Indoors has advantages and drawbacks, outdoors too. Like someone said, the video essentially says: "The best way to do a random encounter is to create a planned encounter".

A random encounter table is just a procedural dungeon generator. The result on the table tells you what is (or was) in that "dungeon room" (time segment); the result on the d20 tells you if there's an encounter present. The story is emergent -- there's no need to force one. If you have a few stories you want to run, and want to roll a dice to see which one you drop hooks for, that's fine. However, your world is gonna get weird when the players are standing in front of Soltice [sic] the Unicorn for the third time this week, or when five different orc camps are seemingly all building Walls of Disease. Some adventures have both an encounter table and a biome table, multiplying the number of variations. The point is that the random selection takes pressure off the GM to hand-pick stuff, the encounter table corresponds to the activity levels of factions and monster populations in the area, and the biome table (if available) provides some variation along the length of a journey. Don't ignore encounter rolls just because there isn't an encounter -- instead of orcs, there might be orc tracks, or the remains of an orc war-camp. Monsters that casually engage the party should escape when they realise "this is not easy prey." Monsters that escape don't disappear -- they're now mobile elements of the world that know about the party, and may add onto the next encounter with monsters of the same faction -- a faction that now knows to treat the party with greater caution. Random encounter tables are great. Procedural dungeons are great. Emergent stories are great.

I’d argue that random encounters also serve the purpose of helping to make your world feel more alive. Definitely doesn’t need to be 100% combat encounters but these little encounters with beasts, people, and other weird things makes you feel like there isn’t this void between point and and point b. Add interest things the players will run into. Make it feel like the world has other things going on than just this one main plot. If you can connect the plot to these little encounters, that’s even better (e.g., players running into a family that has been horrifically affected by something the big bad has been somehow involved with). Also if the worry is it takes too much session time to do a fight and you and everyone at the table knows the encounter is trivial, you can always just do a quick roll fight where you have players say what they want to do and roll 2d6 to determine if they were able to do that very thing they set out to do in the fight. If they roll 10+ they do exactly that, if they roll 6-9 they do what they said they would with one complication, and a 5 or lower is a failure and something not so desirable happens).

I'm running LMoP for my kids. My random encounters have been a group of hobgoblins bounty hunters with a crudely drawn portrait of one of my player's pc with wanted by the black spider. The second encounter there were more hobgoblins & two wanted pictures. The thrid time they meet goblins are raiding phandalin stealing kids. The party managed to save all kids expect carp (who has been an active pc in the game since session 1) the party tracks the raiding goblin party to cragmaw cave. (this replaced Thunder tree Town I felt it was a pointless mission) They fight their way through the cave and save carp. On the way home carp tells them that the goblins aren't happy with the black spider. Once home a pc over heard a hobgoblin talking with two hooligans (second upstart of red brands) telling them the cragmaw's aren't happy with how they're being treated. I planted this hoping the party with try to negotiate with king grol and have a neat social encounter. I might have king grol's (grohl) commander Novoselic a magic using hob goblin, who they witnessed in phandalin with the hooligans, join them for wave echo cave.

Superb advice, except the mount question specified “in the forest”. Most of the advice still holds true, tho. The paladin is sending a poorly prepared creature alone into a dangerous forest.

I don't generally do 'random' encounters. If I want an encounter to take place during travel, or during a long rest in a dungeon, I will create a bespoke encounter based on that specific surrounding. If they're exploring a forest looking for a bandit camp, I will not roll on a random table to see if they face 2d8 orcs or 1d4 displacer beasts or 1 owlbear or 2d12 bandits, I'm going to have them encounter a group of bandits, or potentially a group of people fleeing from or otherwise affected by the bandit presence 100 times out of 100 times. Also, during travel, what I like to do with combat encounters is sort of simulate a 'mini dungeon' by having the encounter lead to some bit of information that queues up a time sensitive second encounter, which queues up a third encounter. A party comes across a group of spiders chasing an injured adventurer, they can intervene and fight off the spiders, or let the adventurer get caught and killed. If they save the adventurer, he'll tell about his allies who are caught up in the spiders' nest. The PCs go kill all the spiders, but find no captured adventurers. Turns out, they just got hoodwinked by a rival group to complete their quest for them, and are going to go get paid for having cleared out the spider nest. The PCs might come to blows with the alternative adventurers, particularly if the rival adventurers sense the PCs are weakened from the fight, or will return for revenge later. The PCs get to kind of modulate the level of involvement they want to have with the series of encounters, being able to eject at any time if the micro story seems or becomes boring to them, but also they have a reason to track daily resources like HP without having a single encounter be screamingly difficult. Ideally there is some information conveyed through the series of encounters about the area or the villains the PCs are in the area to deal with as well, so it's not a complete non sequitur to the story.

Yes ! My 3 player at lvl 1 after they tricked the first miniboss and thus gained a guide for the mid bad guys lair, they wanted to descend on a castle like the angels of death ( little fluffy angles wit safety scissors) The miniboss had to spell it out, hat on the 6 of (1 goblin 1 wolf 1 bugbear and 3 lvl1 PC) us is not enough and he don't want to make a suicide mission. :D

All Good Villains need a HYPE man to directly interact with the PCs. These dudes build up their boss by literally telling the PCs how scary he is.

I think the original purpose of random encounters was to deplete party resources. My encounters tend to be 1/3 "monster" that has a reason to be in the area and may attack the party, 1/3 stand-alone micro-stories, and 1/3 adventure/lore hooks.

My random encounters: “did you say there needs to be something interesting? Ok, let’s make this already scary creature kill two other already scary creatures to make it look scarier!” That actually worked btw, they didn’t even fight it, they watched it kill two others then walk off and start eating something, and they did gain from it by stealing resources from the two kills the creature made by harvesting their hide and meat, but they had to be careful or attract the attention of the bigger beast.

I am currently running a modified version of Lost Mine of Phandelver. It’s actually a well designed module in that it has everything in it you might need, but is still very flexible for both the DM and the Players. The middle of the module is very sandboxy with lots of options the players can take in any order, or ignore all together. Lots of NPCs and options for players to align with various factions and organizations. Many of the side quests involve two or three day’s travel between locations, and the module offers multiple random encounters (and describes the mechanics for running them) to liven up the traveling. I originally intended to NOT use the random encounters, but at least three or more of the possible locations might only involve additional information and a bit of role playing interactions with no combat at all. The DM could just divulge the information without the side quest mechanics, but that is relatively boring. And if the travelled to encounter only involves 10 minutes of dialog, it’s super boring. I find that the random encounters really spice up the traveling, plus convey more effort from the party in gaining information. Granted, I modified the encounters a bit and completely replace the roll table, but the encounters are worthwhile. Also, the final dungeon of the campaign is huge. The map is 8 feet by 5 feet with multiple possible routes. The module has specific encounters listed for key locations and events, but much of the dungeon is based on random encounters. I think this makes the dungeon crawl much more interesting. The party can’t be sure that the area behind them will remain unoccupied, and taking too long to decide their next action creates a greater likelihood of being attacked. I say that the random encounters CAN enrich the game if the DM uses them well.

How do you show the players that the BBEG is beyond their ability (without having it just murder them all)? Use a benchmark. This can be either an NPC ally (or multiple allies) that have proven themselves to be much stronger than the party, OR it can be through a different monster that the party barely defeated. Have the BBEG effortlessly kill this benchmark, or have the benchmark demonstrate fear or submissiveness toward the BBEG. If your players were barely able to defeat an adult black dragon, how do you think they'll react when the BBEG has 2 of them that do it's bidding? If they still underestimate the BBEG then that's on them and you need to TPK that group.

Gotta comment about the social contract argument around 9:00, since you have said this numerous time in many videos. I'd like to propose an addendum to your rule "follow plothooks because you want to play DnD". I would say that it is ok for the PCs to ignore a plothook if they A) Already have something else to do (important and time-sensitive) B) Are very distrustful/suspicious of the source of the plothook (this criminal is offering us a shady job, and we want nothing to do with him). I could probably think of more examples, but the point is - if you wanna ignore a plothook, you should have a VERY good reason to do so, but if you do, it should be ok!

Hi Luke, I use your resources a lot. In matter of fact I created a campaign around your single adventures. I am about to run Siege On Gauntlet Hall which happens outside. One of my players have Boots of Flying and one of may players have Fly spell. Any advice would be highly appreciated. (You said in this video that most of the module's adventures happens inside)

Another fix for the too early discovery of the BBEG would be the "Straw Man " option. The BBEG places an easy to defeat decoy for the players to trounce. Like The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 who turns out to be Trevor, an English actor hired to pose as The Mandarin. Not the BBEG himself. Not yet, anyway ...

"How do you handle a paladin using his/her mount as a scout?" I hate these sorts of attitudes that clearly want to favor one class over another. Paladin doesn't need help, I know, but why would you let a wizard with a 1st level ritual get an animal familiar as a scout, but not want the paladin to do so with a mount? Because it's part of _your_ definition of the respective class fantasies? This is the kind of DM that would cry about a cleric without religion proficiency, or a bard without performance. There are plenty of sensible, fun character ideas that mix up class fantasies. To be clear, I'm not bashing the argument that horses are big and might not be the best scouts, but it doesn't seem like that idea crossed the question-asker's mind. They just DON'T WANT the paladin to be able to do this.

If a party of 5 can one shot an archmage then the game is broken. How boring to be an invincible superhero. Combat should be deadly and avoided unless there is no other option, no matter what level you are. And 'levels' are why the game is broke in the first place - why should an experienced soldier have 10 times the HP as a new recruit? they should be the same. it's the skills that differ. DND is stupid :)

(19:10) - "Doors are over rated" ? : Just ask Critical Role (Campaign 1) about 'Doors' (Spoiler - hardest CR 'creatures' the party EVER faced)

"There's no right way to play a module" => I really think that probably depends on the module... and to be clear I'm dunking on very rigid module design, not the underlying principle that folks should play their own way. But there is a reason no one uses a heavy-size truck or tractor to commute to work... because the design of trucks & tractors is so specialized that it makes them almost impossible to utilize outside their niche. Similarly, an adventure module could be so linear that it is almost impossible to repurpose, or conversely too dependent on random subsystems. Eg. no one runs Scenic Dunsmouth and skips rolling the random map... because what would be the point?

Here's another. One of the orcs calls over an evil paladin who takes one look and say. "Okay what b*****d did that to a perfectly good mount? Here, here, it's okay we'll take better care of you than that s***e! Let's get you cleaned up, fed and a place to rest before we escort you out of here and somewhere much more suitable I have castle with a decent stables where I can get this poor buggar to stay somewhere appropriate. Be sure to let the guards know there's a group of utter morons out there if you encounter direct the paladin responsible for this to my castle unless you want to kill the buggar yourself of course. I won't blame you if you did I mean who lets loose a paladin mount inside a dungeon for god's sake! And they call me EVIL!" shakes head at their stupidity. That's sort of possibility!

In older editions, or in games that emulate that style, random dungeon encounters mostly served to penalize inefficient use of time in-universe (searching every patch of 10x10 area, for instance). The idea being that every certain number of turns, there was a chance to run into trouble, and certain actions would occupy turns, even if they were quick to resolve and narrate. In more contemporary play, where it's possible for the entire party to have dark vision, as well as unlimited access to magical light and magically conjured food and water, and where XP is divorced from the acquisition of treasure, things like timekeeping, random encounters and strict encumbrance make less sense.

not gonna lie, but his responses to some of these questions have a bit of a "rude" tone. kinda has an attitude of a " are you friggin stupid?" perfect example, look at his response to the find steed spell. love the guy but the responses seem a bit rude.

Imagine, you make a joke to your gross hairy fat boss, and he threatens to withhold cash from you in front of the whole company. Yeah this guy for sure was very successful and had tons of friends I’m sure

Random encounters should ideally show players something about the world relevant to them or the story. It’s good to ask “why include this? And do it in this way?”. If you are having trouble determining those, you probably don’t need the encounter. Some reasons can include showing the financial hardship in a locale players are heading toward, revealing that local bandits are actually being paid by a mysterious benefactor, showing than an area is haunted and has a depth of story to it that shows off the cruelty of the tyrannical local lord, or so many other potential reasons. That’s my personal belief anyways :)

Random encounters should matter for world building, if they are just random stuff, they are pointless. A dangerous region should have random encounterd that shows people suffering, huge caravans on roads because it's dangerous. Make it matter or trow it away.

Find Steed: 1 mile telepathic communication, choose elk. It doesn't die when it hits 0 hp, it instead functions like a familiar, and you can summon it back with a lvl 2 slot, no other cost. Still yeah, I would recommend murderizing it if it scouts alone, regardless of what type of steed it is.

My players did not have to fight the BBEG when they last saw him. He was teleporting away dropping minions on the players to keep them busy. The warlock used counterspell and refused to let him leave. For context the players just finished fighting an ancient red dragon in what i can best describe as power armor and are low on resources. The players ran away in the end, narrowly escaping, it wasn't the first countered teleport that was the problem, it was the second. The players learned how much of a threat the villain is and now need to figure out how much stronger they are gonna need to be to stand a chance, that and don't provoke the BBEG when you just fought a dragon.

Which ghost was more beautiful, so her soul could rest in Barovia. Sadistic, I love it. For those who don't know, souls have specific rules in Barovia.

I mean. 6 intelligence horse isn't exactly gonna report back anything great anyway. imagine a 4 year old bringing you a report of what they saw.

Not all random encounters need to involve a creature of any kind. Your players adventuring through Chult? Have them encounter an ancient, worn rope bridge dangling across a ravine with a thundering river below. The bridge's integrity is suspect, but it might be hours, if not days before they can walk around the ravine and cross elsewhere.

My step-dad made a plot hook, he planned 4 roads out of town and had npc's set up to send us on these roads... I started asking questions around the bar looking for some gruff guy in the corner that looked like he was drinking away something he desperately wanted to forget... my step-dad, delivered another plot hook that he didn't expect me to cling to... my character started asking questions around town about this which got the attention of the other party members (that's how we got the characters together) and we set on investigating path #5, the plot hook my step-dad had nothing written up for yet, he even tried to hard core railroad us back to his other 4 paths and we plowed through it. Just saying, even if the DM has the story and the plot hooks all set up, the players don't always follow them (even if it is unknown, he didn't tell us until after session that we weren't supposed to take that hook)

In CoS our GM had the mad mage polymorph into a dragon and kick our arse. Would have been a TPK if my character wasn't already rightfully afraid of the crazy super wizard and ready to turtle up and hide as soon as the shit hit the fan.

The rant about the pcs wanting to kill the villain right away. I would redirect and build some obvious plot armor right now. And to misdirect them I would make mini bosses that work for the BBEG that they would need to tackle first.

I think the word you're looking for is filler. Random encounters can be filler, but they don't have to be. They don't have to be combat encounters. It can be as simple as "you turn your head and you look right into the eyes of a magnificent stag". It can be a great way to breathe life into your campaign when done well. Here's a totally random encounter by me: "A dryad and an awakened tree are bickering like an old married couple in the middle of the forest. The dryad convinced a druid to awaken the tree she is bonded to, but she didn't count on the fact that the tree would become autonomous."

I would tend to agree about the random encounter idea except for one thing, but it's really not that important. In my gaming group, there is always a point where we get a classic Random Encounter versus bandits. At this point, it's really more of a running gag and we just use the bandit random encounter as a joke encounter. Personally though, i usually use this encounter as a power check too, as I want to know what my PCs are capable off. I find it interesting to join the humourus aspect of that running gag with that way to grasp the combat performance of my players a bit better. Beside that, again, I totally agree that random encounter should be more than just a standard fight. Actually, another aspect I like with random encounters is how it help me practice my improvisation skills. You roll something on the spot and you need to think about what you want to tell as a short story or a little setup to make it believable. I also let my players tell part of the stories either by letting them draw the battle or encounter map or adapt what is happening with what they tell me.

I design random encounters as a way to emphasize whatever themes are present in my campaign. If there is a military conflict going on random encounters could include ghouls feasting on the dead, people searching for lost family, bandits taking advantage of the chaos, raiders of enemy kingdom, etc. These encounters serve to emphasize the chaos and turmoil war creates. If the campaign is centered around the misuse of magic random encounters could be evil spellcasters roaming the countryside, eldritch abominations and demons summoned from other planes, battalions of mage slayers. Sometimes it's fun to just find some weird random monster in the book and throw it at the players but it should be there for a reason

If the goal of random encounters is to give players obstacles to simulate realistic resting, travel, etc, then an alternative to traditional random encounters (i.e. fights) is to give them 'encounters' that are solved in different ways and have different consequences. E.g. players are abusing rest, rather than spamming random encounters at them, have thieves steal their stuff, or have a poisonous snake bite one of them during the rest, inflicting damage to one of their ability scores, or have an objective change (such as an important NPC has left the area). Of course, give the players a chance to use their abilities to resolve or avoid these if its appropriate. Point is, there are alternatives to 'well you have to fight monsters now'.

To be fair, random encounters I feel has the purpose of familiarizing yourself with combat. So that you can make your own stuff up later that is relevant to the story. Also you can learn to tie random stuff to the bigger picture to make your players feel a bigger narrative or world come alive.

wow some solid advice about random encounters. Color me shocked, sadly like literally every random encounter table isn't written with the "interesting thing happens with x" creature in mind.

Random encounters are a horrible idea. I think people get the idea that it saves time creating content for the game but it never does. It just makes churn on the clock of your game where nothing of value occurs other than leveling fodder and the risk that bad dice will kill party members. Your game will always be better with encounters that are thoughtfully included in your game. They don't all need to support the story but they could all have a value to entertain, provide an opportunity to roleplay or provide narration about your world, or hook future events to raise stakes for your players. Every encounter should be an opportunity taken to enhance the story you're telling with your players. Part of building your campaign or game should be a list of possible encounters that would be purposeful in the game that you can introduce when you need to stretch out the clock on your game or shake up a moment where the players are stuck or RP seems to fallen into a rut. Pick from the list for encounters that best fit the scenario.

"random" encounters are there to push the game on. make sure teh players don't just wait/get to bored, add action, add a way to give information/threats, rumors, distractions...