Diary of indie game developer put out an interesting short video on YouTube the other day, discussing long journeys and how adding cool locations along the way can add colour and options to four game. It set me thinking about Random Encounters, about what they can be, and how they can enhance your solo RPG experience.
I recall when I first started playing RPG’s, (Tunnels and Trolls was my introduction to the hobby), my games were simple and perhaps somewhat naive. I would create a table of wandering monsters, usually of about 11 (2d6) creatures with a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter each turn (about once per day for overland travel, or every time the characters moved in a dungeon). My games back then we all about bashing monsters over the head with a big axe.
It wasn’t long before I started wanting something more from my games. I started playing Traveller both with a group and solo, a game which does not lend itself to just bashing things over the head. I started creating random encounter tables that included NPC’s which the characters could interact with, for my solo games there would be secondary tables to determine how these NPC’s reacted.
For a long time, that was all my random encounters consisted of, lists of monsters, creatures and NPC’s. It was only when I came back into the hobby about 10 years ago after a break of a similar number of years, that I started realising random encounter didn’t just mean wandering monsters.
Encounters of the location kind
Many of my solo adventures and campaigns involve my characters undertaking journeys, often lasting many days and I have two perfectly acceptable ways of dealing with travelling long distances.
The first, and least fun, it to just have the characters arrive at their destination. I can simply note that the companions travelled north for seven days and have now arrived at the ruined tower of Belgoth. This works well if I just want to get right into the main part of the game.
The second, and the one I tend to go for, is to work out how far away the ruined tower of Belgoth is and play through each days travel, rolling for things such as weather, terrain and random encounters several times a day, depending of the rules I am using. but usually once during the day and once at night.
Nearly every RPG core rulebook contains rules and some tables dealing with random encounters, and one thing of note is that the tables often include difficult terrain to cross, bad weather to deal with and fantastic locations to explore (or not as the characters desire), and even if such tables are not included, its really easy to create your own.
I find the Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures supplement, Further Afield, a very good starting point for creating random encounter tables. The book has two appendix with useful tables, one has eight sample regions each with a basic d6 random encounter table, the second has three d8 tables allowing you to create interesting minor locations on the fly.
Its easy to expand the d6 encounter tables, turn them into d8 tables by adding wandering monster encounters and minor location encounters. You can then create secondary table for wandering monsters and use the three minor location tables in appendix III to generate cool locations.
If you don’t own Further Afield, after all if you don’t play Beyond the Wall why would you own it, it’s simple and fun to make your own tables.
For your random encounter table include things like getting lost, very difficult terrain such as deep ravines or wide fast flowing rivers, extreme weather such as a violent storm or hurricane strength winds as well as wandering monsters and fantastic locations.
Your secondary wandering monster table could include interesting NPC’s the characters could interact with, even fantastic locations such as a goblin lair which you could have the characters avoid but make a note of it and mark its location on your map, these goblins could cause trouble for a nearby village in a later adventure.
Fantastic locations table can be very simple, just pick 6 possible sites, for example.
- Ancient Barrow
- Stone Circle
- Ruined Tower
- Remote Tavern
- Mystical Glade
- A small Cave
Your characters don’t have to investigate these sites, but they can, again, just make a note of their location and use them in a future adventure.
The idea really is to make your encounter table, your game world and your game richer, colourful and interesting. So the next time you design a random encounter table, don’t just make it a list of wandering monsters, add locations into the mix.
Adventure on.