Better And More Meaningful Random Encounters!

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Better and More Meaningful Random Encounters!

Random encounters are a staple of DnD, they are expected to be there during exploration as a way to make the world feel alive, to have it have an aura of adventure and danger, to eat up party resources and put pressure on the PCs to make interesting and important choices, and also as a way for a DM to reasonably 'stall' the party with a quick and easy situation.

Usually, it ends up something like this:

There's just one problem with most random encounter tables though, it's so easy for them to be GOSHDARN BORING! Especially for a newer DM.

Making them interesting becomes gambled improv on the DM's part if they're not used to it, and it's hard to keep track of the important factors that need to be kept in mind

Luckily, I ended up finding a great source for random encounters from 'Dungeon Masterpiece' on YouTube, and I integrated it into my own DMing. I figured that I'd share it here for any that want to work it into their own sessions as well!

After adjustment, a single table can account for multiple entire sessions of in-depth worldbuilding and fun without getting dull!

Sources:

Source 1 (Creating interesting Random Encounter Tables):

Source 2 (Making Random Encounters reflect your Worldbuilding):

There's 4 major methods we can use to improve the Random Encounter table

1. Make the table a straight 1dx roll.

2. Adding 'depth'.

3. Adding meaningful encounters.

4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling.

You can also check out the "Where to Start?" section for some direction to make getting it down and prepped all easy peasy!

1. Straight Roll:

Its enticing to go for 2d6 or the such in order to add non-linearity to the rolls, but these sorts of adjustments only end up making one or two encounters extremely likely and leave all others in the dust, it often ends up defeating it's own purpose of interesting randomness.

In the previous example, it was extremely likely to only get Wolves, Barbarians, Orcs, or Spiders, from a table of 12! A straight roll would serve us much better. The rare rolls are already rare enough as is!

Simply enough, adjusting the original example by replacing the 2d6 with 1d12, it'd become something more like this:

#2. Adding Depth:

We can add more columns in the encounter tables. These columns will represent different aspects about the encounters that we can roll on separately!

Usually it can be difficult as a DM to naturally come up with motives for the encounters, showcase the worldbuilding and have it all come together.

This setup can give you a solid guideline on how the creatures/people think (if any), and also sets up the overall area so that you get an idea of what events tend to occur there as a result of its occupants. 

We want to add 3 more columns to the tables to convey different aspects of the encounter. Fill in these new columns corresponding to the expectations of each encounter.

We'll roll each of these and combine them, then we'll interpret them to make a robust, in-depth random encounter with truly unexpected results!

I recommend rolling alot of complete encounters at once and interpreting the context to the vast general area the party is travelling in.

i. Behaviour: How the creatures act. Are they friendly, scared, aggressive, curious, mischievous?

ii. Complication: Something behind the scenes in the encounter. Do they have sick young? Broken equipment? Are they starving?

iii. Significant Impact: This is a tick box, and will only be present under ONE of the rows. It will be rolled like the other columns, but ONLY once. It signifies which encounter is the Significant Encounter

The Significant Encounter will have its encounter's presence prominent amongst all the other random encounters in the area. There could be burn marks and carcasses from a rampant dragon, or a goblin raid leaving tracks moving through the area. Which is the most impactful of the different encounters?

Adding this to our previous example would expand it to:

Rolling this would give us things like:

Significant encounter: Owlbears

Note that the significant impact shows that the Owlbears are a massive problem in the area. Perhaps the Owlbears are agitated for an unknown reason, and are unnecessarily aggressive.

The significance of Owlbears gives us context to the second one as well! Perhaps the hunters raided an Owlbear den, and adopted an Owlbear cub from there as well.

There could be uneaten carcasses, ravaged trees, less wildlife, etc around these parts.

Note how much sheer CONTEXT these columns add to our encounters. It's invaluable!

3. Adding Meaningful Encounters

Usually random encounters tend to be rather mundane and very one-note.

There's usually some general wildlife and monsters, different disparate factions without any rhyme or reason, and maybe a general non-combat encounter or two, but these don't really tell us about the area or its surroundings at all by themselves.

Instead, we can add in wildlife and monster encounters specific to the biome, non-combat encounters, and encounters of nearby factions and/or settlements to the table, and we can even add environmental encounters in there as well.

Note that we're not tied down to 12 encounters, and can expand it ad infinitum according to our need of diversity in our encounters.

Just add in specification and connection, and suddenly the dominos all fall into place.

Lastly, we'll also be adding in 'DOUBLE TIME' which will let us roll on everything twice, and make it so it's a double encounter!

Thus, the table can instead be adjusted to:

Note how each and everything has its relation in one way or another, but through the sheer variance, they remain truly random and novel.

4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling

Lastly and this is just something that I do, but that I found gamechanging. Be sure to pre-roll 5-7 encounters for each session, for the general area the players are going to be headed in.

Note that you don't need to really prep anything at all, just interpret all of them on a surface level as a buffer.

Also note that you don't need to use all of them if they're not needed. The foreshadowing and signs are worldbuilding and having secrets that the players don't unravel is just as useful as the ones that they do, perhaps even moreso. It adds depth and detail beyond the scope of what the party will encounter

It simply let's you get an idea of the connections between encounters, allows for foreshadowing, and acts as a deterrent to getting caught off guard.

Even if you roll mid-session, I recommend calling for a 5 minute break, rolling 5-7 encounters at the same time and interpreting them and their connections before resuming the session.

It WILL make a difference, trust me

Where to start?

It can be difficult getting inspiration or direction to get started in creating these random encounters, and sometimes you don't want to go through the hassle of thinking them up from nothing

For some great conceptual headstarts and examples for these tables, you can check out 'Worlds Without Number' and it's:

- Page 205 (Great general templates for encounters differentiated by broad creature types such as Beasts and Monsters, Sapient Monsters, and Humans)

- Pages 206-219 (For inspired locations to occasionally run rare encounters or groups of encounters in. This works best with flexible/discovered worldbuilding given the significance of some of these, and you also want to add these in sparingly to keep them significant)

- Pages 246-247 (These pages have great templates for the kinds of encounters and situation to be included in the tables, and it can be expanded vastly, and certain options can be selectively and repeatedly chosen to meet our needs. Mood works well as a complication.)

There might be other pages that are useful as well for these sorts of random encounters in the wilderness that I haven't come across yet. If so, give them a shout out and I'll be sure to add them in. It's worth checking it out in its entirety for some great tips!

Conclusion

Again, credit goes to Dungeon Masterpiece and Worlds Without Number for excellent adjustments. This has been quite long, but I hope you stuck around till the end.

Many a session have been made easy but complex ever since this was introduced and I hope that this helps you out as much as it helped me in my prep and improv!

Feel free to give any advice in formatting on Tumblr, or any feedback on the post itself. It really means a lot to me, thanks!