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Maximilian Hart puts out a daily newsletter with a short thought and some links to resources that may be of value to D&D GMs called Dungeon Master Daily (subscribe and read some more about this resource here.

Of course, some of those links and resources have a broader applicability, which is the main reason I subscribe. From time to time, he’s good enough to link to Campaign Mastery.

He’s also on Twitter (twitter.com/maximilianhart_).

Last week, his editorial focused on Random Encounters, also called Wandering Monsters by some. His thought was that no-one but the GM (and sometimes not even him) loves the idea. I’ll leave discussion of why that might be the case for the relevant section, below.

He promptly received a barrage of communications disputing this premise, prompting a second editorial presenting the other side of the coin a couple of days later. You can read his Twitter thread discussing the subject at this link.

I’m a big believer in modifying the way that you play any game to suit the campaign story that you are trying to tell, but also being dynamically responsive to player wishes – something that is sometimes more difficult than you might expect.

That means that there is no wrong way to game, in my opinion, only ways that are mismatched with one or both of these objectives.

It also means that the question deserves closer inspection. Especially since there are more choices than might have occurred to many readers – including a new one that I’ve only just thought of, myself..

Today’s plan of action is to look at the known options, in sequence of decreasing randomness, and then I’ll throw in my wild card which doesn’t really fit the orderly progression – or, perhaps, fits it in too many different places!

Option 1: An Element Of Chaos

So the place to start is fully random, where the GM has no idea what the next wandering critter is going to be and how it’s going to fit into the story.

Why might a GM like such anarchy in their games? I can think of a few possible reasons.

Let’s start with Looseness. The unpredictability is a natural anodyne to any tendency to plot trains or over-planning your adventures.

We can follow that with Challenge – and there can be no doubt that making the products of anarchy seem sensible is a definite challenge to the GM.

Third is Verisimilitude – believe it or not! Real life is full of unexpected surprises, and random encounters are one way of reflecting that state in a controlled manner within a campaign.

Fourth, Random Encounters can provide an expression of The Fantastic that is a necessary part of the Fantasy Gaming experience when the adventure itself shapes up as a little mundane. It’s all about how those inexplicable random encounters get to where they are encountered.

for example, the PCs are in the middle of the Mad Elemental’s Fire Dungeon when the dice indicate a Frost Giant. You have three choices: (1) Ignore the result because it simply doesn’t fit; (2) Re-skin the encounter so that it makes marginal sense, eg to a Fire Giant; or (3) Let It Not Make Sense while making it rational, anyway – eg a random portal opens up to deposit a band of Frost Giants into this hellish (from their perspective) environment, in which they can only survive for a short time. They spot the PCs, immediately blame them for their predicament, and attack – fighting for their very survival. A diplomatic solution might just barely be possible if magic is used to extend the Giant’s capacity for withstanding the environment – which might gain the PCs a nominal ally, at least in the short-term, but also handicaps them with dependents.

Fifth, Random Encounters can be Inspiring, prompting the GM to discover solutions to their plot problems that they never even dreamed of.

Sixth, and finally, Random Encounters are – by definition – unpredictable, and so they consume game time with material for which prep is neither possible or necessary. And that can be a godsend when your prep has fallen short, either because the party have taken an unexpected direction or because the GM ran out of time.

There may be more, but those six are entirely adequate to justify a fully random approach to Wandering Monsters.

But there’s no escaping the fact that these would be meaningless filler in a book or movie. By definition, they don’t progress the plot (unless the GM is very clever, of course). That fact can turn a lot of GMs off the purely-random approach. While it must be remembered that an RPG is not the same as those forms of media, the less ‘screen time’ that’s available, the more the first comes to resemble the latter. For example, my usual campaign schedule permits only a few hours play in any given campaign, once a month. That puts a premium on story and plot advancement – any stagnation, no matter how brief, risks a complete loss of momentum and impetus. That’s like a stroke – if they recur, one of them will eventually kill the campaign, and short of that terminal state, it will be crippled, paralyzed, or even comatose.

Fortunately, for those GMs who don’t like untamed randomness in their encounters, or who can’t afford the potentially debilitating effects of stalling the campaign, there are alternatives.

Option 2: The Not-So-Random Encounter

The first alternative is to actually incorporate specific random events that are custom-fitted to form part of the main plot – a pair of wandering guards, for example.

Compile a list of ten or twelve such, and you have the simplest possible expression of the Not-so-random encounter.

A more advanced version allocates additional probability to the more common encounters and employs a larger die size – many GMs gravitate to the d20, others to the d%, for the purpose.

Still more refined is the notion that some encounters can only take place once, no matter what the dice might indicate – forcing a re-roll if they are indicated a second time – while others are naturally recurring.

Probably the most extreme version of the concept that I’ve ever encountered had a separate table (with only 6-8 entries most of the time, and only 4 on one occasion) for each room of a dungeon, based on the local geography and who was ‘living’ where. Personally, I think that’s probably going too far, but to each his own.

But a combination of these two factors – effectively treating each dungeon as it’s own terrain type – can provide the necessary randomness in a fairly controlled and confined manner.

Of course, once you have this notion in place and integrated into your dungeon design process, it’s a VERY short step to incorporating one or more critical plot elements into the encounters – like the (metaphoric) key to unlocking the next section or level of the dungeon!

A still further advance is the concept of “sticky” entries to the encounter table – once the party “encounter” a table with this entry without triggering this specific encounter, it gets attached to all subsequent encounter tables, perhaps even after they have left the dungeon. This can be an excellent way to get background information of no immediate relevance into the hands of the PCs in an interactive manner.

You don’t have to advance down this design pathway very far before you have crossed over into the next approach to random encounters to be discussed – integrating random encounters into the plot as essential parts of the story.

Option 3: All Part Of The Plan

In many ways, this isn’t all that dissimilar to the preceding approach. Essentially, it designates certain points in the dungeon (castle, whatever) as a location in which any designated random encounters that haven’t been triggered will automatically take place.

This can actually make the dungeon more responsive to PC actions. For example, there might be four different events that trigger a pair of guards to make their way along an individualized route to a guard post, where they will sound an alarm to summon still more guards. When the PCs reach the guard post, they find it manned by 8 + each un-encountered wandering pair guards. If the PC’s wandering monster rolls were unlucky (meaning that they didn’t encounter any of these pairs in isolation), there might be 16 guards to be dealt with – all triggered and on alert.

This still contains some random, ‘chaotic’ elements, but they are very carefully managed. But it’s possible to go one step further.

Option 4: One Plot To Rule Them All

You can design your dungeons and towns and whatever so that designated parts of the plot take place at random intervals.

This subsumes the very concept of ‘encounters’ into a larger schema; an ‘encounter’ might be stumbling over footsteps in the dust, for example. The “random encounters” list is dealt with in sequence (avoiding the dangers of anticlimax and incoherence that would otherwise be inherent).

This approach takes almost all the randomness out of Random Encounters while broadening the concept to include all manner of events that would not traditionally be considered an encounter. It is sometimes represented by the maxim “The dungeon’s not finished until the wandering monsters are vanquished,” which I first bumped into way back in the early 80s.

My early players meant that you should be able to close the doors and spend an unmolested evening in a cleared dungeon, but it was while contemplating the maxim that I first developed my current appreciation for random encounters.

Different Centaurs For Different Campaigns

It should be clear from my other writings and from the discussion above that I strongly advocate the deliberate choice of one or more of the above approaches for each distinct campaign. There may be times when the purely random approach is the most appropriate to the desired ‘look and feel’ of the campaign, as experienced by the players, while there will be times when one of the more structured approaches – or even doing away with random encounters altogether – may be more appropriate. Often, metagame considerations such as the frequency of play will be a significant consideration.

Nor does this exclude the other approaches. My fundamental approach in the Fumanor Campaigns was essentially the “not-so-random” encounter tables for overland travel, and a more structured choice within dungeons and set locations that were plot-significant. There were also a few locations, notably beyond the boundaries of “civilization”, where the choices were fully random.

You can have one dominant approach and exceptions wherever they seem appropriate.

Interestingly, it’s normal for players (unless you tell them differently) to assume that you are using either the fully-random or the not-so-random approaches, even in the most tightly controlled reality, and simply ‘doing a better job than usual’ of integrating these encounters into the ongoing narrative.

Which brings me to a variant sub-approach that I rarely see employed, one based on the ‘purely random’ approach, but which also works well with the ‘not-so-random’ concept: Dungeon Trivia.

Option A: Dungeon Trivia

At a fairly meta-level, dungeons should be thought of as a living organism. It needs a circulatory system (usually water); it needs lungs, i.e. some delivery system that feeds fresh air throughout the structure; it’s component parts need food, i.e. some sort of internal ecosystem; and, sometimes, it will have a brain that actively maneuvers the forces within to challenge and confound the PCs, and will react to their actions.

These are all parts of dungeon verisimilitude. Outside of that purpose, they have no function. They do not advance the plot in any way, shape or form. What’s more, even a hint that such considerations have been part of the GM’s design thinking is often enough to get the full benefits in the minds of the players.

Thinking about that gave me the idea of Dungeon Trivia, in which a list of all sorts of miscellaneous factoids about the dungeon or encounter location are gathered in a list. Each random encounter is then treated as an opportunity to highlight one of these factoids – or even just mention it. I just skim down the list (forcing the entries to be brief) looking for the one that’s most significant or relevant to the type of creature encountered.

This keeps the actual encounter backgrounds down to the minimum necessary information to tell the story and make decisions, while dusting all of the above with just enough additional color..

Because it can be used as a variation on all four of the previous options, I’ve called this “Option A”.

And that’s where this article was going to end (more or less) – until I had a moment of inspiration.

Option B: An Independent Plot

Why not have an independent second plotline that is purely derived from random encounters that may span multiple adventures before it comes to a conclusion?

That gives the GM two plotlines – one, relatively orderly and controlled, and one that is very loose and free-wheeling, with a balance that is easily controlled. The only requirement is that the second plotline must be able to connect to the PCs, no matter where they go – whether that is by some form of communications conduit, or a Dream-quest, or an actual presence/transition – a planar gate or whatever. This connection should be only partially controlled by the PCs – they might be able to initiate it on occasion, but should not be able to prevent it becoming active at other (potentially inconvenient) times.

This enables the players to use the second plot as a diversion when the first is dragging, or nothing important is going on, while the GM can use it to add secondary layers of complexity to the campaign the rest of the time.

What’s more, a second line of stimulation can’t help but provide new opportunities to explore the characters of the PCs and highlight distinctive elements thereof – elements that might get very little display in the more rigorously-plotted primary plotline.

The more creative you are, the greater the variation that is possible – and it all focuses on that interaction channel. Some channels may only be possible in certain environments – strictly local, small scale plotlines, like hunting down a bandit leader. Creatures encountered can be part of the band, or a victim, or a wandering beastie that is feasting on the remains of a victim – all of which shows that it’s not necessary for these random plots to get all existential and cosmic. Instead, they can be matched to the advancement of the PCs.

Old-school vs New Approaches to Random Encounters

An interesting thought came to me in the course of writing the above. Previous debates on the subject have largely dealt with the power level of the encounters, and whether or not they should be adapted or modified to match the capabilities of the PCs.

The division between the two possible camps – yes and no – regarding the latter question largely follows the division lines between old-school gaming and new-school.

The old-school argument is that creatures of all possible power levels are out wandering the reality of the game world, and any random encounter should therefore have a statistical probability of occurring, based purely on the rate of incidence of that creature. If you go into a realm known to be populated by Giant Spiders, the odds are that you will encounter such Arachnids – regardless of whether or not the party are up to coping with them or not.

When I first started gaming, the old-school was still contemporary, and the dichotomy was between dungeons (carefully-planned and balanced encounters) and wilderness (completely unplanned and not-necessarily-balanced encounters).

To be fair and honest, the tools for balancing encounters properly didn’t really exist until 3rd edition D&D provided them – even though those tools left a lot to be desired when you dug deeply into their workings. Furthermore, the game mechanics explicitly allowed for unbalanced encounters by fixing the experience awards for such encounters at a higher level than those of a balanced encounter. A number of the early posts here at Campaign Mastery deal with such game balance issues.

The new-school argument is that RPGs are, first and foremost, Games, and that some compromising of reality is desirable at times – and that it’s not fun to be killed in a battle in which you had all the chance of success of an ice-cube in hell or a moth drawn too close to a flame. Instead, the GM should moderate the danger posed by encounters, random or otherwise, to something that the party has a reasonable chance against – unless they are foolish enough to put their heads in the Dragon’s maw, of course.

This (mostly) avoids the catastrophic consequences of the flaws in the experience table, which can quickly spin a campaign out of control.

There are other points of difference between the two camps of gaming, of course, but they are not relevant to this particular discussion.

Frankly, I can see both sides of the argument, and while I personally am far more strongly drawn to the new-school argument in this respect, I have no problem with those who prefer the old-school camp. It certainly kept you on your toes, as a player!

Many of the thoughts regarding integration of random encounters with plotlines that have been expressed above have their origins in the contemplation of mechanisms and guidelines for this sort of encounter self-censorship.

There is also a third option, which I described in my posts about ecology-based random encounters – see the links at the end of the article.

The point that I want to make right now is this: it doesn’t matter which of the Four primary choices, or the -A or -B or even -AB sub-varieties of those choices you select, the philosophical position vis-a-vis the encounter models mentioned in this section remain completely open – “encounter level” (or whatever you choose to call it) lies upon a completely separate axis of decision. You can use the techniques and approaches described in this article regardless of your philosophical orientation.

Broadening the Random prospects

It should also be pointed out that the principles discussed should also apply to every other genre of gaming. A superhero wandering down the street should have a random chance of encountering a bank robbery or a mugging – and, if they don’t, that’s a break in reality that the GM has to take responsibility for. The more story-oriented approaches described might be a way for GMs running such campaigns to have their cake and eat it, too. Only the encounter content changes with campaign genre, not the general principles.

A hatful of links

In this section, I’ve isolated eleven posts and one series that go into some of the side-issues that I tried hard not to get bogged down with in this article.

XP & Balancing Encounters

Encounter Philosophies:

rpg blog carnival logo

That’s probably got even the fastest readers sorted for the next week or two.

But in case it’s not: I tried hard to get this article done and published in time, but just missed the close of the January RPG Blog Carnival at Geek Native, which had the subject of Random Encounter Tables.

If you head to this post there and check the comments, You’ll find even more on this subject!

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