So one of the most common things that you’ll see talked about in the Dungeon masters guide, is the use of Random Encounters, and lots of dungeon masters use them. If you’ve ever played an RPG video game, like say Final Fantasy VII, you might have a situation where you are walking along a map, and “BAM” you all of a sudden are thrown into a battle with a random set of creatures.
I have to be honest, I’ve always hated this. In video games I hated these because they always felt like a hurdle that was just annoying. I know some of my friends who are more power gamers enjoy them as they represent an opportunity to increase the power and gain XP points. But I’ve always been more interested in story, so they were just a boring headache.
And I know the Dungeon Masters Guide talks about random encounters, and how they will help you flush out your world and make it more real. But in my case, I never understood how rolling a random table to select the monsters thrown at your players. And to be honest it felt like a little too “Lazy dm” for me.
Now that being said, I do see value in having sessions that break off from the regular narrative. If you look at many of the most popular TV shows, you will notice that they have episodes dedicated to the main plot of the season, but then have episodes that are self contained and just more light hearted.
This goes to the idea of “pacing”, and how it helps a story if you take a step back and let the story breath. For example, if you look at horror movies, which put a heavy focus on pacing, they always have high tension moments and then moments to break the tension. I find that Dungeons and Dragons campaigns are similar.
So the question becomes, how do you insert the randomness into your game to break up the tension your building. I find that the best way to do that is how you build the random encounters, first and foremost encounters should embody all 3 pillars of a TTRPG:
Combat
Exploration
Roleplay
And I would argue that your “random encounters” should embody all 3. So the idea being that you could build “encounters” around all three. Much like how I approach NPCs, I recommend just taking time to build out smaller encounters, with the intention of having them inserted into any campaign.
The idea being that you build out an encounter focused on each pillar, like for example, I build an encounter, found <link>here</link>. Here’s an encounter I built with a shady magic dealer, that the players can do. Or another example might be a fighting area, or a gambling den.
Or for example they stumble upon a group of bandits, that are rebelling in their latest stolen goods. These can add real dimension to your games, and avoids the boring nature of just “they rolled a 6 so that’s a group goblins, but if it had been a 4 it would have been 3 ogres…” and gives you a more interesting opportunity to showcase the world.
So what I do, is compile a list of these and keep them in my OneNote. And then I insert a placeholder in my outline for my campaign. And then I roll to select one at random.
On this blog I will be publishing several of my encounters, and would love to see some of the encounters you’ve come up with. So what fun encounter have you planned?