Using Random Encounters right

[Yora]

I've never really been using random encounters as they always seemed like 4 additional rounds of combat crammed between two segments of the actual adventure.
Now I will be running a game in which the PCs will spends a great amount of time traveling through wilderness and when they get into dungeons, they have a task to perform there and not just clean out all the monsters from every room.
I think random encounters are going to actually be an important part of a game like this. It's a sparsely populated world of vast open wilderness with only relatively few small towns and villages. Like in a Dark Sun game, getting from one place to another should be just as important as what's happening in the home base and the villains stronghold.

But as I said, I've always avoided using random encounters and basically made all my dungeons like in 3rd Ed. and Pathfinder adventures, where they are one long winding corridor full of enemies that you have to cross to get to the dungeon boss at the end. I've taken a look at Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and that type of dungeon seems a lot more exiting. A place to explore and search for the thing you need, while maybe trying to not meet all the creatures that inhabit the place.

Can anyone give me some pointers on how to do random encounters well? Anything that isn't just "a group of 1d6+2 orcs comes around the corner in front of you", but the start of interesting situations.

[Thanael]

Read the alexandrian blog. It has very insightful articles about random encounters and "Jaquaying" the dungeon i.e. making it non-linear.

As for interesting situations some products have interesting pre made encounters. I'll dig up the thread with links soon. Toolbox and Ultimate Toolbox come to mind, plus there's tons of interesting smaller encounter tables available for free. Also build your own or use the extensive tables from 2e.

In the meantime be creative, maybe use some random tables to generate initial reaction and or agenda. Using the encounter distance rules also changes things. Did both parties spot each other? No? The encounter could be circumvented or a trap set up. The Alexandrian covers bits of this in the articles on hexcrawls. Also the articles on Node based encounter design should be handy.

[BzAli]

I like to give my players options when doing random encounters. Some examples:
-they spot a group of humans obviously preparing an ambush, but come at them from behind, and as such are not spotted themself. Who are these men, and who are they planning to ambush? Can they be argued with, should they be attacked on sight, or should they just be left alone?

-The PCs come across the scene of a battle. A man claiming to be a paladin have just killed off 5-6 enemies. He's obviously dangerous, but he might be even more dangerous once he had a chance to rest. Is he really a paladin, and were they really bandits?

-A group of d6+2 orcs could be interesting if the orcs had captives. So either you manouver to save the captives, or the orcs might threathen to kill them unless you back down. And if they do that, do you let leave, and abandon the captives to whatever mercy the orcs might have... or take a chance and assume that the orcs are bluffing, or nor fast enough to kill their hostages before you kill them?

Just remember that random encounters suffer from being most likely once pr. day. Your players will soon realize this, meaning the spell users will pop out their best spells at earliest opportinity, leaving non-spellcasters feeling pretty useless. The interesting part of a random encounter is what happens before fireballs start flying, cause once battle starts, the wizard will soon end it. :)

[Lincoln Hills]

At least until the first time they have three unplanned encounters in a single day... and the first one wasn't the tough one. They only have to know that the chance of three hostile encounters in a day is not zero for the spellcasters to start planning accordingly from then on.

To keep things plausible this should be quite rare. But the possibility that it might happen should be known; it's one of the reasons PC spellcasters are supposed to pace themselves. When you blow your death spell on a hobgoblin patrol leader in the morning, and that very afternoon find yourself forced to hide in a hole because a flight of chimerae showed up, you re-evaluate your strategy.

[Bobo Rolliolis]

To avoid one-encounter syndrome, just have them do some type of skill check for each unit of time/distance. So let's say survival checks for every 5 miles. If they roll over a 17, they progress fine, if they roll under they get a random encounter.

This way, they don't know if they'll have 1 or 8 encounters.

To keep things interesting, you could have non-combat encounters too. Like, maybe they find a horse in the wilderness but it has full tack and saddle gear so it isn't wild. Then they come across two parties blocking the road arguing over who's horse it is and the PCs have to arbitrate the dispute before they can move on. Or they can just attack them out of the way, but who knows what repercussions that would cause...

[EWHM]

Everything you meet as a random encounter inside a dungeon/fortress/complex/etc comes off the order of battle for the complex as a whole. People/monsters/etc do tend to wander around, even guards have shifts. Some such encounters are even patrols. If an alarm is raised, random encounters stop and a prewritten defensive plan begins. Consult the old 'Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun' for a good example of this sort of dungeon.

Outdoors, random encounters happen with monsters drawn from the list that actually lives in an area. In practice, this means segregation by CR and ecological niche.

[ub3r_n3rd]

I personally like using very different monsters that are indigenous to the terrain, but that are rare or that my group has never seen before.

It's funny, the last session we played I put a gelatinous cube in the dungeon and found out afterwards that it was the first one that any of my group had ever encountered and we have people who've been playing for 20+ years.

[Yora]

I've been reading around a lot the last days, and I've come up with an interesting idea:

When making encounter lists for a given environment, make roughly 32% monster encounters, 24% natural obstacles, 16% NPC encounters, and 8% artificial structures like ruins, hunting lodges, or guardposts. The remaining 20% are left empty to be filled when preparing for the next session, with encounters specific to the places the PCs will visit or the the greater plot. Like adding some more spider encounters when the PCs will cross a spider infested forest, or some enemy patrols if they are in a conflict with another country.

There's a good chance they will run into one of these special encounters, but there's still the other 80% with generic encounters.

[Thanael]

The "Is there a Randon Encounter Deck?" thread has some nice links to productswebsites with encounter tables, some free some not.

Other interesting threads:
GM Seeking Advice on Balancing Encounters
What Does it Mean to Run Sandbox / Open Ended Games?

Raging Swan's Encounters series products( also available discounted on paizo as a big bundle) are very nice judging from the reviews. They apparently present those interesting situations you mentioned. Just check out the reviews of the individual products on the paizo page...