Seriously!
we started Jade Regent last year and we are not even in the fouth book yet.
we try to play every week but of course normal life gets in the way so we get about 35 game session a year.
the story is quite engaging unfortunately with all the random encounter it takes forever to play a single adventure path. The grinding remind me of a old korean MMO.
So after a year I dont even remember most of what we did after the brinewall.
and the caravan rules are the worst sadistic piece of rules ever made in the history of RPG.
Dam if I want random encounter I'll go play final fantasy!
I want to see the story! I want engaging NPC, gut ripping tension and epic larger than life characters! Epic bad ass bad guys!
random encounter are like the mud that slows everything down! There are so many AP and so many character concept you can do in PF come on!
too many random encounter makes combat banal, a routine and uninteresting affair. Even when your character come close to death its just a matter of luck.
And that is why I love Wrath of the righteous so much - sure there are some Random Encounters but as the DM I decided that I WILL NOT put my players though this!
they are HEROES dammit!
they come, they see, they get involved and I keep the pace up!
if a encounter is beneath them they just kick the door and roll over those dam rats!
I put emphasis on role play and moral dilemma, on tragedy and on the struggle to triumph.
we played half the first book (chapter 1-3) in a 8h session and they are level 3. They do all the story part then they will get the sandbox part were they will have the opportunity to save people and get some bad guys but always for a purpose.
semi random encounter is a lot better - at least you don't have to waste time rolling dice, then flipping pages then setting stuff... dam by the time we finish a random fight we could have done a whole chapter!
I know some people like them but I don't. With all the adventure path available do you really need to add meaningless encounters to it?
my goal is to have my players play through a adventure path in 6-7 month Tops , from level 1 to 20 and then move to another new adventure.
with all our busy life I don't want to take 2 years to finish a campaign.
I dont even give XP, I follow the progression found in the beginning of the book and give other rewards when do do above and beyond the call of duty - more cash, extra item, cool upgrades or opportunities.
but for the love of my D20, no more game session where we must wait for the DM to ROLL ROLL ROLL before he looks up from his books to say : ho nothing happens this hours...
AAAARRRRGGGG!
Perhaps you might suggest to the DM that they pre-roll that stuff? I like random encounters, but when I run a game I have half a dozen pre-set and ready to go if needed. The endless rolling isn't an essential part of it.
(It doesn't mean you have to like them, of course, but simple steps like that may reduce your frustration somewhat if the DM isn't reading the signs that you're not enjoying it).
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Every single part of anything in an AP could be dropped or changed. If something is no longer fun for the group, ignore it.
Another solution is to have the GM makes ALL the dice rolls in advance, and thus have "prepared" random encounters. If you want to keep the "random" aspect of the encounter, then the GM should make numerous rolls on the chart before the session. Right down each of the rolls and it's consequence on a small piece of paper, fold all the pieces and place them in a basket.
During the session, whenever there's need for a roll, just draw one of the folder papers and read it. It might say "nothing happens", or it might say "A raiding party of 3 ogres (page xx in the bestiary) attacks the camp at night".
This method is still random and is faster than rolling dice.
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Kingmaker was made better through embracing the random encounter table. It took the story in amazing new directions. Sandboxes NEED random encounters to feel procedurally generated.
Story APs don't need them nearly as much and I recommend the GM pre-roll random enocunters and make sure each one does something for the story.
I love random encounter tables and random encounters in general, it is just another tool that GMs can use that adds flavor and depth, also they are entirely optional:) no one is holding a knife to the GMs throat saying "roll a random encounter, or i'll cut ya!!" tho in that instance hopefully A) you get to keep your money and/or B) he shares his PcP with the rest of the group;)
its just that story information gets lost with time. the longer it takes to run your campaign, the more you forget about it. Also it becomes hard for the players to make the difference between a combat that is important to the story arc and one that has nothing to do with it. At some points as players we forget to roleplay and we roll play too much. I can see many missed opportunity were we could have made better relations with the NPC or get closer to the story and I admit its part of the Players ( and I am part of that) fault.
But if the story is drowned in too much combat and the path takes too long to advance ay some point we get lost.
I think I will talk to my gm and ask if we can read some part of the back story and make a journal of sort so we can figure were we are and what is going on.
but lets be clear, its not all bad quite the contrary, I really like the game so far and I really like our team and my character and were we are going. We talked to the GM and he was in agreement - roll in advance, and be more prepared and more meaningful encounter...
the aim for this post is to tell people to go easy - you can run a AP without any encounter, blaze through it and start another - going thru and leveling up doesn't have to be a painfully slow experience . and I believe that random encounters are a part of the problem.
In the case of jade regent are you talking caravan encointers or normal random encounters? Because if its normal ones if your getting so many it slows the game down or leads to faster than intended levelling.
If its caravan encounters we dropped the whole caravan thing when the dm realized we were incapable.of winning any of the encounters. Which sped the game up.
But my experience seems to suggest playing once a week you should be able to finish a game in under a year.
i am a GM for Jade Regent, i did a dry run with the caravan before we actually ran the caravan portion of the trip, so i knew right away it wasn't going to work. i did allow everyone to pick jobs, which was a lot of fun, especially after they picked the gnome witch with no profession (cook) skills as the caravan cook, then i made everyone make fortitude saves after every meal or be nauseated for 1 hour after every meal, i did that only til they got to kalsgard after that they were inoculated to her terrible cooking lol it was hilarious describing everyone throwing up after eating some god awful stew
the non-combat encounters i tried to describe cinematically, like when they're going over the ice when suddenly the last wagon plunges fifty feet into a crevasse (when a caravan save or such was required i just rolled randomly and had a party member make an appropriate save or skill check (usually survival, knowledge (nature or geography) works best for skill checks)
for combat i rolled a random encounter (in linnorm kingdoms i used the ones from that campaign setting book, otherwise it was from the tables in the various gazetteers in the modules) then i described it as everyone in the caravan is fighting such and such while thePCs fought there battle, if the PCs won, then the rest of the caravan did too, my PCs rolled their scores with my daughters lucky little 4d6* so they stomp most random encounters but when they get into a dungeon they don't rest much and blow thru their consumables and are beginner players that dont think tactically so the boss fight are usually pretty hard on them, especially in book 2, they ran thru ravenscraeg in one go and two died vs boss used the seal for resurrecting (i allow one resurrection per pc instead of one total, its their first campaign, are mostly kids and quite attached to their PCs:)
(*no re-rolls take the first six scores, four PCs no score lower then 10!, they are little 6 sided dice rolled in the lid of our beginner box, we got them at pegasus games in madison if any one cares:)
Creative Director
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Random encounters, in my opinion, should be used sparingly. More than once a day is too often, and even when one DOES happen in a game I run, I try to inject personality and story into the encounter.
The APs themselves generally do not assume any random encounters happen as far as treasure and XP are concerned (there are a few exceptions), so if your group doesn't enjoy them, the GM should be made aware of this and should remove them from the game. For something like Jade Regent that involves long travel scenes, replacing them with scheduled set encounters that can help to add to the verisimilitude of a long overland journey is a great solution.
the Caravan rules were dropped just before we went thru the ice cap (book 3).
I think we learned a lot about AP since this was our first one.
we are currently doing the Ruby Phoenix tournament and its really fun so far.
I think that it takes some time to find the right balance.
I also wish I could find more post about player's perspective of AP, to read about what they like and what they didn't.
the Caravan rules were dropped just before we went thru the ice cap (book 3).
I think we learned a lot about AP since this was our first one.
we are currently doing the Ruby Phoenix tournament and its really fun so far.
I think that it takes some time to find the right balance.
I also wish I could find more post about player's perspective of AP, to read about what they like and what they didn't.
start your own thread, the players will come!
It's funny ... for years, I'd stopped using random encounters entirely. However, I've recently started using them again. I *always* pre-roll all of them, so I can lead in properly, etc., but I really like the idea of things happening "on the way."
Plus, I've also decided it's a great way to combat the 15-minute adventuring day. If the players can't assume they're perfectly safe because they decided to rest for the day, it's much harder for them to go nova for every encounter.
I agree whole-heartedly about the delay, however - I don't think I'd ever roll for random encounters during the game, as it would just delay everything.
It's just book three which seems overly stuffed with random encounters, IMO.
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Hadn't used them for 20 years before KM.
Now I like to use them as GM. It's exciting not knowing what lies ahead!!!
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Yes and No.
In games like Kingmaker having random encounters during the sandbox periods of the AP it's fine.
I'd say the same goes for extend periods of down time when a session focues on an area. Like dealing with the Varisian hinterlands, etc.
When it doesn't work is when you are doing specific mission pacing. And during the crossing of the Crown I could see it being a time for it...but really I'd rather just have a series of if/then gates depending on where the PC's choose to go and stick to that. No more random Rimfrost Mammoths in their path. (I rolled 2.)
After a while I stopped the Random events and just let the PC's travel.
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I grew tired of random encounters when I moved into 3.x because the our game sessions shrunk and the length of fights increased. I like to plug in planned encounters now so it still feel like there are random encounters. The rule of thumb I use is if the terrain is dangerous and the travel time is more than a day I will pick something thematically appropriate and run it. Once the party reaches a certain level I usually drop these extra encounters to focus on story-based events.
That being said, I am starting a Varisia sandbox campaign soon and I will be using random encounters. In a sandbox I think they have a place, showing that the world is alive and vibrant and dangerous in ways that planned travel encounters do in a more linear campaign.