Crunch vs. Creativity -- Am I missing something?

[pachristian]

A couple of thoughts.

Mostly, I guess I'm a 'crunch' GM. I like to know the rules and the math, and make sure things will fit together. Most of my players are distinctly storytelling/roleplaying oriented. So I try to keep quiet about the crunch, and just have it quietly working for me in the background. Like a building foundation - you shouldn't see it, but it does support everything else.

A number of years ago I was running a campaign where I prided myself that I wasn't doing any random encounters - everything contributed to the plot, or not. I also prided myself that every encounter was scaled to the party's level (some were tougher, some easier, but all were appropriately leveled). Then the players met the campaign master villain. They were far from ready - I was counting on another 20+ sessions before they had to fight him - but I wanted them to get a glimpse of the villain. They charged in and attacked. TPK. After the fact, I realized that it was my fault: I had trained the players to believe they could take on any encounter that i identified as an encounter. Further, they had learned that any NPC with a name, and the ability to hold a conversation, was significant to the story arc in one way or another. They were metagaming. I was running a campaign that encouraged it.

Now I use a wider variety of random encounters - the players learned that some can be steamrolled, and some must be avoided. A few random encounters keeps the players on their toes, so they look for clues and think, rather than assuming that every encounter is a significant one. I'm not good at creating names and personalities on the fly, so I wrote up a number of NPC pools (based on region). So if I need a "random mysterious old guy sitting in the corner", I've got one handy.

I keep my NPC pool and random encounters on decks of 4x6 cards. I keep the significant encounters and NPC's on the same kinds of cards.

[anthony Valente]

My latest session needed some random encounter generation. I'm running a (not quite complete) conversion of the old Keep on the Borderlands module. After getting ready for the night's session to be yet another romp through the caves, my players, out of the blue decided to pursue one of the wilderness leads (spoilered for players who may be playing it):

Spoiler:

"Oh, the mad hermit! Let's go find him!"

Being totally unprepared for this, but having the gist of the encounter from the old module, the random encounter table for temperate forests from the Bestiary proved valuable. (I didn't have time to pre-make one and if I rolled something that wasn't appropriate for the region, I would have just re-rolled until something that made sense was rolled.) The PCs ended up taking several days to accomplish the objective, with me rolling random encounter checks 3 times a day. One encounter rolled was 4 dire wolves (the party consisted of 4 level 2 PCs), which is a TPK encounter for this group. Perception checks revealed tracks… some Survival and Knowledge (nature) checks later, one ranger in the group surmised that they entered the territory of a pack of dire wolves and they were no match at this point for such beasts. The PCs opted to leave the area at once before encountering the threat. A good Survival check ensured that they were able to evade the area without getting the wolves' attention.

And that was the encounter.

I find it most enjoyable if a whole range of encounters is possible (from really weak ones to impossible ones). The key to make it work is that the GM should always present the players with a choice to act upon any given encounter (whether that is immediate or well in advance of the encounter).

[juanpsantiagoXIV]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

A rune giant jumping the party as soon as they leave town begs the question of why the town is still standing with such a threat in the area. Too many such encounters breaks verisimilitude.

Guess it's good I don't worry about verisimilitude.