David Ross, author of Legendary V: Eastern and Exotic Weapons, brings his newest creation to the Purple Duck Games brand.
Random Encounters Remastered is intended to provide GMs a detailed, comprehensive source for randomly generating unique encounters with a variety of interesting terrain features, NPCs and site-specific monsters. More than simply a bunch of tables, Random Encounters Remastered also presents rules, guidelines and advice for quickly creating interesting roleplaying and combat situations.
Each volume of Random Encounters Remastered describes a number of adventure areas. These encompass common sites such as grand marketplaces, eerie woods, and windswept plains to more unusual locales such as planar strongholds, underworld battlefields and endless caverns. The areas can be further customized by adding new terrain features and hazards described in each book. The random monster generator for each setting is setup to automatically provide a CR-appropriate challenge for a party no matter their level so a GM doesn’t have to worry about encounters that are too easy or too hard. Wherever a party finds itself, the tables and rules in this book can help a GM construct a quick, memorable encounter.
Adventure areas included: Eerie Woods, Jungle River, Planar Stronghold, Restless Volcano, Treacherous Mire, and Underworld Battlefield.
Out Now!
So your next book in the encounters line then huh? Only this one is not a themed book just cool encounters?
This is not part of our forgotten encounters line. This is a collection of tables and mechanics for generating your own random encounters.
Ah ok.
Forgotten Encounters will likely continue but Stefen and I tend to write that series. When David finished Legendary V, we asked what do you really want to write.
He pitched this idea to us and delivered a great and really useful product. We are very pleased.
Question :
The biggest problem I have with random tables is, they are usually only good as a snapshot in time. That is, they list creatures and beings valid as of the time of printing.
Is this the same? Or is this more along the lines of specifying more 'generic' types of encounters, with suggested creatures?
I know that's confusing, but let me see if I can make a small example :
Forest Encounters
1d6 Result
_1_ 1d4+4 opponents of Party Level - 2 : _________________________
_2_ 1d4 opponents of Party Level - 1 : _________________________
_3_ 1d4 opponents of Party Level : _____________________________
_4_ 1d4-1 opponents of Party Level +1 : __________________________
_5_ 1 opponent of Party Level + 2 : _______________________________
_6_ 1 opponent of Party Level +2, 1d4 Opponents of Party Level - 2 : _______________________
Suggested opponents by CR :
1/3 : <blah>
1/2 : <blah>
etc.
The blank lines would give the GM the option of writing in appropriate creatures as examples he wants to use, and the suggested list would give him a list of examples in case he doesn't have any specific creatures in mind. Then he could print out the sheet and fill in the blanks for the specific forests the party are in before each game.
This would make it easy to add new creatures to the tables with each release of a new bestiary. Just print off the 'creatures by CR' table in the back (or with any 3PP monster book) and add it to the stack of papers.
RE: The biggest problem I have with random tables is, they are usually only good as a snapshot in time.
The Random Encounters Remastered definitely fit in the snapshot variety. I believe David has included all the creatures he could from the referencable (<--- I'm going pretend this is actually a word) Paizo products.
For tables like you suggesting, I would look to one of the Campaign Planner books released by Paizo (I think there was a 3X little gamemastery book like that), LPJ Design, Green Ronin or my favourite the Ronin Arts on.
If you want drop me an email and I can send you a copy to preview.
The first review is in from a Paizoan customer.
If you want drop me an email and I can send you a copy to preview.
Sorry, didn't see this until now.
I'd say yes, but I don't think I'd be able to use them anytime soon (due to the locale my game is currently in), and I'd therefore not be able to review them from the perspective of having used them. If I'm not able to use them, I'd not feel like I could give an honest review.
Thanks for the offer though.
Thanks for the offer though.
Well I didn't say ... review copy ... it was a preview copy. Which would mean it would be just yours to look at and use or not use. My email is in my profile if you want a copy.
- Mark