Random Encounters in RtR and CoSS that don't suck

[Abudufdef]

I'm considering running this AP in a few months. Looking over the random encounters in these two books, I'm wondering how to frame them in a cool way and one that doesn't break verisimilitude.

What I don't want is "You see 2 wights in the middle of the street, roll for initiative," or "You see an elephant grazing on the plain, it turns and charges, roll for initiative." Why would there be wights in this place, or why is there a singular elephant (a herd animal) in the middle of nowhere? If the elephant isn't a combat encounter, how do you make it an engaging encounter?

How have you made your random encounters more interesting and more "believable".

[Randomdays]

To use your two examples, and I haven't gotten to those 2 parts of the AP yet so I'm not sure of the specifics with them;

The Wights - At night, everyone in town is behind locked doors due to the townpeople knowing about the local undead problem. The PC's hear a scream and see the wights either attacking an unlucky townsperson who didn't make it home in time, standing over the body of said townsperson, or attacking a door trying to get inside for "lunch" The PCs react as they think best.

The Elephant - Have it maddened either due to an obvious injury like spears and arrows in its side, or showing signs of disease. This would give a reason that it has left the herd and is not in a norma l state of mind. You could also place it near the body of a dead calf. The rest of the herd has moved on but the mother refuses to to leave and continues to protect her young, dead or not.

[Geo Fix]

The elephant could be a rogue bull. Very territorial, very agressive.

If you're concerned about verisimilitude you will need to plan your 'random' encounters in advance for both RtR and CoSS and key them to the specific points in time and space for each module.

I didn't do that for RtR and found myself rerolling random critters until I hit one that made sense. For CoSS I planned out possible random encounters before game day and used them as a way to tie in other factions and future story developments.

[Abudufdef]

Geo Fix wrote:

The elephant could be a rogue bull. Very territorial, very agressive.

For CoSS I planned out possible random encounters before game day and used them as a way to tie in other factions and future story developments.

I do plan on planning the random encounters ahead of time. Geo Fix, could you give some examples of random encounters that you did in CoSS ?

Spoilers:

Rival faction agents seem pretty easy to make convincing as do raiding parties from the various tribes. It would make sense that these groups would send out scouts and raiders at any given time. Things I find harder to tie in well are things like wights, mummies, shadows and gibbering mouthers. Having the PC's come home to find an undead attack is ok I guess, though it sort of clashes with the big undead attack at the end of the book. Maybe there are some mini-crypts that the PC's could stumble into that house a some undead, or locked cellar in a home with some undead Azlanti that died during the city's fall in an unfortunate way. Maybe there are some undead in the lake too. Gibbering mouthers though...and camulatzes.

[Jenner2057]

Well there's nothing to say that the party HAS to fight every random encounter either. Actually I used many of the random encounters in RtR just to add some flavor to the travel and set the atmosphere for the native wildlife that the party was seeing in their travels. I think they only actually fought maybe 1 out of every 3 encounters.

NOTE: I had the advantage of having a ranger with Wild Empathy and jungle witch that could speak with animals too. They went out of their way to turn random encounters into diplomatic encounters with the native wildlife. Almost anything that was an herbivore my group would speak with and arrange safe passage for them and their expedition behind them.

As for the CoSS encounters...

spoiler:

Many of these you can just use to foreshadow other areas in the city.
The gibbering mouthers probably spawned off of the ones down in area N. A new one pops out and starts wandering off mindlessly through the city. Up to you whether you'd want to reduce the number at N depending on how many the PCs kill as random encounters. Shrug.
The cumalatze should only be a single encounter though. I think there's only one in the city but if you roll if for a random encounter, nothing to say that the party just doesn't spot it flying over the city. It obviously has to come out to hunt sometime. If they fight it as a random encounter, then they can find its empty nest later at L4 to claim its treasure if you wanted to run it that way.
The wights and other undead I just imagined as scouts sent out by the necromancer. Either from the First Vault (through the sinkhole) or from the "haunted" mansion at J6... depending if Juliver has disturbed him and you're ready to run the Hissing Death event or not.

Just some thoughts.

[Abudufdef]

@Jenner

Those seem like pretty reasonable ideas.

Spoiler:

I am honestly thinking about doing away with the camulatzes all together. Giant murder parrot? Nah I don't think so. I will probably replace them with suitably potent pterosaurs. In my head, I see Saventh Yhi having pterosaurs of various sorts living all over the place anyway.

Separate Spoiler:

I've heard some people complain about a lack of treasure in the supposedly treasure-laden lost city. I can see this I guess. What would be some good treasure to include with random encounters (preferably with an eye to the Azlanti theme)? Aren't ioun stones supposed to be Azlanti in origin? Were there any particular item deficits your groups found that could be shored up with random encounter treasure?

[Geo Fix]

Abudufdef,

I used a fair number of the random encounters for foreshadowing

spoiler:

A transparent Charu Ka watching the party from below the lake.

Encountering a Boggard/Trog in a dugout canoe who hoots at the part from a distance and is suddenly grabbed and taken under water by a ridiculously large crocodile

A leader/representative of a different faction acting odd and having green goo in their ear.

I also had the party spot a couple of the nastier flying critters at night.

The Aspis Consortium faction was encountered cutting up buildings and monuments, cheerily discussing just how much this place could generate as long as they took care not to flood the market.

I borrowed an idea form these boards and had the colonials posting notices of their authority over Saventh Yhi.

Charu Ka stalked the party for a while, close enough to be seen from time to time but too far away to chase.

Like you, I thought Dinausaurs suited the place so I had the party encounter T-Rex tracks and then the T-Rex.

For the loot problem I added Leaf Armour with a fairly high bonus to the higer level denizens and ancient Azlanti spears, one keen, one reptilian humaniod bane and then added more treasure to the crypts from the 4th AP to provide things I thought the party needed.

I also added a submerged bank with a vault in the sub basement that was strongly warded but loaded with gold and gems.

[martryn]

The loot in the adventure is pretty potent. My party had such an easy time with the boggard oracle / thrall that it was vulgar, and then they found a weapon worth 38,000 GP. Next session they stumbled upon that Rod of Well-Deserved Rest, which is worth 62,000 GP. If they sold both, the share per member is 12,500 GP. They've not really complained about loot since entering Saventh-Yhi.

As for the random encounters, I think a giant murder parrot is incredibly creepy, so I can't wait until those pop up in the city. I've mentioned hearing T-Rexes occasionally nearby, or seeing massive brachiosaurs walking on the outskirts of the city. They've been attacked by bat swarms and monkey swarms (hilarious use of gust of wind). Exploring the residential district they've been stalked by vegepygmies that they can't drive off. They've been watched from the banks of the island by degenerate serpentfolk, which is causing them to avoid the government district. Some of the more dangerous random encounters have involved dire animals, like a pair of dire tigers that tried to slip into and out of camp with a PC in their jaws.

Looking ahead I've got an encounter with a stone golem I'm looking forward to springing on the party.

As far as loot goes, I've added a lot of expendable stuff to the empty buildings on the maps, the potency of which is determined by a Perception check after several hours of searching. We're talking high level scrolls and potions that the party might not think to buy but would think would be handy to hold onto. It encourages the party to spend some time looking through the buildings, and thus slows down how quickly the explore the city. The party seems to be clearing an entire district per week, which I think is a bit fast, so I'm coming up with things to slow them down, mainly politics with the other factions.

In Racing to Ruin I tried to make the random encounters stick out more as well, so they'd seem less random. The party would stumble on the remains of other caravans, for example, that a group of ankhegs are busy scavenging from. I combined the easier lizardfolk encounter with a random encounter with a giant dragonfly to challenge the party and add a new dynamic to an otherwise cakewalk. The party was stalking through the high grass by hyenas for hours before they finally attacked. When stopping for lunch one randomly determined party member sits down ontop of an army ant swarm (unless he can make the appropriate survival check to recognize the signs of it).

Group still hated Racing to Ruin. It's a fairly poor adventure. Nothing can be done, though. All adventures that mostly consist of traveling from point A to point B are poor adventures.

[cibet44]

Abudufdef wrote:

I'm considering running this AP in a few months. Looking over the random encounters in these two books, I'm wondering how to frame them in a cool way and one that doesn't break verisimilitude.

What I don't want is "You see 2 wights in the middle of the street, roll for initiative," or "You see an elephant grazing on the plain, it turns and charges, roll for initiative." Why would there be wights in this place, or why is there a singular elephant (a herd animal) in the middle of nowhere? If the elephant isn't a combat encounter, how do you make it an engaging encounter?

How have you made your random encounters more interesting and more "believable".

Some of mine from R2R:

1. At first docile megafauna appear or are spotted at a distance. Allow high Survival rolls for the PCs to come upon them unnoticed. They can hunt them or leave them be. After 1 or 2 of these encounters the next group of megafauna have mega-sized parasitic infestations that attack the PCs. Giant ticks, giant ants, giant sized insects of your choice.

2. Each night, if the players have a fire, giant mosquitoes are attracted to it. At first maybe one arrives and perches on the party tent (remember these things are the size of ponies) then later 2 or 3 arrive and attack. If the players don't use a light at night then the mosquitoes stay away but they are left in the dark all night. Burning a certain weed (Survival or Knowledge(nature) to find it) on the fire through the night keeps the giant mosquitoes at bay as well.

3. During one of the giant mosquito attacks if any of the mosquitoes get engorged with blood (after draining some con) it attracts giant wasps that feed on the mosquitoes first then they move to the PCs.

4. Once the PCs get into the Screaming Jungle and have had some charu-ka and viper attacks they stumble upon a scene where constrictor snakes and vipers are battling with chimps or even charu-ka. Knowledge(religion) can tell them it seems like the jungle is at war with itself as the rising power of Ydersius is battling with the long time rule of Angazhan for control.

5. Any snakes they kill (this should happen kind of often) writhe around as if they were still alive after the killing blow. The ones that are decapitated seem to writhe around the longest and still ineffectively try to attack any nearby creatures for several rounds before finally expiring.

[Whaleshark]

cibet44 wrote:

5. Any snakes they kill (this should happen kind of often) writhe around as if they were still alive after the killing blow. The ones that are decapitated seem to writhe around the longest and still ineffectively try to attack any nearby creatures for several rounds before finally expiring.

Freaking brilliant. Well done.