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I like how you kept it short and sweet in your blog. You bring up the idea that everything should have a purpose in order to continue (or add to the immersion of) the story. I agree with you that the randomness should add a purpose (other than wearing down your characters before a bigger battle)...but not exactly in way that is suggested in your blog.
Random encounters do not have to be monster/battles. They most certainly can be opportunities for role playing.
As an example, the party beds down for the night, one of the characters steps past a tree to relieve herself, and stumbles upon a fresh corpse. No monster needs to appear. No maps. No pawns. So what is going on with this encounter? Well, with a freshly dead corpse, this can create tension because the characters might be thinking something dangerous is out there in the dark (and the players might be thinking that the GM is building up a battle). But, it can also be presented in such a way that the characters can feel empathy for the dead traveler. Perhaps, they can give him a proper burial? Or say a few words, giving a tough character a chance to show a more compassionate side of themselves.
With the above scenario, are they advancing the plot? No, not exactly. But they are creating a richer version of the game for the players. This is a random encounter that doesn't require a d20 to complete. You can decide to award xp or not, up to you.
I like these versions of random encounters better because my purpose for role playing is live out the story of another person. Don't get me wrong. I totally agree with you in that if it makes sense to have evil Fey trying to randomly pick off party members, then that is exactly what should be happening. I also agree that they should be used sparingly. I mean, characters have to sleep sometime. But ultimately, the random encounter's purpose should serve to be a very important part of the character's story arc.
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I think that as a GM, I generally like the random elements of the game, because they keep the game surprising to myself (to a degree). Which is also why I tend to like random encounter tables, because this way I haven't everything planned out and depending on what I role for. events can take whole different turns in the campaign.
Now I'm also all about plot and storylines, so I share some of your concerns and also agree, that encounters should serve a purpose. Maybe with the difference that I don't think that this purpose necessarily must be to advance the plot of the game. They can also serve to illustrate details of the setting and let the PCs interact with parts of the world they would normally simply ignore (because they are not relevant to the plot). And while you probably can plan all those things out beforehand, I think that it may rob you from one of the strengths of RPGs, namely the interaction of your ideas with those of your players. And that is what makes all those random elements most valuable to me. Because I don't know what will happen before I make the role, I need to be much more reactive to what my players will do during gameplay (I simply can't plan everything out for 20 events on a random table, don#t have the time for that). And as players tend to have awesome ideas, this approach often brings me new ideas and inspiration that would never have developed if everything would have gone according to plan A.
TL;DR What it comes down to (for me) is giving up a bit of narrative control. Instead of a planned-out single event that I try to make as rich an experience for the players I can, I just prepare an ecounter table (often only with some basics, which spares a lot of time) and let the dice fall as they want to. If the players catch on, this is often very rewarding and adds new twists to the story. If they don't I haven't wasted my time on an encounter I may have to force on them, because they actually are only interested in reaching the goal of their voyage as soon as possible.
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Like you I once hated the random encounter. As a fledgling GM I accidentally TPK'd a party with a randomly rolled Tiger. For years I refused to use random encounters.
Then came Kingmaker, and Kingmaker taught me the value of random encounter because Kingmaker unlike any campaign before it really centered the story on the players. Our heroes are adventurers by definition anything they do is an adventure. And Random Encounters are the heart of Kingmaker.
I really learned to exercise those improv muscles, based on the player's survival checks random encounters could be combat, mystery, roleplay or ambient.
Suddenly random encounters could propel a whole new direction for the players to go in, whether it was rescuing a man who woke up in the middle of a rushing river (and was secretly a werewolf and he didn't even know it, that character married one of the PCs later).
Sure sometimes a random encounter is just an obstacle to keep the players from resting too soon. But there is value in random encounters, it just takes a little improvisation to make it more interesting.
When I first began playing in 1985 my DM rolled for random encounters every hour during the game day. I just thought it was part of the rules, but a year or so later I discovered he was just a sadistic bastard... lol.
Today I rarely, if ever, use random encounters. Everything is planned out to speed up game play.
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I like random encounter tables a ton because there's a lot of great ideas in there that usually fit the theme of the setting and I can convert them into planned encounters for that region. That's how I've ended up using them in my pretty young GM career.
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Random encounters work well for sandbox and/or hexcrawling. They can help immerse folks into a world. However, like any other tool they can have the reverse effect if used too often or too poorly. For linear story based gaming random encounters should be used seldom, if at all.
One advantage of random encounters is it's a good counter to the strategy of slow-advancing, over-preparing, always-resting parties which can kill the mood. Obviously, there are stories where you have to "interrupt the ritual before midnight" or similar, but not every adventure is on the clock and random encounters are an incentive to keep moving, in those cases (in keeping with the approach of earlier editions, where random encounters were things to be avoided, I generally have them provide little loot).
In pathfinder, I use story awards a lot. To mitigate the over-levelling problem, I generally reduce any story award by the amount given out for any random encounters they've triumphed over since the last one (to incentivise achieving goals efficiently).
I don't like the time drag, so I generally err on the side of making them easy. I want them to be irritating things to avoid, but not actually awful.
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its gotta have a root somewhere I've just never seen it
It goes back to Original D&D (and somewhat to 1st Edition AD&D) where monsters provided very little XP, and treasure was the major source for a party's XP (which included XP for magical items). So the thought was to avoid random encounters, because they ate up valuable resources and gave little in the way of XP/treasure.
Coming from a background with this mindset, I like random encounters; but then I don't think everything in a campaign needs to have a reason for being there - or a need to contribute to the overall story.
As a GM I don't allow the 15 minute work day period. So I've never really had this problemOne advantage of random encounters is it's a good counter to the strategy of slow-advancing, over-preparing, always-resting parties which can kill the mood. Obviously, there are stories where you have to "interrupt the ritual before midnight" or similar, but not every adventure is on the clock and random encounters are an incentive to keep moving, in those cases (in keeping with the approach of earlier editions, where random encounters were things to be avoided, I generally have them provide little loot).
In pathfinder, I use story awards a lot. To mitigate the over-levelling problem, I generally reduce any story award by the amount given out for any random encounters they've triumphed over since the last one (to incentivise achieving goals efficiently).
I don't like the time drag, so I generally err on the side of making them easy. I want them to be irritating things to avoid, but not actually awful.
How do you disallow it?
And as a player random encounters have never made we want to move things along. If anything random encounters are a great way to just sit around and soak up XP before moving on top a big boss. Kinda like how most people do in Final Fantasy.
Well, like I said - that doesn't work since the story goals I hand out include a premium for efficiency. So the random encounter experience is deducted from your next story award.
All that you get for risking lots of encounters is that you use up limited resources. (I don't make them super difficult, as I find that counter productive and players will tend to be even more cautious),
However you aren't the first person to mention using random encounters to make players speed things along. So its gotta have a root somewhere I've just never seen it
It's not really "making" them do anything. It's actually about player empowerment - they have another choice to make re: risk-reward.
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Sorry I'm not the best at this multiple quote things. But Ill hit them in order.
For disallowing I don't say you can't rest now. But the time you take allows your enemies to move forward. Building better defenses, recruiting more allies. The bad guys don't sit on their laurels when you do. And if you're in their lair and you're resting where their guards once were they are going to come and beat you up anyway.
I dislike them as a player and as a GM. Both without making me move faster as a player they also feel meaningless. They don't drive the story. They don't do anything for the game for me as a player or a GM.
Changing the % makes no difference. Rolling on the random encounters tables gives a few outcomes.
I roll zero encounters. And now my who speech about how the road is rife with bandits means nothing. I told them how dangerous it was but no encounters because randomness has decided that's the narrative.
Maybe I roll one or two encounters. But bandits won't be the only thing on the table. So maybe I come up bandits and maybe I come up with no bandits but again randomness takes the narrative out of my hands. I could be telling a story here and now I'm just letting fate decide that there is no story and if there is what the story is.
And even at 10% or 5% there is still the chance I roll 10 encounters in 2 days and that's still all just meaningless. And its all because I've let randomness take over the narrative of the story. I don't want that, I want to build with my players a world they can enjoy. I want to react to what they do not let the dice react for me.
It's not all or nothing. You can place a bandit encounter and then roll for other encounters. You can overrule what monster turns up on the table. In a lair, the random encounter should almost always be patrols or reinforcements.
Randomness doesn't remove the narrative, it offers you a fresh opportunity to change it in a way you wouldn't have come up with on your own. (I've often thought of ways to tie them into the AP story, even though I never would have thought of it).
It also definitely shouldn't be removing the DM's control of the world. The rate of encounters and things on the table are suggestions you're free to use or ignore. I wouldn't even consider it fudging to decide "Jim's getting sick of these, I'll ignore any more encounters until we get to the city". They are a tool, not a limitation on you, imo.
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Sorry I'm not the best at this multiple quote things. But Ill hit them in order.
For disallowing I don't say you can't rest now. But the time you take allows your enemies to move forward. Building better defenses, recruiting more allies. The bad guys don't sit on their laurels when you do.
How does that work in practise?
Suppose you've mapped out and populated a bandit lair. The players have located it and now they decide to spend a week observing it, learning patrol times and sizes, understanding when the camp sleeps, guard changes etcetera. They spend days planning their raid for when a large number of bandits are out or asleep (and exhaustively searching the surroundings for secret tunnels in).
Do reinforcements/allies arrive making the dungeon too much of a challenge? Do you just decide that they run into a patrol? (and when they win, is the dungeon now easier?) i like to present it as a choice - there's tactical advantage in scouting the place thoroughly and gathering intel, but it comes at a risk. They can then choose what approach to take and it's a meaningful choice.
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but again randomness takes the narrative out of my hands.
Well, there's an awful lot of players (amd GMs) that think that the control of the narrative shouldn't solely rest in the GM hands. Because it's the player's (including the GM) story, not the GM'S (excluding the players) story alone.
Also I use random encounter tables differently than you suggest. For example, If the players have been warned before that the road is rife with bandits, I also might plan out some encounters with those bandits. I put those into a random encounter table and if during my rolls, nothing comes up at all, I might still decide just to use those encounters, if it makes sense. Or, if the PCs act carefully enough they might just have been lucky enough to avoid all those bandits, if the dice are their friends.
On the other hand I most certainly won't use 10 random encounters in 2 days just because the dice said so but may just stop rolling for them if game is threatened to get boring otherwise. So I try to be flexible about it and as those tables aren't hard-wired in the rules, no one can call me out for breaking them all the time. ^^
The thing for me is, that with random encounters, I don't simply decide what the players have to cope with and leave room for the unexpected, and in my experience, some of the most memorable roleplaying moments came up from this place.
And the other thing is that random encounter tables enable me to have encounters ready in case I need them. And as I don't plan them out with as much details as I would with a planned encounter, I save a lot of time and still have more encounters ready than I would have otherwise. Which is very important to me as I don't have the time to plan everything out as I used to have twenty years ago.
You need to be ready to improvise though, and you're probably better off with players that actively catch on to the roleplaying opportunities that come with those random events. In the end, you might not get the story you planned for, but sometimes, the new story might be even better than the planned one. And for the players, it's potentially much more satisfying because they had a bigger part in creating the story
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For that matter the players don't even need the GM. Just roll to see if they meet monsters and then battle them themselves.
That's a bit extreme don't you think?
And it's a far cry from having randomized guard patrols within a castle for example.
Think of this example: The PCs are sneaking though the king's castle, and they turn a corner and... run right into one of the servants bringing a midnight snack to the queen. Can this be scripted? Sure, but if your players know you don't use random encounters, well, then they know that no matter how careful they were, this encounter would have happened anyway. Or, that you placed this encounter by fiat alone...
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But if it was random it would be like, "You turn the corner, hold on a second let me roll these dice to see if anything is there. Oh nothing ok you guys are good." Or "Hmm ok let me roll to see, of you guys come across something, let me see what it is. Oh its a servant." These both seem weak.
Because that's a lazy way to implement a random encounter.
If you purchased a mod you have to understand it thoroughly - all the ins and outs, variables, best guesses at player reaction, encounters, treasure/treasure impact & team resources and yes - random encounters.That is a prepared GMs job - looking at the random encounter table (if included) and having the same understanding of the table as you would the rest of the module. That means the job of the GM is to come up with interesting implementation of potential encounters vs a dry and mechanical presentation.
The random servant does matter as a concept (the random part) - if they are running an espionage op then it is one of those random "oh shit" moments that makes things memorable and adds an immersive quality to the game. That random encounter can happen at the most inopportune time - say the rogue is dispatching an evil henchman of the BBEG in the henchman's chamber and the servant walks in (an innocent)...changes everything. Or the players may be dressed like some of the BBEG enforcers as part of their deception and they encounter the servant who avoids them out of fear (since they are treated badly) by the BBEG men. RP encounter? Info? Even just immersions - all are valuable and good adds.
If you want the servant there but him/her there. If it doesn't matter if they are there are not - which is what rolling says, you don't care one way or another if its there or not - just pick and run with it.
In many respects - yes, you don't care if the servant encounter happens - its just part of the potential tapestry of the adventure. It isn't supposed to be the adventure, just a feature that chance introduced (and the GM familiarized himself about prior to rolling).
Honestly, random encounters - if crafted with some care or even just read through by the GM are incredible tools to enrich an adventure and to make the world come alive. I'm not talking bulk Roll 2)1-2 trolls attack the party, but instead while wandering through the dungeon they attract the attention of a hideously deformed and scarred troll outcast who hides and murders with stealth anything it can get away with killing.
Random encounters can help various class or character concepts shine:
- Wilderness encounter: With a random dangerous predator - could the druid or ranger reverse the encounter and use it as backup for a group that is injured or can the whole thing go south?
- Espionage encounter: DE's servant example is a great one - all sorts of random things that can throw off an attack on a base - unexpected reinforcements, escaped prisoner, etc. Are the players making too much noise, for stealth characters reducing chances of random encounters is actually a form of reward for their character choice.
Theme of adventure
- Red Herring: Random noises, non-combat encounters, etc -keep the PCs on their toes, makes the world alive and doesn't trigger panic every time you roll the dice
- Mood: For horror games that random sound can be a shriek in the night, a bad turn in the weather, an incomplete grave, a weird cairn (freshly made), strange tracks and drag marks, blood on a tree, etc
That's not even the tip of it, I could write a once a week blog for a year on how to create and develop random encounters for all kinds of games and GM styles - that's how strongly I feel about this poorly implemented and underused GM tool.
IMO of course, I could be wrong about random encounters.
I hate random encounters with the passion of a thousand burning suns (part of why I didn't like Kingmaker), but I'm not above picking something off of a provided table, fleshing it out a bit, and sticking it into the story for texture.
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f the player's are being stealthy then the would notice the servant and the servant wouldn't notice them.
Are you sure? How many movies and novels feature the stealthy hero, being cautious to a fault, and yet all of a sudden has a freak, dare I say, chance encounter that the hero DID NOT SEE coming, that ruined everything.
Heck, this happens in real life. With real people that are trained professionals (e.g. Green Berets, Nave SEALs, etc.). And no, I am not trying to equate real life with the game. I am only using this as an example to say that a stealthy party will not always notice every little detail (such as the servant in my previous post).
Crap happens that is totally unforeseen sometimes, even to the best of them... And random encounters when used correctly, can provide that nail-biting, tension-strewn true element of chance, however small it may be, to your games; which has the potential to make a good game, great.
I mean sure, you obviously can run your games as you see fit of course, and I don't think anyone here is telling you otherwise. And if your players are all on board with your stance of no randomness, more power to you.
I, and a few others here are merely trying to point out that maybe, just maybe, you're leaving a valuable game mastering tool untapped and unused.
Either way, good gaming to you. :-D
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The GM guides the narrative and adjusts it to what the players do. Except random rolls mean that now neither the GM nor the Players have control of the narrative. For that matter the players don't even need the GM. Just roll to see if they meet monsters and then battle them themselves.
You are aware that there are systems out there where there's no GM to guide the narrative? And that still produce narratives very consistently?
That aside, I'm not saying that your style of GMing isn't valid, but it's hardly the only one. As much as I like story-telling, I see my duty as a GM not to tell a story. To me, roleplaying means collaborative storytelling and with the PCs at the center of that story, I do not even think that my role as the GM with respect to the story is the most important one.
And with this in mind, I'd say that random encounters, if used correctly, can influence, change or even enhance the narrative, but they won't destroy it. Because the narrative isn't created by the event itself but by the PC's reactions to the event
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Just to take a step back from that very topic: I followed the link to your blog and did notice that you use randomness to create cool characters. I found it very interesting that your argument to do this is to challenge yourself to do new things you might normally not do.
I like to create characters this way myself for the very same reason, but accidentally that's also a reason why I do use random encounters in my games because those might add elements to the narrative or modify the narrative in a way I might not have been able to come up with if I had planned out everything beforehand.