Better Random Encounters

I think Random Encounter Tables are great. They're a huge part of what makes my latest campaign so different than others that I've run, they're part of the reason I called this place the Verdigris Table, and even if you don't use them as much as I do I think they can a very useful tool for any Dungeon Master.

I'm making a whole post on how encounter tables work and what makes them good, and then I'm going to describe how I've been using them the past year or so as the core of my open-world sandbox campaign, but I wanted to kick off this little series with something that will (hopefully) be useful to you immediately, whatever experience level you're at, to make your next game night better. So here's: 10 ways to create better Random Encounters.

1) Location Location Location

2d4+1 Goblins, boring. But what if they're hiding up in the tree tops, or they're on the other side of a ravine with only a rickety old bridge crossing it, or they're on the opposite bank of a river? Maybe it's a river of lava, or acid, or sentient ooze. Find a cool battle map online or just doodle some patches of quicksand on a basic one and things are instantly a little more interesting. It could even be a location the PCs will want to put on the map and revisit. A potential safe house or stronghold location if they clear it out and fix it up. Or maybe these goblins are harvesting goodberries from the bushes in sacred grove, or they're trying to solve the puzzle lock on the tomb of the dwarven lords.

2) Lairs

This is kind of a subtype of location, but deserves it's own entry because coming upon a creature in their lair can add a whole lot to an encounter. A monster might run at half health out there in the wilds, but fight to the death to protect it's home. Plus, now we're talking lair actions, traps, environmental effects. Additionally, lairs are where the monsters keep their stuff. A dragon on the wing is probably not carrying anything. Maybe a goat they're about to eat or something. You find their lair though, and you find their hoard. And maybe other things as well: minions, prisoners, an egg. Patient players might wait for the monster to leave the lair, or maybe they'll come back when they have more XP or reinforcements.

3) Environment

Rounded out the location based trifecta, we've got the environment. That rickety bridge over the gorge or that lava river can be a challenge in its own right, even without goblins shooting arrows at us while we try to get across. If a tree falls in the forest and you're sleeping underneath it, do you get to make a dex save? Ever get caught out in the rain? Ever hike a hundred miles over four days in the rain? Maybe your rations go moldy, or your armor starts to rust. Maybe you gain a level of exhaustion because there are puddles in your boots and you haven't been warm or dry in nearly a week. That's just regular rain, what happens when some fluctuation in the weave causes magical storms? If that drizzling rain of frogs becomes a deluge of giant frogs, you better watch out. There's tons of flavorful, challenging potential here.

4) Not everything's an instant fight

It's easy to default to “2d4+1 Goblins, roll initiative,” but monsters aren't necessarily going to attack everything they see.

Check out this OG reaction table, utilizing a nice 2d6 bell curve.

Or this more complex one from the red box.

Now we're talking. We're creating more variety and giving the players some options, some choices to make. Maybe these goblins are just going about their business. They're coming back from a successful hunt, and they'll be willing to trade some fresh meat or some information about the local region if the PCs have something good to offer. Maybe they just fought a battle and half of them are injured. Maybe it's some weird goblin holiday and they're celebrating. Maybe they're excited to find a band of adventurers who might be interested in dealing with the ettercaps and phase spider that are encroaching on their territory.

5) Not everything's a monster

Put some useful NPCs and potential allies on your tables. The players are going to be way more excited about rolling a random encounter when they know the Blind Priest wanders the Golden Hills handing out blessings, that old tortle in the Frog Marsh makes the best potions, or merchants with magical goods frequent this trail. Here's a bounty hunter who asks the party's help in capturing her quarry and is willing to split the reward. Rumors, quests, shopping, give them a little taste of civilization out here in the wilds, or a dash of something they'd never see in town.

6) Signs and Portents

We can use random encounters to show what's coming up, or what has come before. The table says Owlbear, but the party's level two and limping home after a near TPK in the dungeon. Well, maybe they hear the owlbear before it perceives them, and with a little luck and smarts they can avoid it. Or maybe they come across Owlbear tracks, and can follow them or run the other way. Again, the players have choices. They can try to start the combat on their terms or avoid it entirely. Maybe they take a rest, follow those tracks to a nest lined in fur and feathers. They wait for the Owlbear to leave on its next hunt and find a few regurgitated owlbear pellets, one with a little glint to it revealing the magical amulet contained within.

7) Loot!

If there's potential loot on the table, rolling a random encounter is way more like gambling; risky but fun. Maybe it's a rare mushroom that is a valuable spell component, or an easily overlooked rock that's actually a semi-precious stone. Maybe it's straight up a coin purse or a scroll case laying on the ground, surely there's got to be a story here. The aftermath of some disaster perhaps, or bait in a trap. It could be an exquisite elven stature, half buried by the centuries. This is worth a ton of gold to the right collector, but first we'd have to dig it out and transport it somehow. Treasure can be a reward, while also being a challenge, and telling a story.

8) No result can still be (kind of) interesting

The typical procedure is to roll to see if an encounter is triggered, and then if it is to roll on the table to see what encounter you get. In my latest game I don't do that. It's just the one roll, you're always getting something. Sounds crazy right? But half of the time the result is just descriptive fluff. Even without a classic encounter, what makes traveling through this place feel different than traveling through some other place? Flora, fauna, features. You can get poetic with it or get gonzo weird with it. Is it more effort, whether I do it in prep or improvise during the game? Yes it is. But, it stops me from saying the very boring “nothing happens” again and again. A full day of travel in a fantasy adventure where nothing interesting at all occurred, or that day we saw the two giant fire badgers fighting under a razor thorn bush. Where they fighting, or were they...? Plus, the players might have discovered something if they had stopped and investigated, or cast animal friendship or speak with animals, and of course they still could have turned it into a combat encounter if they were so inclined.

I'll also have an entry for RP prompts on there too. Sure, sometimes I'll say “the nights first watch passes uneventfully” but I'll also say something like “as you finish dinner and settle down for the night, the conversation turns to childhood memories, what do we learn about your character?” I call it d20 questions, I keep a list, sometimes I roll on it, sometimes I just pick something, sometimes I make something up on the spot. It's great for tables that like RP and it's also great for tables where RP rarely happens unless you prompt it.

9) Roll on the next table

I am a big fan of verisimilitude in my world building. Things can be weird, mysterious, magical, but I like them to make sense together. You're going to find foresty things on my forest table, and you're going to find different things in the Cradlewood than in the Webbed Wood or the Centaur's Forest. But it's always good to have a chance for surprise, so I'll often include an entry for reroll on the next region's table. Maybe the Black Tusk Orcs came down from the mountain passes: are they raiding? Running away from something really scary? On vacation? Alternatively, I'll also have the same encounter appear in several regions' tables. Especially those big bad ones that the PCs have no chance defeating so they better play smart. Yeah, I don't want to wipe the party with a random encounter, but if you don't default to instant roll initiative you can absolutely have some low probability outcomes that are double the deadly challenge rating for them. Why is there a dragon randomly swooping down from the sky to bully you out of most of your gold? Because this is Dungeons & Dragons and you rolled snake eyes! That young red dragon might sleep in the caldera of Mount Slag, but his territory stretches past those foothills to the river valley and Lost Lake. There's a dragon, or a giant, or something way out of the party's league on every table. It lets them know this world is dangerous, not perfectly calibrated to always give them enemies they can kill. It makes things feel more real, and gives them something to aspire to.

10) Roll twice on this table

What's more fun than roll again? Roll two more times! And what better way to make a random encounter more interesting than to combine it with another random encounter. If you quietly follow the trail of shambling mound spoor it will lead you to the standing stones of the old druid circle, where short rests give you max healing on hit dice and you set out with a charge of inspiration. Or turns out these goblins have a pet manticore. Or they're in the middle of fighting one when the party comes upon them, what do we do now? Hey, isn't that Bartleby the Scrivener who sold us those scrolls talking with those bugbears? What's going on there?

Sometimes the dice will give us weird interactions that will take us to places we'd never get otherwise, and sometimes they just won't fit and we'll have to roll or select something else. And sometimes you can just do this combining anyway to see what happens. Purposefully grab a handful of entries and stick them together like legos to create a memorable encounter for your players. A very powerful though not necessarily antagonistic monster from another region, pointing a magic item in the face of an NPC ally, at the edge of a cliff while hail is coming down causing damage and difficult terrain. That's a lot of things but I don't think it's boring.

I truly hope you found this inspirational and picked up at least one thing to add to your game. You could even take these ten ideas and make your own random encounter table for your world. Ten entries is plenty to carry you for several sessions. Put two entries in each and you've a d20 table, and that's more than you'll need for awhile. If you've got other types of entries you like including on random encounter tables I'd love to hear about down below in the comments. If you wanted a deeper dive into the mechanics and purpose of these tables check out the next post.

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