Matthew Perkins
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Relevant Encounters
🕑 Added 2023-01-19 22:15:03 +0000 UTC
Random encounters should not feel random. In a video game where it only takes a minute to resolve an encounter, it’s no issue. But for a TTRPG session that took a month of WhatsApp messages to get five adults in the same room, nobody wants a bad roll on a random encounter table to chew up a half-hour of precious game time.
To respect every player’s time, a mindful TTRPG session should be a purposeful, curated experience, even when the Game Master decides to roll on a seemingly random table.
For most encounter tables, the possibilities reflect the environment — zombies in the swamp, bears in the cave, yetis in the snow — but even that doesn’t feel curated enough. Because when the players defeat the random bears in the cave, we haven’t really advanced the story, we’ve just survived the story. That’s not drama.
Instead, this system advocates for relevant encounters rather than random encounters. Regardless of whether the players are faced with a wandering monster or a roleplaying challenge, every option on your encounter table should be specifically curated for the adventure and always geared towards exposition.
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Comments
Jesse James Cantu
Nice!
Matthew Perkins @heyitsMattyP
Hey Trav! Nah, I wouldn't fudge the encounters. If they landed on a result that foreshadows an element of the adventure they weren't immediately focussed on, that's OK! That just means we're foreshadowing. But on the opposite end, if they had already resolved the myconid threat and then they rolled the creeping spore cloud trap, I would reflavour the encounter so it poses no threat (because the players have already dealt with the problem we're trying to give exposition about), and communicate to the players that they've bypassed this threat because of their actions with the myconids. "Good job, players!" I think it's a good way to give the players a W :)
Travis Mitchell
In regards to your examples, would you recommend perhaps fudging some of the rolls so it makes sense, narratively? For example, you would want the Myconid trap to come before the PC's complete the seagrow caves mission. So if they happen to head to seagrow caves on first, would you fudge the encounter result so they deal with the trap on the way? Same with the harpy encounter
