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Wednesday, May 13, 2015

(Very) Random Encounters in Context

Based on this discussion: LINK to Tenkar's Tavern

I don't prep.  I roll encounter dice and read 3s as evidence of activity if someone is tracking, 2s as obvious recent activity or tracks (what have you), and 1s as encounter events.

Next, I grab my Koplow dice, now dubbed Quisitor dice, comprised of a Greater Than/Less Than die and a Likelihood die, roll them together and determine if something actually happens.

After I know something happens, I roll two colour dice (red through violet) and use that to stimulate my imagination/understanding of the situation, taking terrain, time of day, season, etc. into account.

If the Quisitors give me a high likelihood of an event, and the colour dice suggest it is hostile, I then roll critter dice (again, Koplow), to impromptu create a type of thing to be encountered, doing away with the need for monster lists.

Then to determine strength of encounter, I roll a d20 or something that makes sense for circumstances, then in the ten seconds or so this process took, I ask the players to roll perception or initiative, etc. to then describe the results.

4 comments:

  1. What are the "critter dice"? Or are they the same ones you dubbed Quisitor dice? I wasn't familiar with Koplow in general or the Greater Than/Less Than die and Likelihood die before, I can see how useful those could be in play. I poked around their catalog a bit, are you using some of their animal dice?

    I started using Rory's Story Cubes to generate random encounters a while ago rather than using encounter charts. I am seriously thinking about adding the greater than/less than and likelihood dice to the mix now :)

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    Replies
    1. Carl,

      The critter dice are the ones that have Ant, Eagle, Fish, Frog, Horse, and Turtle on them, and then the other die is the Woodlands Animals.

      I have two Rory's, and I just can't get them to flow for me. Weird.

      I hope the Greater-than/Likelihoods serve you well.
      I also made a Goggle doc which uses 2d6 (d36 or d66, whatever) in their place.

      Delete
  2. I think we pretty much deduced what the initial d6 dice do during play. And I always figured you had some pretty extensive, customized random encounter tables.
    But had no idea the other various systems used to figure out what we're running into.\

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  3. Peter,

    The Terrain Tables I have are really for determining land features and resources. I don't have or use encounter tables at all.

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