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Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Micro-adventures instead of random encounter tables
As I mentioned before, I am planning to run a more open, player-driven D&D campaign next year. Less prepared main story with a pre-determined archvillain, more freedom for players to go in whatever direction they want. Now one thing that tends to feature heavily in such more open campaigns (but also sometimes in more linear campaigns) is the use of random encounter tables. The players are traveling through a forest, and on a roll of below 5 on a d20, they will have a random encounter. Roll the d20 again, it's a 12, that means you encounter 5 wolves. The DM throws down a generic battlemap, and the group is occupied for half an hour with combat fighting those random wolves. And I always hated that style of gaming for D&D.
I kind of like random encounters in video role-playing games. I find it open helps that if you feel underleveled for the next story content, you can run around in circles in that forest until you have a "random" encounter, which gives you some xp and loot, making you stronger. But combat in a video game is a lot faster, and it is easier to play every day. In D&D I tend to get only one or two sessions per month, of 4 to 6 hours. I don't want to waste that precious time with a combat against some random wolves.
That isn't to say that every combat in D&D needs to be epic, or every encounter be some dramatic piece of the overall story. I can see the appeal, and even necessity, of having dangerous encounters while traveling. I just would like them to be a tad more interesting. So I was thinking of creating / collecting a list of micro-adventures to populate my random encounter table with. For example, instead of meeting 5 wolves in the forest, the group meets a wounded merchant, who has been robbed by bandits. The group can track the bandits to their camp and fight them. As the DM, I can prepare a battlemap with a bandit camp, so it's already more interesting than a blank map with 5 wolves. But also, as Sid Meier said, a good game is a series of interesting decisions: If 5 wolves attack the group, there are no decisions other than what combat abilities to use. With the wounded merchant encounter the group can decide whether they want to go after the bandits or not, and whether they want to return the merchandise or keep it.
I will see in the adventure material I already have, as well as what can be found in places like DriveThruRPG / RPGNow / DMsGuild, for collections of micro-adventures. I know that "5 room dungeons" are a thing, and those might fit the purpose for things like a small tomb or wizard tower. But that would basically be the biggest possible micro-adventure I would put on an encounter table; with something like that bandit camp being the smallest possible micro-adventure on the same table. I don't want "you randomly meet X monsters", but I also don't want "you randomly meet a large dungeon that will take you several sessions to explore".
Fortunately the theme of my future campaign, pirates and naval adventures, fits rather well with that concept. If the players control a pirate ship, an encounter with another ship, whether that is a merchant to rob, or a ghost ship chasing them, makes for a good micro-adventure. So does a small island on which possibly a treasure is buried. The Ghosts of Saltmarsh book actually has some micro-adventures in the back, in the Underwater Locations section, with battlemaps like a sunken ship and ideas how to populate the area.
Labels: Dungeons & Dragons
- posted by Tobold @ 11:03 AM Permanent Link
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There's a distinction between encountering 5 wolves and breaking out battle mat to fight 5 wolves.
Imagine if you're hiking with your friends in real life, and learn that there might be a pack of friggin wolves somewhere nearby! There's a lot of options for your group:
- you can deduce where the wolves would likely be and veer off your route to avoid stumbling on them. Cross a river would work, if you only had a boat...
- you can have someone constantly on the lookout for wolves
- you can look for other groups to find safety in numbers
And that doesn't even include hunting options like tracking them down (how?) and fighting them (How do you get the upper hand? How do you make sure they don't run away? Do you prepare traps, lure them in? Attack them in their lair? Use a poisoned bait?)
If you actually see them, what is the pack doing?
- Wolves might be consuming an animal they killed, too distracted to mess with the party... for now.
- What if the animal is a rare monster, one of its organs a valuable alchemical ingredient? Does the party chase the wolves away? Do they wait for them to finish? How do they hide?
- Wolves might be consuming a dead humanoind. Which might have loot.
- They might be attacking a person.
- They might be licking their wounds from an encounter with something far more scary. Do you attack them now? Or risk encountering them later? What could mess up wolves so hard? Is it still around?
And then, if you leave them be, the pack could follow you. For a fantasy party, 5 wolves might not be scary in fair fight, but what if they strike when the party is most vulnerable and least prepared?
5 wolves can be a lot. The "encounter" could last for a several days I'd say, depending on the party strategy and circumstances.
And that's just animals - humanoids could be much more complex.
I think a good approach to have more interesting encounters might be not to think of them as combat encounters.
Imagine if you're hiking with your friends in real life, and learn that there might be a pack of friggin wolves somewhere nearby! There's a lot of options for your group:
- you can deduce where the wolves would likely be and veer off your route to avoid stumbling on them. Cross a river would work, if you only had a boat...
- you can have someone constantly on the lookout for wolves
- you can look for other groups to find safety in numbers
And that doesn't even include hunting options like tracking them down (how?) and fighting them (How do you get the upper hand? How do you make sure they don't run away? Do you prepare traps, lure them in? Attack them in their lair? Use a poisoned bait?)
If you actually see them, what is the pack doing?
- Wolves might be consuming an animal they killed, too distracted to mess with the party... for now.
- What if the animal is a rare monster, one of its organs a valuable alchemical ingredient? Does the party chase the wolves away? Do they wait for them to finish? How do they hide?
- Wolves might be consuming a dead humanoind. Which might have loot.
- They might be attacking a person.
- They might be licking their wounds from an encounter with something far more scary. Do you attack them now? Or risk encountering them later? What could mess up wolves so hard? Is it still around?
And then, if you leave them be, the pack could follow you. For a fantasy party, 5 wolves might not be scary in fair fight, but what if they strike when the party is most vulnerable and least prepared?
5 wolves can be a lot. The "encounter" could last for a several days I'd say, depending on the party strategy and circumstances.
And that's just animals - humanoids could be much more complex.
I think a good approach to have more interesting encounters might be not to think of them as combat encounters.
What Random_Phobosis said. In the right party with druids, rangers and good animal handling checks, the five wolves might end up befriending the adventurers, for all we know.
Another possibility for making it feel less random is to customize the encounter tables to follow certain "themes" for a specific region, or contain clues towards some pre-made locations you don't mind your players visiting.
If a region has particular factions in power, for example, the wolves could be feasting on a messenger of one of those factions, and the corpse may have a valuable delivery or hold an important secret. Or they might be 'tame' free-roaming wolves of some orc tribe or vampire lord and have a symbol/tag on their collars - their masters may also be quite unhappy should they discover who killed their wolves, etc.
Another possibility for making it feel less random is to customize the encounter tables to follow certain "themes" for a specific region, or contain clues towards some pre-made locations you don't mind your players visiting.
If a region has particular factions in power, for example, the wolves could be feasting on a messenger of one of those factions, and the corpse may have a valuable delivery or hold an important secret. Or they might be 'tame' free-roaming wolves of some orc tribe or vampire lord and have a symbol/tag on their collars - their masters may also be quite unhappy should they discover who killed their wolves, etc.
I love the open game campaign, but be aware that your players will most likely flounder around looking for something to do briefly and then get bored. Players hate being railroaded onto the plot train, but quickly get lost and die in the proverbial wilderness when there are no train tracks to guide them.
Also be prepared for your players to do a better than normal job of ignoring every adventuring hook you set them.
I'll be reading to see how you go.
Also be prepared for your players to do a better than normal job of ignoring every adventuring hook you set them.
I'll be reading to see how you go.
# posted by 
: 12/8/21 01:26
: 12/8/21 01:26
I agree with the above comments, but another potential concern is your group taking the opportunity to get stuck on all these apparent "side quests". If you encounter the robbed merchant, you usually assume he's either relevant to the main story or a side quest and not just a "random encounter". As a result, you might spend sessions chasing your unrelated minor side quests and losing track of your intended narrative.
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