Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated

This post is an update to my 2017 essay “Structuring Encounter Tables.” It’s intended to replace that earlier version, and thus includes a bit of self-plagiarism.

In order for an environment to feel dangerously alive it must intrude on the player’s desired activities. For any activity in my game, there are increments of fictional time which require the players to roll the Event Die. Each face of the Event Die corresponds to something, but the most complex and important result is an Encounter, which then calls for a roll on my Encounter Table.

All my encounter tables are 2d6 tables¹. The bell curve allows me to vary the likelihood of different encounters. The ones that are most likely can be a little mundane, so that even as they intrude on the player’s desires they also serve to establish what is normal in this place. The less frequent encounters can be the zanier stuff that’s fun to write, but would make the game feel disjointed if they were omnipresent.

¹ The methods I describe here could easily be adapted for use a 2d4 or a 2d8. I have occasionally used 2d4 myself when I was running smaller campaigns with fewer expected sessions. In general, though, I find that 2d4 doesn’t give me enough room for all the variety I like to pack into a table. Conversely, 2d8 tables are too big. They take too much effort to write, and the odds of uncommon results occurring are too diminishingly remote for my preference.

2 is always a dragon

Because all of our games could use more dragons in them. The game is called “Dungeons & Dragons,” yet in my experience, the appearances of dragons end up being exceedingly rare when contrasted with how often dungeons show up. They don’t need to be these hulking colossal beasts capable of stepping on PCs as though they were ants. They don’t need to be impossible to defeat, so long as they’re scary. A lizard the size of a car with 8 more hit dice than that party’s average, multiple attacks each around, and a big breath weapon is more than enough.

When my players encounter a dragon there’s a 1-in-3 chance that it’s hungry and wants to gobble them up. In this mood a dragon can’t be reasoned with, you’ve got to fight or flee. The other 2/3rds of the time the dragon will simply demand tribute from anyone who crosses its path. Anyone who refuses to pay tribute is gobbled up on principal as a warning to people who think they’re allowed to say ‘no’ to a dragon. Each of my dragons has a preferred form of tribute (perhaps unique books or fancy bottles of booze) but will also accept money of a certain amount per person.

12 is always a wizard

Because all of our games could use more wizards in them. Because wizards are the coolest, fuck you wizard haters. A wizard doesn’t need a complete spell list and inventory of magic items. All they need is the ability to do something really weird and scary, and an escape plan. Wizards know they’ve got a d4 hit die, so they’ve always got an escape plan.

Wizards, being a few steps closer to humanity than dragons, are slightly less likely to want to eat people. Like all my encounters, they’ll be pursuing some specific activity when the party meets them—though because they’re wizards that activity may be completely inscrutable. Capable-looking passers by may find themselves press-ganged into doing something strange, and a lucky party may earn a boon. Though, it’s just as likely that what a wizard wants is something the party would never willingly give up. “The foot of a traveler” is a desirable component for certain spells.

My private rule is that it’s not possible for the party to become friends with a wizard, because wizards do not have friends. Wizards divide people into three categories: people they hate, people who are useful, and people who are beneath their notice. That third group is definitely the safest one to be in.

Wizards and Dragons are each factions of one. They’re individuals with enough personal power that they don’t have to worry about rules or territories. They usually have a few minions, but they control them at their whims rather than by any formalized structure. When encountering either of these creatures the party should be in great personal danger, but clever play could also bring them great advantage. If a wizard or dragon is slain, there are consequences. Allegiances shift, power vacuums appear and are filled, and valuable treasure hoards are left without their most powerful guardians.

7 is usually Recurring Characters.

I maintain a separate list of these, populated with NPCs the party has had some fun dealings with but who would not otherwise have any reason to recur. I rotate people off that list whenever this result causes them to appear, then rotate them back on if the list ever gets too small. In most other circumstances I prefer the purer randomness of a creature that can appear over and over again while some other creatures never do. For recurring characters though, who are mostly friendly to the party, that has often felt tedious to me. It’s fun bumping into an old friend in the grocery store. It’s awkward when you keep bumping into them in every aisle.

The Major Half of the table

8, 9, 10, and 11 are for universal threats. Stuff that could appear anywhere and any time without being out of place. The further they get from 7, the more wild they can be. So while 8 might be a rabid dog or a hungry bandit, 11 is going to be something like a void vampire or a spell-starved lich.

The Minor Half of the table

6, 5, 4, and 3 are for threats tied to specific locations. In On a Red World Alone that usually refers to the factional territories the party must travel through in order to get anywhere in the Dome, but it might also mean levels of a dungeon, regional biomes, depth beneath the surface of the sea, etc. Whatever boundaries are important for the players to understand in your setting, you can help emphasize them with this. On one side of a boundary the players fight goblins, on the other they fight flying devil sharks with tornado breath weapons.

Thus my encounter table ends up looking like this:

2. Roll a Dragon
3. [Territory]
4. [Territory]
5. [Territory]
6. [Territory]
7. Roll a Recurring Character
8. Six giant slugs demanding taxes in the name of the slug king. Who the hell is the slug king?
9. Starving Dire Bear, recently escaped from an abandoned moleman zoo deep underground.
10. 21 Gnomes (the ideal number). A numerological cult. They’re insulted by the number of buckles on the party’s clothes.
11. A talking book that is horny to be read from. It makes things weird right away. (The text is about the history of obelisks).
12. Roll a Wizard

Kobold Territory

3. The party spots a pit trap. They’re supposed to spot it. There are 7 kobolds waiting to ambush them as they edge around it.
4. 17 goblins in full armor, here to raid their kobold foes, and willing to raid anyone else they meet.
5. A kobold merchant traveling to the lands of the slug king to trade. Has a minotaur bodyguard, and doesn’t trust outsiders.
6. 4 young Kobold bravos, all drunk, looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness.

Boneboy Territory

3. A great big rolling skull that can shoot fire out its eyes. Trying to win a marathon race. Would be furious if anyone delayed them even a moment.
4. A giant serpent. Unseen are 3 boneboy hunters stalking the serpent, who may ambush the party if their encounter with the serpent presents a useful advantage.
5. A whole company of boneboys (24!) out on marching maneuvers. They’re raw recruits. This is their first day. All but their commander will panic at first sight of the enemy.
6. 2 boneboy warriors sitting in a small camp, polishing one another’s bones. They will be angry and embarrassed to be discovered.

By breaking the table down this way, generating 11 options becomes a much more manageable task. And adding a new location only requires generating 4 new options, rather than a whole new table. So the only task left is to actually fill the table, and the question becomes: what makes a good encounter table entry? First I ought to specify that for my purposes, an encounter is (almost) always an agent of some sort. An NPC, animal, or monster. I’ve got other tools for managing random locations or environmental hazards. Encounters are things that have their own desires and the ability to pursue them.

The first step is just to come up with something that feels cool to me. It’s easier to turn a weak encounter into a strong encounter than it is to conjure a strong encounter fully formed in my imagination. I pull ideas from anywhere. If I’m on the Minor Half of the table I try to stick to something that represents the factions and situations of the region, but otherwise I let my imagination roam widely and trust that I’ll figure out how to make it fit during play. Sometimes I’m fired by the sort of creative energy that drives me to invent a unique monster, other times I just flip through one of the monster manuals I’ve got on my shelves and pick out the first thing that looks fun. Once I’ve got everything down in a way that interests me, then I can go back over the table to figure out if the entries meet the criteria of being a good encounter. There are two wrinkles that each encounter needs in order for me to be satisfied that I’ll be able to run it quickly at the table.

Wrinkle 1

All of my Encounters are doing something specific. Even if they’re a group of 2d6 generic mooks, they need to be up to something when the party encounter them. For this I wrote a “What is the Encounter Doing” table. My original intent was to roll during play, in conjunction with rolling the encounter. In practice that slowed down play too much, so I’ve taken to using it during session prep, and its been a delight having those details at my fingertips when I run. Roll a d30 for intelligent creatures, and a d12 for animal creatures.

1. Lost
2. Hurt
3. Trapped
4. Sleeping
5. Eating
6. Sick
7. Tracking Prey
8. Lying in Ambush
9. Mating Behavior
10. Starving
11. Returning Home
12. Fleeing
13. Plotting
14. Holding Captives
15. Scavenging
16. Building a Camp
17. Demolishing
18. Doing drugs or drinking
19. Artistic pursuits
20. Spying
21. Committing a crime
22. Searching
23. Religious ritual
24. Setting, putting out, or fleeing a fire
25. Weeping
26. Excreting²
27. Bathing
28. Socializing
29. Gloating
30. Something that isn’t on this table.³

² “Why is this in the intelligent creatures only part of the table?” I hear you ask. Because excreting NPCs are only interesting if it means they can experience shame.
³ For a table that is meant to be re-used over and over again, it’s nice to have something that forces me to reexamine it from time to time.

Wrinkle 2

At this point an encounter often doesn’t need further tweaking. However, I’ve noticed a bad tendency in myself towards encounters that don’t demand the party’s attention. I construct something that I’d be interested in engaging with for its own sake, but when I describe it to my players they just say “Alright, we keep going.” And that’s…fine. Ignoring an encounter ought to be possible sometimes, but it shouldn’t be quite so simple. Encounters ought to intrude on the players attentions more than that. Ignoring them is possible, but doing so ought to be an interesting choice with interesting consequences.

So in my final pass over an encounter I ensure that the majority of them will make some undesirable demand on the player’s attention. This can mean defending themselves from violence, or slander; figuring out how to soothe an aggrieved person, how to cope with a stolen item, or even just deciding whether or not they want to stand by while those things are happening to a sympathetic victim right in front of them.

One exception to this guideline are the Recurring Characters, because their purpose is different. Most encounters are meant to give the party little problems to solve. Recurring characters are meant to give the world a sense of history and interconnectivity. When you meet someone interesting, you might bump into them again. Usually these are friendly characters, since antagonistic character recur in other ways that will present themselves more forcefully. (i.e. plotting elaborate revenges against the party). That being said, recurring characters still ought to invite the party’s attention in some other way. Maybe they need money, or they have a quest to offer, or they’re running a shop and have something to sell. They may even have a gift for the party.

Restocking

Restocking is an essential and constant process when each entry is as specific as I’ve described. I don’t want to understate how burdensome that can be: it does mean I spend time between every single session going back to these tables and adding to them. I’ve managed to make that practice into a routine which I have not yet fallen behind on. I genuinely find it to be the easiest form of inter-session prep I’ve ever committed myself to, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for preferring somewhat more generic and reusable encounters in order to save themselves that constant effort.

Two things make Restocking easier. The first is that, on occasions when I have more ideas than I need, I make sure to record those ideas under the encounter table, where the extra entry will be ready to sub-in when an old one gets sliced out. Second, and much more important, is that restocking rarely means coming up with a new idea from scratch. If the party encounters “4 young kobold bravos, all drunk, looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness,” then all I need to do to freshen it up is create a variation on that basic theme. This time it’ll be 8 kobolds of various ages. I roll on the table above and discover they’re building a camp. So I mash those ideas together and restock the entry with “7 kobold bravos erecting tents, while an elderly kobold sits on a nearby rock and criticizes their work ethic. None have their weapons immediately to hand.”

The way I run the game, the encounter die is the primary driver of play. It’s how I introduce adventure hooks to the players. It’s how I communicate the details of the world, big and small. It’s how I give weight to the passage of time, which in turn enables me to run a game where the players really can go anywhere and do anything, because rolling encounters gives me a chance to gather my notes and prepare details. It’s a multifaceted tool, and I happily put this much effort and thought into my Encounter Tables because the dividends they pay as play aids makes it worth the effort.

Additional Reading

My original post from 2017
Hazard System v0.3 on Necropraxis (Any post under the Hazard System tag is worth a look!)
Combined Encounter Checks & Tables Using d% on Traverse Fantasy
Encounter Checklist on Prismatic Wasteland
Impact on Goblin Punch
In Search of Better Travel Rules on Rise Up Comus
Monster Design and Necessity on Dungeon of Signs
Sticky Goblins on False Machine