this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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It's interesting seeing "random encounter" coming back in grace, I have the impression that they were universally considered as a "bad practice" for at least 2 decades, and now i see people defending them again. Is it an effect of both the OSR and Rule-light zero-prep ? Or is it that I spend more time on english speaking communities dominated by more "classical D&D perspective"
My issue, and why I (quickly in my GM career) stopped putting "random combat" is that, as a "low combat GM" random combats end-up interrupting the game for no reasons, and end-up being either "clay shooting practice" (So a few easy ennemies to roll some dices without bringing anything to the story) or a "catastrophic event" throwing all the PC plan away as they walked injured out of that fight and will need a lot of in game time to recover which basically breaks the game. If there is a combat, the PC called for it, either by their action or their non action, but not just by "simply existing in the game world"
However, I can totally see how for games with more focus on combat, it can still be interesting, just "not my cup of tea"
@Ziggurat @mozz I also have very little combat in my games, but I use random encounters all the time because they make the setting dynamic.
I don't equate random encounter with random combat, an encounter can be something to interact with, talk to, run from, or plenty of other things.
I also don't equate "random" with "unrelated to the rest of the adventure", part of the fun of random encounters is figuring out why and how an ogre ended up on top of the ruined tower, and building on that.
@Whidou @Ziggurat @mozz Absolutely this. A "random encounter" can be finding a magical spring, a traveling merchant, a lost child, faeries who invite you to a riddle-game, or any number of other things that don't involve combat.
Literally every single time I have presented my players with an unaccompanied child who's asking for help, they've believed it to be some treacherous magical creature or illusion designed to lure them into some horrible trap.
It's never been those things. It's always just been a lost child. But every time, without fail, they spring to their guard, they start detecting magic, all kinds of things. I honestly have no idea where they got the idea that that's what lost children mean.