Random Encounters

Sometimes as a GM you just need a bit of inspiration to give some excitement to your party’s travel (or simply to buy yourself some extra time to figure out what is going to happen when they arrive since you certainly didn't expect them to go to that town all the way across the map!). Below are tables for all of the common types of terrain your party may travel over for an extended period of time - arctic, coast, desert, forest, jungle, plains, mountains, swamp, and finally the high seas! There is also a table for encounters that might occur while they are visiting a city. Each of these environments come with a d20 table of encounters your players might come across on a given day. These are primarily ways to give small bursts of inspiration to you as the Game Master which you can use to create a much larger hook or adventure.

On each of these tables (except for the city) there are 5 slots dedicated to pure combat encounters. You may notice these all fall into the category of Hard and Deadly difficulty which may cause you concern, but the typical use for these tables is to make a day of travel more exciting and are intended to be the only combat encounter your players have that day. They will likely be using a good deal of their resources, but hopefully it will also make for an interesting fight. Sometimes your players just needs to deal with a good old-fashioned orc ambush after a long session of heavy role-playing.

Along with the 20 random encounters for each environment, they also come with a d10 table of methods to make the combat encounters a bit more interesting. If you dislike the idea of your players having nothing to worry about beyond the enemy and nothing to use in their battle beyond their weapons and spells then hopefully these tables will give you some ideas of extra ways to allow creativity to take hold and be rewarded. These additions to the battlefield may add extra challenges to the combat or it could make things easier for the players if they take advantage of the situation; either way it will make the battle into more than an open battlefield slugfest.

Now your only real choice is if you simply browse through the list and find the option you think looks most fun . . . or do you let the dice make the decision for you?