A lot of people dislike random encounters. The way random encounter tables have been written in most gaming products over the years is why. They are usually treated as a way to provide minor challenges to players or to deplete their resources along the way to an adventure site. I use them for those purposes but also as a way to tell the players more about the place their characters find themselves in.

I’ve written previously about how I construct random encounter tables. The short version: I make the standard 1D6 die roll to determine if there is an encounter. If I roll a 1 then there is an encounter. I vary the frequency of the die roll depending on the area the players are in. In the case of an encounter, I roll 2 dice (usually D6) to decide what the encounter will be. The table is set up to go from extremely dangerous to very beneficial. Roll snake eyes and something very bad shows up. Roll 12 and the players meet a friendly ally or careless merchant has dropped his purse of gold in the road. I vary the potential for good things or bad things based on where the characters are at.

The encounters themselves convey information to the players. First, it tells the players that this is a world where this “thing” exists. The “thing” being the monster, the NPC, an strange phenomenon, magical storm or whatever happens. This can be particularly powerful if that is a surprising or ironic event. If you are playing a western and a robot from North Central Positronics shows up, the players know that this is not your normal sort of western.

Second, the frequency of encounters and types of encounters conveys information to players. In my Sunday Swords and Wizardry game the players noted that I was rolling random encounters every hour of travel through this weird forest they are in. They had to travel several days to get to where they were going, meaning a lot of rolls. They also noted that not a single one of those encounters was beneficial. Everything was danger. They quickly figured out that the place they were going to was going to be dangerous, very dangerous. Now the players, who have to go back to through this area again, probably multiple times are thinking about bringing more gear, more help and setting up an armed camp in the forest rather than risking the travel back and forth.

Third, the embedded story about the place can emerge from the random encounter as well. If your characters are on the road and encounter several bands of pilgrims headed to a shrine in the mountains. The players can ask questions of the pilgrims. They can notice that there are a lot of pilgrims on the road because they’ve encounter four groups in the last two days of travel. They may notice that the pilgrims seem to be carrying a lot of food and supplies with them. In fact, the pilgrims have way more than they need to get where they are going and come back. This can then be an adventure hook the players decide is too juicy to ignore. Now you’ve picked the interest of your players with not a lot of effort.

There are lots of ways you can tell your players information about your world through random encounters. This was just a few. The key is to think carefully not only about what the players encounter but how often and the way those encounters act toward the characters.