On Overland Travel, Part 3: Random Encounters

In the first article in this series, I set
out to prove Vaarsuvius wrong and to salvage Random Encounters in overland
travel.

In the second article in this series, I proposed
some additional requirements for having a Long Rest that would allow Random
Encounters to have real stakes.

Now, I’m going to tackle the Random Encounters
themselves.

Foreshadowed Encounters

Let’s start with the Into the Living Library Wandering Monster table, as seen in the On
Wandering Monsters series—the one that looks like this:

This type of table will work as-is for overland
encounters, though of course you would change the specific entries depending on
the current biome (i.e., instead of a Gelatinous Cube, you might have a
ferocious Owlbear). We don’t need to use the version that includes traps,
because traps tend to be a feature of dungeons, rather than wildernesses.

How Many Entries?

This is a tricky question. More entries on
the Random Encounter table isn’t necessarily better, as it increases the odds
that a given monster is encountered before it has been foreshadowed. It also increases
the odds that a heavily foreshadowed Owlbear attack leads to an encounter with
a Giant Badger.

I would say that the number of entries you
want to put in depends on how much use you expect the region to get. Four rows
is probably the minimum you can have in a viable chart, but I wouldn’t go
higher than eight unless the entire campaign is set there. If you feel the need
to include more monsters, instead try splitting the region into sub-regions
with different tables, each with four to eight entries.

Remember that since each row has five
filled in columns (plus a blank one), it will take at minimum five Random Encounter checks to see every piece of
content created per row. If you only call for one encounter check per day, then
a four-creature table will give you a minimum
of 20-days of adventure without the party discovering everything. If an area
becomes more important to the campaign than you’d first anticipated, you can
always increase the size of the table later.

Adding Non-Combat
Encounters

If the region we’re describing is close to
civilization, we want the party to have a chance of bumping into a caravan or
passing pilgrims or the like. This is where we can afford to cheat: friendly encounters
don’t need to be foreshadowed, because they act as foreshadowing for each
other. Once you’ve found some farmers heading to market, you definitely won’t
be surprised if, the next day, you meet some lumberjacks.

The bottom row or two on your Random
Encounter table can (if this region represents a fairly civilized one) be made
up of encounters with NPCs or other elements of civilization, each in their own
cell, whether or not the column is “ENCOUNTER” or “HINT” or
whatever. For example:

An encounter with lumberjacks might be
nothing more than a friendly wave, but it might also be an opportunity to ask
for directions, barter for some food, or, in the worst case, desperately ask
plea for help. An encounter with the caravan or peddler might prove
particularly fruitful as an opportunity to buy or sell goods.

Summing it Up

That’s all I’ve got for now on this subject!
Here’s a summary of what I’ve found so far:

If
you want to have Random Encounters in your game but have struggled to make them
‘work,’ you’ll likely need to tweak the resting/recovery rules in order to add
a dungeon-like resource management layer of tension to these encounters.One
solution is to require real comfort and shelter to perform a long rest, such as
a wayside inn or a house with a welcoming host, but otherwise leave the resting
rules unchanged.Once
you have made this tweak, you can either use a conventional Random Encounter
table, or something like the Wandering Monsters with Foreshadowing tables as
described in my On Wandering Monsters series.Don’t
forget to add non-combat encounters to the table as well, especially when close
to civilization!