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The Game Master's Book of Random Encounters: 500+ customizable maps, tables and story hooks to create 5th edition adventures on demand
In a game packed with infinite possibilities, what are GMs to do when their players choose what they have not prepared?
As every GM knows, no matter how many story hooks, maps or NPCs you painstakingly create during session prep, your best-laid plans are often foiled by your players' whims, extreme skill check successes (or critical fails) or their playful refusal to stay on task.
The Game Master’s Book of Random Encounters provides an unbeatable solution. This massive tome is divided into location categories, each of which can stand alone as a small stop as part of a larger campaign. “Taverns, Inns, Shops & Guild Halls” section includes maps for 19 unique spaces , as well as multiple encounter tables designed to help GMs fill in the sights, sounds, smells and proprietors of a given location , allowing for each location in the book to be augmented and populated on the fly while still ensuring memorable moments for all players. Each map is presented at scale on grid, enabling GMs to determine exactly where all of the characters are in relation to one another and anyone (or anything) else in the space, critical information should any combat or other movement-based action occur.
Perhaps more useful than its nearly 100 maps, the book's one-shot generator features all the story hooks necessary for GMs to use these maps as part of an interconnected and contained adventure. Featuring eight unique campaign drivers that lead players through several of the book's provided maps, the random tables associated with each stage in the adventure allow for nearly three million different outcomes.
The book also includes a Random NPC Generator to help you create intriguing characters your players will love (or love to hate), as well as a Party Makeup Maker for establishing connections among your PCs so you can weave together a disparate group of adventurers with just a few dice rolls.
Locations include taverns, temples, inns, animal/creature lairs, gatehouses, courts, ships, laboratories and more, with adventure hooks that run the gamut from frantic rooftop chases to deep cellar dungeon-crawls, with a total of 97 maps , more than 150 tables and millions of possible adventures.
No matter where your players end up, they'll have someone or something to persuade or deceive, impress or destroy.
As every GM knows, no matter how many story hooks, maps or NPCs you painstakingly create during session prep, your best-laid plans are often foiled by your players' whims, extreme skill check successes (or critical fails) or their playful refusal to stay on task.
The Game Master’s Book of Random Encounters provides an unbeatable solution. This massive tome is divided into location categories, each of which can stand alone as a small stop as part of a larger campaign. “Taverns, Inns, Shops & Guild Halls” section includes maps for 19 unique spaces , as well as multiple encounter tables designed to help GMs fill in the sights, sounds, smells and proprietors of a given location , allowing for each location in the book to be augmented and populated on the fly while still ensuring memorable moments for all players. Each map is presented at scale on grid, enabling GMs to determine exactly where all of the characters are in relation to one another and anyone (or anything) else in the space, critical information should any combat or other movement-based action occur.
Perhaps more useful than its nearly 100 maps, the book's one-shot generator features all the story hooks necessary for GMs to use these maps as part of an interconnected and contained adventure. Featuring eight unique campaign drivers that lead players through several of the book's provided maps, the random tables associated with each stage in the adventure allow for nearly three million different outcomes.
The book also includes a Random NPC Generator to help you create intriguing characters your players will love (or love to hate), as well as a Party Makeup Maker for establishing connections among your PCs so you can weave together a disparate group of adventurers with just a few dice rolls.
Locations include taverns, temples, inns, animal/creature lairs, gatehouses, courts, ships, laboratories and more, with adventure hooks that run the gamut from frantic rooftop chases to deep cellar dungeon-crawls, with a total of 97 maps , more than 150 tables and millions of possible adventures.
No matter where your players end up, they'll have someone or something to persuade or deceive, impress or destroy.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2020
13 people are currently reading
326 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 21, 2020
I actually really loved this book, FAR beyond what I expected to. It's a super brainstorming tool/idea generator with a lot of fun (and easily adaptable) puzzles, one-shots, etc. I found it worth the buy, for sure. I've already used it multiple times.
March 11, 2021
If only WotC were as thorough with their adventures! Highly detailed, lots of maps and a plethora of tables; this is a great read whether for those seeking inspiration or those desiring to plug fully fleshed adventures into their campaigns.
May 16, 2021
Lots of great stuff in this book. Very well laid out and lots of detail. Great maps and colorful backstories. Easily adaptable to other editions of D&D.
January 13, 2024
I’ve been a fan of the various iterations of Dungeons and Dragons since 1979, when I first encountered people who played the game. While my involvement has waxed and waned over the years, I still enjoy reading the game products. One of the challenges that the Dungeon Master or Game Master faces is coming up with random bits of business when the player characters decide to go exploring or jump the rails of the plot.
And that’s where this book comes in. It’s designed to be dipped into when a GM needs a quick idea to fill in parts of a map previously left blank or explain the presence of a person in a new location. The first and larger portion of the book is about locations, split into commercial establishments, religious and death-related locales, outdoor spots, and living spaces of various kinds. The second part is random tables for creation of NPCs, curses, and even hidden relationships between player characters.
Each location comes with a map or two, a description of what makes the place distinctive, and a random table or two to keep the players guessing as to what will happen there. Many also have a non-player character with a paragraph of description who’s tied to the location. Some places are especially distinctive, such as the Dream Archive, a place where the city’s unconscious musings are kept, or the Nightmare Market, where the undead come to bargain with each other and the occasional foolhardy mortal. There’s some other moments of cleverness…like that one possible random occurrence at the city gaol, or the possible contents of a certain secret room.
The larger random tables in the back are more about quantity and variety of randomness–it’s up to the GM to turn the results into coherent or at least interesting characters.
This was made with the Wizards of the Coast Open Gaming License, so it’s not specifically tied to any given gaming system. On the other hand, it’s very much oriented towards the stock D&D world or clones thereof, with abundant magic and specific character classes, monsters and player character species. Those using a drastically different gaming system or a setting unlike D&D standard will need to do a lot of revising to make some of these locations or random occurrences fit.
A GM who prefers to do advanced planning might lift some of these locations in advance to place in their campaign setting at suitable map junctures. None of them are major dungeons or overly complex locations that require over-preparation.
I think this book will be most valuable to an experienced GM who has learned how to improvise but sometimes needs prompts. Newbies who need guidance to fit things together will likely feel frustrated. Most recommended to those playing D&D type games.
And that’s where this book comes in. It’s designed to be dipped into when a GM needs a quick idea to fill in parts of a map previously left blank or explain the presence of a person in a new location. The first and larger portion of the book is about locations, split into commercial establishments, religious and death-related locales, outdoor spots, and living spaces of various kinds. The second part is random tables for creation of NPCs, curses, and even hidden relationships between player characters.
Each location comes with a map or two, a description of what makes the place distinctive, and a random table or two to keep the players guessing as to what will happen there. Many also have a non-player character with a paragraph of description who’s tied to the location. Some places are especially distinctive, such as the Dream Archive, a place where the city’s unconscious musings are kept, or the Nightmare Market, where the undead come to bargain with each other and the occasional foolhardy mortal. There’s some other moments of cleverness…like that one possible random occurrence at the city gaol, or the possible contents of a certain secret room.
The larger random tables in the back are more about quantity and variety of randomness–it’s up to the GM to turn the results into coherent or at least interesting characters.
This was made with the Wizards of the Coast Open Gaming License, so it’s not specifically tied to any given gaming system. On the other hand, it’s very much oriented towards the stock D&D world or clones thereof, with abundant magic and specific character classes, monsters and player character species. Those using a drastically different gaming system or a setting unlike D&D standard will need to do a lot of revising to make some of these locations or random occurrences fit.
A GM who prefers to do advanced planning might lift some of these locations in advance to place in their campaign setting at suitable map junctures. None of them are major dungeons or overly complex locations that require over-preparation.
I think this book will be most valuable to an experienced GM who has learned how to improvise but sometimes needs prompts. Newbies who need guidance to fit things together will likely feel frustrated. Most recommended to those playing D&D type games.
December 13, 2022
Not quite what I expected, but still a pretty useful book. Obviously, it's written with D&D in mind, but it's fairly system neutral, so pretty much any standard Fantasy game should fit.
What this actually is, is a collection of eight adventures that take up the first 0ne hundred pages. Each of these adventures allows you to then mix & match locations and encounters from the rest of the book. This means that each adventure could be quite different each time you run it. Many of the locations and encounters in the back half of the book could also be plugged into other modules or home-brew settings without much effort. The last thirteen or fourteen pages contain some general random tables, which are more like what I was expecting from the book.
There are odd choices made. The maps, for example, are very detailed, as though they're meant for players to look at and maybe use miniatures on. But they're quite small and I didn't find anything in the book to indicate that they were available for virtual tabletops or to download & print. In fact, other than the level of detailed art on the maps, everything indicates that they are meant to be used by GMs. However, I'd certainly have preferred a much more simplified and uncluttered line-drawn map. The high detail, small size, and greyscale coloring make the maps kinda difficult to read. Mentioning the color makes me remember that's an odd thing about the book, too. It's basically all in greys and reds. But there's really not much reason. I can't help but think time, money & ink could have been saved if the whole thing was just in black & white. Like, if you're not going full color, this half-measure is just odd.
So, though there were some weird choices made in the production of the book and it's not quite what I was expecting, I think this is a pretty solid work and worth it for GMs/DMs, who want some interesting adventures and plug & play locations for their game.
What this actually is, is a collection of eight adventures that take up the first 0ne hundred pages. Each of these adventures allows you to then mix & match locations and encounters from the rest of the book. This means that each adventure could be quite different each time you run it. Many of the locations and encounters in the back half of the book could also be plugged into other modules or home-brew settings without much effort. The last thirteen or fourteen pages contain some general random tables, which are more like what I was expecting from the book.
There are odd choices made. The maps, for example, are very detailed, as though they're meant for players to look at and maybe use miniatures on. But they're quite small and I didn't find anything in the book to indicate that they were available for virtual tabletops or to download & print. In fact, other than the level of detailed art on the maps, everything indicates that they are meant to be used by GMs. However, I'd certainly have preferred a much more simplified and uncluttered line-drawn map. The high detail, small size, and greyscale coloring make the maps kinda difficult to read. Mentioning the color makes me remember that's an odd thing about the book, too. It's basically all in greys and reds. But there's really not much reason. I can't help but think time, money & ink could have been saved if the whole thing was just in black & white. Like, if you're not going full color, this half-measure is just odd.
So, though there were some weird choices made in the production of the book and it's not quite what I was expecting, I think this is a pretty solid work and worth it for GMs/DMs, who want some interesting adventures and plug & play locations for their game.
March 5, 2025
this book is an extremely helpful resource for new (and seasoned) dungeon masters to incorporate random encounters that don't feel meaningless to their players into their campaigns. i was having a pretty bad case of writer's block and i love having random encounters that spiral into something bigger so i'm using this guide to help give me ideas and it's doing the job well. there are a few one-shot adventures at the beginning and some elaborate encounters detailing character names, locations, etc. i love the art pieces and how inventive this is. if i don't feel like coming up with one myself, i can just use this book and i don't have to worry about wasted random encounters for a long time.
September 8, 2023
On the one hand, even when I wasn't a good GM, the ONE thing I was never short on was ideas for stories or encounters. But I know a LOT of GMs who have this problem. So I can see how this book could be useful. I don't think it would be possible to do a serious adventure with this book... but if you're more in the lighthearted fantasy (think the recent Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie) or an out and out silly game- think Discworld, or Mythadventures, or parts of Peter David's Apropos of Nothing series or even Monty Python... yeah. This would be real useful.
February 20, 2021
Its a very useful book and has helped me when it comes to making my own campaigns. I also enjoyed readding the mini adventures which has given me inspiration and ideas for my own games.
December 27, 2022
Excelente libro como fuente de inspiración para crear campañas fantásticas, arquitecturas de juego, personajes extraños y memorables, etcétera.
January 29, 2023
Very good book full of interesting items and items to use in campaigns
June 25, 2023
Great addition to my collection.
September 24, 2023
4 stars. Imaginative and inventive. Recommended.
December 7, 2023
Loved this book, it's so much fun just to flip through. Would make a great gift for any DnD fan!
June 26, 2024
Sometimes it's nice to have a comprehensive guide with room to add your own flair. Perfect for new DMs and GMs
June 19, 2025
This was given to me as a (very late) birthday gift by one of my younger sisters. She bought it but lost it, and I found it on accident several months later, much to my amusement.
This is book is one of a long series of books by these authors, and this one focuses on random encounters, something that can be difficult for many GMs to write.
The encounters themselves are fun and detailed, but the writing (particularly the character names) is a bit underwhelming. My biggest issue is the maps. It's great that they included maps but they are really difficult to parse out as they're all in black and white. Every map looks like a big, differently shaped smudge and that feels like a disservice to the rest of the effort.
This is book is one of a long series of books by these authors, and this one focuses on random encounters, something that can be difficult for many GMs to write.
The encounters themselves are fun and detailed, but the writing (particularly the character names) is a bit underwhelming. My biggest issue is the maps. It's great that they included maps but they are really difficult to parse out as they're all in black and white. Every map looks like a big, differently shaped smudge and that feels like a disservice to the rest of the effort.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews