DM Thoughts: Encounter Tables

I’m a total random encounter table freak.

And I say that in such large lettering because I feel so strongly about it! Yesterday, I posted a plant dossier about the White Jaunt Pine. Unlike other plant dossiers, the White Jaunt Pine is less focused on the plant and more on the greater impacts to the world that the plant signifies. Because of this, the gameplay effect I gave the White Jaunt was an encounter table.

D&D is a game that’s completely enamored with its tables. There’s a table for gaining spells in a subclass, there’s a table for deciding your character’s personality, there’s a table for choosing which magic items to stock a shop with, you get the point. This is all to say that, while D&D’s core gameplay revolves around dice-roll-decided improv prompts, an equally important aspect to this gameplay involves knowing what the dice roll means. Most of the time, this just means knowing what the happens when someone passes or fails a DC. But I think a roll of the dice can mean so much more; one dice roll can change the entire course of a campaign.

Okay, maybe that’s putting too much grandiosity on a roll— and I’m sure there are plenty of valid and reasonable arguments as to why this shouldn’t be done. But ‘eh, I suppose that’s why I’m more of a CN person. Let me explain:

Making Meaningful Encounter Tables

Encounter tables, as they appear in most D&D publications, do not look like powerful storytelling tools at first glance. Indeed, if a GM takes most encounter tables at face value, they certainly are not. The poorest (and best) part of encounter tables is just how vague many of them are, appearing as little more than fodder to fling at a traveling party or some spontaneous environmental event. This vagueness can stand to reduce random encounters to little more than two parties meeting on a flat field and doing battle— great for padding an hour of game time if needed but not offering much in substance. I’ve been guilty of this more than once.

This undoubtedly plays into the reason many folks find travel absolutely abhorrent or unnecessary in their games, and I don’t blame those people. Sure, everyone likes absolutely dunking on a pitiful group of enemies using their entire toolkit for the one combat encounter of the day; but what does it add to the greater narrative or world?

Circling back to vagueness, this can quickly become a strength of random encounter tables with a bit of effort on the DM’s part. I believe it is vital to consider how encounters interact with the setting and characters. When I began running my Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign years ago, I did just that.

It was the eve of the party’s first long oceanic voyage. To prepare, I obsessively read over the Ocean Encounter Table presented within the book… and realized how boring it would be to have an entire game of random one-off encounters. To combat that, I began writing out the encounters in my notes asking myself these questions: What can a character gain in an encounter? What can a character demonstrate in an encounter? How can I reveal more of the setting in an encounter? And most important, how do I further the narrative by using a seemingly random encounter?

In asking myself these questions, I was able to take an encounter like “1 plesiosaurus” and turn it into “Nelson, the awakened plesiosaurus.” In doing so, the plesiosaurus gains some depth, the druid of the party can utilize their skill with animals, I introduced that there is someone awakening powerful sea creatures, and the party could ally or fight Nelson, potentially gaining a strong aquatic friend.

Rollable Brainstorms

I strongly encourage all DMs to rewrite encounter tables and personalize them. One of the largest benefits is that, in doing so, you’re generating a wealth of fresh ideas and honing your idea generation ability. Random encounters also show how certain characters will react to new situations and circumstances. If a dragon is spotted flying overhead, will someone hide, shoot an arrow, or taunt. This can reveal much about a character’s mannerisms.

For me, random encounter tables are a way for me to write down all the cool ideas I had without getting attached to a full plotline. For instance, in another one of my campaigns there are multiple areas of conflict that can be explored. There is a warring army approaching the borders of their nation, evil fey in the waterways, enterprising gangs, and extraplanar influence corrupting various flora and fauna.

The unifying elements of all these conflicts is that they are not caused or associated to the characters at first glance and they couldn’t be hurled at the party all at once (or at all). Yet, the magic and beauty of the random encounter table is just that, its randomness.

A roll on a random encounter table adds to the feeling of character’s “stumbling into something.” It adds spontaneity and agency because remember, we’re designing our random encounters to demonstrate the strengths of our players and to reveal more about the setting.

The evil fey in the waterways probably would go unnoticed by most. Yet, if the ranger connected to water and the balance of nature spots them swimming through a canal, and they in turn try to charm him into walking into the water so they can eat, suddenly a new plotline reveals itself. The party can kill the fey, try to get on their good side, learn the location of other evil fey, or ignore it completely. The great part is that whether they do or don’t doesn’t harm the beat of the wider narrative (or at least it shouldn’t)— it only stands to supplement it and enhance the character’s connection to the world, each other, and themselves.

This is hard to get right at first. When I began to employ these tactics in my encounter tables, I made the mistake of rolling too often. There is a delicate balance that must be struck. If you’re going to use your encounters to present new plot threads or clues towards greater conflicts, you cannot throw too many at them at once. There also needs to be boring days of little action, but this should be enhanced by vivid imagery-heavy depictions of the setting and in-party roleplay (if they’re into that thing).

One way to make story-impactful random encounters work is to loosely associate them with each other and the established plot. For example, perhaps a topaz dragon is eagerly hunting for the aforementioned evil fey in the waterways, the aforementioned gangs supply the evil fey with a fresh supply of food that just so happens to be corrupted from extraplanar influences, which are just so happened brought on by the army. You don’t have to reveal all these threads connecting, but it will help you as a storyteller to have a robust background to the conflicts of your world and how they impact each other.

The best case scenario of writing encounter tables like this is that the party grows intrigued by the “iceberg” you present. Once they learn things are linked, they will want to go out and explore more to uncover more clues. If done properly, this basically converts the encounters into the main narrative.

The worst case scenario of writing encounter tables like this is that the party will feel overwhelmed by the plot threads and feel confused as to which direction to move in. For this reason, if you are beginning to craft narrative encounter tables, be sure you don’t roll too many times on the table— even if each encounter is one of the best ideas you’ve ever had. Allow your ideas to go unused if necessary, be grateful for the chance to further hone your creative skills, and create a new encounter table later on.

In doing so, you will be able to create small moments that are just as rich as the “main questline” moments of your campaign and enhance your player’s connection to your world!