1 comments:

Brooze the Bear said...

Good thing! You must be a former goth!
Regarding Encounter Tables, I share your fascination, never could figure out, how to use the Gygax's Monster Frequencies - Common, Unommon, Rare, Very Rare. To me, it doesn't make sense to have two or three very rare creatures in a single encounter table. 2% of all the encounters should be very rare creatures. Few creatures indeed. "Special Monsters" of the Moldvay basic Dungeon adventuere design section.

With regards to Encounter Tables, there are definite kinks to work out in my game. I had an encounter field for looting the bodies on a battlefield. I made up tables of clothing, possessions, small treasures and items of intelligence value to describe the different tribes of the men, orcs and goblins who fought. I borrowed the cocept of an EVENT encounter table from Traveler. When rolling for an encounter, you can get a mixture of non hostile and wandering monster (combat encounters) [sometimes separate tables], and then there is an indication of an Event - geographic events - unusual terrain features, ruins also, that can be explored, weather events - hard blowing southern winds, raistorms, freezing spells, and Party Mishaps -broken horseshoes, sniffles, etc. Events usually stay on a single table.

The problem with too many encounter tables though, if the game is event table generated, is the the game becomes more abstract and less realistic. I think that two rolls per encounter check is light enough game burden, and to pre-roll all the encounters will save the time during gameplay.

May 31, 2009 8:37 AM