I’ve been thinking about how to handle “random battles” in my game, final fantasy style.

I’ve been thinking about how to handle “random battles” in my game, final fantasy style.

I’ve been thinking about how to handle “random battles” in my game, final fantasy style. Rather than just roaming monster tables, does anyone know a good resource for random events or encounters?

For example, Skyrim is excellent at this. In addition to random monsters, you bump into all sorts of interesting situations when traveling from one place to another. I’ll make some of my own, but I’m curious if anyone has things for me to steal…. I mean draw upon for inspiration

24 thoughts on “I’ve been thinking about how to handle “random battles” in my game, final fantasy style.”

  4. Why not ask your players about the lands they’re traveling through, while on an Unexpected Journey? If they talk a lot about trading routes and safe havens, then based on their rolls maybe they find a watchtower or a wagon with a broken wheel (since you were asking about in addition to random monsters). I quiz my players about what places they’re traveling through, to get a vibe for what kind of things are out of place or interesting, and then let UaPJ handle the heavy lifting of seeing if anything happens.

  5. Here’s a handful:

    1) Sounds of a fight nearby; orc “adventurers” being ambushed by a tribe of goblins.

    2) Three halflings being pursued by angry ogre. What did they steal?

    3) A pile of neatly folded, expensive clothes stacked on a stump; no one around.

    4) A pack of gnolls are looting a pile of dead bodies; maybe royal guards?

    5)  An inquisitor and his henchmen are about to hang a young woman from a tree.

    6) A dying man’s last gasp, “they’re coming…”

    7) A bard hangs upside-down from a snare. “Cut me down before he returns!” Something huge is on the way.

    8) A carnival wagon lies aflame on the side of the road, dead orcs everywhere,  no sign of the occupants.

    9) An abandoned farmhouse. In the fields surrounding it are numerous corpses; all appear to have been fleeing the house.

    10) A lone “halfling child” appears to be looting the body of a mangled troll.

  9. Something I shy away from in my games is completely random encounters. Reason being is that I usually have a lot going on in my games (currently 4 fronts at 3-4 dangers per). If the group happens on a random encounter it’s part of one of the fronts. Otherwise my game would get bogged down and most likely the group would accomplish less over a period of time due to chasing random events instead of focusing on what is already going on.

    My question for you David Schirduan is why do you want random encounters in your game?

  10. Delos Adamski great question!

    I’m trying to create a sandbox world, with a simple bounty board being the only pre-made “quests”

     http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

    My attempts at a over-arching story have not only been somewhat dull, but I haven’t enjoyed writing it either. I prefer to create locations, and situations for the PCs to interact with, rather than having a main villian, or main quest.

    This seemed like the next logical step, and is a little experiment I’m running. I’ve also got about 10-15 people who want to play in my games, so having an over-arching story would be hard to maintain with multiple groups.

    I am hoping that certain groups will organically find things that they want to do. Maybe they want to ally with one group against another, or maybe they want to travel the roads, keeping them safe for travelors.

    Any grim portents I have are more about different factions interacting with one another organically, than pre-set countdowns or master plans.

    Does that make sense? I’m still trying to figure out what I want, and would love any ideas of help you can offer.

  14. You know… a number of those “more interesting scenarios” in Skyrim sort of appear randomly too. You could use a “random adventure hook encounter” table instead of merely a monster one.

  23. Ever try mythic? It is s gm emulator that can be played with other systems. The short version is ask a y/n question decide the odds and roll for it.

    When appropriate ask is there a random encounter, then start by asking about common things

    Example: are they Human? No

    Goblins? Yes

    Are they openly hostile? Yes

    Are they currently in a fight? Yes

    And there you go, your party just ran into a group of goblins attacking someone.

  24. Seldom I put a mini random adventure/encounter, in my campaigns. While I hate to drag the things on, some time this give me the chances to introduce a nice NPC, or a new enemy (that could become recurring later on). I love when the players try to understand how the random encounter fits in the things they know, so this bring me to:

    – they come with a good/funny link to the main campaign, so I turn this thought into reality 😀

    – they don’t bring nice ideas, so I continue with the main things, and often after few time I find good reason for that encounter we played.

    So, random encounters as sparks for future events.

Comments are closed.