I pre-roll my random encounters

15 Oct, 2024

That's right, I pre-roll them, and I won't apologize for it. It gives me more time to think about how to make the results cool.

I'm running a West Marches game (I've talked about it before) and one of the things I am trying to prioritize is some advice right from the source:

"The sandbox game really demands that you remain neutral about what the players do. It’s their decisions that will get them killed or grant them fame and victory, not yours."

- Ben Robbins on arsludi.lamemage.com

It's important to me to stick to the results of the dice and not interfere if at all possible.¹ But that doesn't prevent me from interpreting the random encounter results in interesting ways.

I don't typically use monster reaction tables when rolling random results, but instead give myself permission to decide what it makes sense for a creature or NPC to be doing in this region. When I created the random encounter tables for each region I selected each creature and NPC for a reason. I ought to be able to come up with plausible circumstances for them that don't stretch my players' sense of disbelief, while also taking the opportunity to make encounters more interesting than "the creature is sitting in a clearing waiting for player characters to arrive."

There are factors I can't anticipate such as the time of day my players might enter the region, or the weather when they do so. However, the more I've come to grips with the encounter, the more I can account for these sorts of things in my description to my players.

Two examples:

• In one region I rolled that my players would encounter fish-folk. I had a think and decided that this was a good opportunity to demonstrate a little bit of the fish-folk culture. Rather than just "hunting" or "preparing traps" or whatever, I decided they'd be carrying a dead body up-stream in a sort of religious procession towards a sacred site away from their main village. It turned out my players encountered this at night during a thunderstorm, so I took the opportunity to include dramatic bursts of lightning showing freeze-frame images of the procession.

• In another session the dice decided that any players visiting a given site would encounter the fish folk again. After some deliberation I decided that the fish folk would have carved a little artificial bay into the riverbank (for reasons left unclear to the players) and they would be encountered while installing protective charms in the surrounding trees.

• In another session I rolled that my players would encounter some pirates from a faction with whom they'd so far had little contact. They were in an uncharacteristic location, so I reviewed their faction sheet to see what they might be trying to accomplish out here. I decided that these particular pirates were attempting to capture a terror bird for reasons which are not yet clear to my players. Beyond the borders of their own territory and on a dangerous mission, the pirates were willing to parley with the PCs and ask for help, rather than simply attacking on sight.

None of this is stuff I couldn't potentially come up with on the fly, but pre-rolling it gives me more chances to really turn it into something special. I can review a few possibilities and decide which one I like. I can go on to prepare names and personalities for NPCs, and to workshop other details: sights, sounds, smells, etc. The charlatan has a unique perfume on his powdered wig. The bandit's leather boots are creaking with every shift of their weight, not yet broken in. The angry boar looks to have a mix of wild hog and domestic pig markings, maybe indicating the presence of a local settlement. That kind of stuff.

Of course I only pre-roll one encounter for each region. If my players linger in an area or retrace their steps in such a way that my travel procedures call for another encounter, I just roll it on the fly and do my best to interpret the results in a way that makes sense. There's no sense in my coming up with a dozen encounters for each region. I only have so many hours in the day. But I am convinced that this process of interpreting and finessing the results of at least some of my encounters has resulted in more satisfying and meaningful gameplay for my players without sacrificing the value of an impartial GM.