Saturday, September 17, 2011

Encounters (A.K.A. The story's speed bumps.)

I've been running a 3.5 D&D Core Book (and the Arms and Equipment Guide) game and it's been pretty fun so far. One of the best things about it is the encounters, all of them randomly generated. I cheat and use online generators for them.  Since they are in the wild lands I roll 4 times for the day and 4 times for the night, using d6s and if a die rolls a 1 then there is an encounter. If there is an encounter there is a base 10% chance that the encounter will be a major NPC from my world that they will run into and the other 90% are randomly generated by an online generator.
Some of these have been very interesting. 

Once a young copper dragon stopped by the party's camp one night to warm up by the fire before continuing to fly on home. Another time, the group came across some warriors and allowed them to travel with them. Another encounter was a bunch of pixies played pranks on the group while they were at camp and when the group played along with the pixies, the little fae gave the group items (also randomly generated and boy were those pixies nice!). I still give experience points even if the characters don't have to actually fight the encounter, but interact with it in some form or another  (They got xp for talking with the wandering old priest and his entourage, but none for the herd of bison they rode past).

Normally I don't scale down the encounters, I let the characters deal with it as best as they can. They were 3rd level (most of them anyway) when they were set upon by a Bulette (CR 7 I believe) It killed 2 of the horses pulling the wagon that was with the party, and trounced a couple of the members of the party. But they managed to kill the beasty. Then another encounter, randomly generated, was a Lich. Yes, a Lich. I decided that I would hit the random button again, got another lich.  Restarted the browser, got a Draco-Lich. Then switched to a different generator and got something not as potent ( I can't remember what it was now). Then I hit the button again on this new generator and it gave me another Lich. One of these days, I'll have to write up the wandering Lich, he lost the keys to his tower and he knows he left them somewhere around here..... And then the next time a group encounters him, he will have found his keys.... but lost his tower....

Have you seen my keys?
Don the Evil Bassman

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