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this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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@Ziggurat @mozz I also have very little combat in my games, but I use random encounters all the time because they make the setting dynamic.
I don't equate random encounter with random combat, an encounter can be something to interact with, talk to, run from, or plenty of other things.
I also don't equate "random" with "unrelated to the rest of the adventure", part of the fun of random encounters is figuring out why and how an ogre ended up on top of the ruined tower, and building on that.
Yeah. This is why I like his table. I get what @Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works is saying in that random encounters can feel kind of same-y and pointless -- but if there's a little subplot that the encounter is looping the players into, where they can decide for themselves how to react to what happens and how much to involve themselves in it -- then it can form instead a good way to add some grist to the let's-have-fun mill.
@Whidou @Ziggurat @mozz Absolutely this. A "random encounter" can be finding a magical spring, a traveling merchant, a lost child, faeries who invite you to a riddle-game, or any number of other things that don't involve combat.
Literally every single time I have presented my players with an unaccompanied child who's asking for help, they've believed it to be some treacherous magical creature or illusion designed to lure them into some horrible trap.
It's never been those things. It's always just been a lost child. But every time, without fail, they spring to their guard, they start detecting magic, all kinds of things. I honestly have no idea where they got the idea that that's what lost children mean.