by Clyde Starr

Created on: April 12, 2009

Random encounters? What exactly is a random encounter? Before addressing the Pros and Cons of such a subject, first I think its important to address what people mean by random encounters.

The old, Grognard(term for older generation, early roleplayers and tabletop strategy games) term for a random encounter is an encounter rolled up on a table of several potential encounters. These encounters were used for areas where any of several possible encounters might occur. Typically speaking, you would see a random encounter at least once per day while the characters were travelling to and from an adventure site. Another time you might see a random encounter of this type is anytime the party stops in hostile territory, be it above or below ground, for a rest.

Another definition of a random encounter is an encounter that is not planned tactically to occur in a specific point of the adventure, but more played off the cuff. Sporadic or loose form gaming is the way some people like to play it. Not a "planned adventure" such as you would find in a published module or established campaign, but more of a free-form game where everyone gathers around the DM(Dungeon Master) and he or she weaves a tale without all the preparation that usually goes into such endeavors. This kind is also for those non-site based encounters, affectionately called Dungeon Crawls by the oldest gamers.

This brings up a good point as well. There are basically 3 kinds of adventures for D&D out there;

1. The Dungeon Crawl, also called a site-based or map-key adventure generally involves a series of encounters structured via a map key or flow-chart. Each segment of the adventure, be it a room or a timeslot is involved with a specific encounter. This is the most common of all adventures, where you see text like "Room 1: A 30ft square chamber, littered with dust and debris opens before you as the door swings inward. Setting atop an alter in the center of this dank chamber smelling of mildew and decay lies a corpse..." but this is also those dungeons that might happen in a town, that include a time based trigger or flow-chart to determine when something happens, such an encounter might read as: "When you rise in the morning, you are astonished to find that around you the village has come down with a horrid disease. Making your way to the common room of the little hut that was provided, you find the headman of the village waiting with a proposition" Now, in this version of the Dungeon Crawl, a room isn't the

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