100% agree with your thoughts on "level appropriate" encounters. It's cool to come across stuff that's way out of your league and do something other than fight.
If you know you're always the correct level to overcome what's in front of you you cut yourself from the most fun part of sandbox games where you map out stuff you can't face now so that you can come back when you're more experienced / better equipped. You might as well run a story based scenario at that point.
I created many of these things for my West Marches 5e game, and I think they are great additions when you want to increase the simulation aspects of the world, and can be expanded to weather effects, posture checks for encounters, and special events. I used foraging tables, random encounters, random interest sites, and mixed in plenty of set items on my hex map. Has been a really fun way to play D&D. Only thing to keep in mind is you gather a party who is also interested in this style of game, then everyone has a good time. Also great video!
On page 25 of Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, he goes into detail about the OD&D encounter tables. In his system, if a DM rolls up 300 goblins, you'd first take the "% in lair" to populate the base. So, in the case of goblins, that means 50%, or 150, of the goblins are back at the lair. The remaining goblins are split into patrols that are used to populate the surrounding area. Therefore a party searching a hex containing a goblin lair are more likely to encounter a smaller goblin patrol rather than a giant goblin city. IOW, the encounter charts in OD&D were not originally wandering monster tables, but hex stocking charts. Why they are listed as such, I have no idea.
+Hedgehobbit I’ve got FFC but it’s been quite a while since I’ve gone through it. In a sense, the random encounters do function as a stocking chart when you roll up large numbers of forces since they no-longer represent a normal, transient population. You get to decide what it means and either plunk down a marker denoting a lair of some sort or determine why a mass migration is taking place and what that means. Good stuff!
... for 30 years I've thought "% in lair" was a percentage chance that the PC's ran into the creature while it was in its lair; this makes SO much more sense, thank you!
The biggest thing that gets me about new-school D&D is that it is full of player facing mechanics that kind of rob the hexcrawling procedure of its mystery. Like morale, reaction, surprise is largely configured by what's on the character sheet since you're dealing with necessary abstraction due to large chunks of time. One of my favorite things to do with BECMI is that I got all kinds of situations the players have to deal with and they all may have an impact on the mechanics in different ways, lighting a campfire in the woods so you can dry your clothes from the rain? That will shrink the random encounter die from a 1-3 chance with a d12 to a 1-3 chance with a d6 otherwise you won't be able to properly rest. Or maybe your hirelings are getting crotchety from trail rations and want a chance to let loose for ONCE, penalty to morale if you don't humor them but the risk shifts somewhere else if you do. Rulings derived from the situation the fiction presents, ya'know? You get the idea, there's just so much more you can do with old-school D&D because the system itself creates incentives for travel prep because the player characters are weak, need to respect the world and don't have tons of combat abilities. (That kind of game is cool if you like it, it's just def not for me) The other thing that makes me salty is that like you touched on with the AD&D Monster Manual, in 5e monsters are presented less naturalistically (no lair %, variant # encountered, etc) and more as floating chunks of CR to slot into a "story" and I don't know about you but I'm not really interested in telling a story and more interested in being genuinely surprised by what happens in the session. Sorry. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I like the idea of the 2d6 random encounter table (supplemented with a WHY? table if necessary) because it creates a bell curve and you have rarer encounter slots that helps to mitigate their danger (reaction helps with this as well). I like to run the suggestion from this blog that still helps to inject the flavor and show the threats you had in mind for your regions while creating encounters related to but not always directly using the monsters you have prepped: retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-procedure-for-wandering-monsters.html I still like to create 1d20 (all have equal chances of being rolled, no bell curve) "special" encounter tables that have preconfigured situations/encounters that show the weirdness of the region and usually throw the ball in the PC's court with a dramatic question "A wealthy weapon-thane with a retinue of mercenaries approaches the party and accuses them of thievery, a guard approaches."
There’s definitely more ways for player powers to short-circuit some of the traditional hexcrawl procedures but I think they can be adapted with effort (something I’m working on now though it’s early in the process). I actually really like 2d6 for encounters (I’ve even toyed with 3d6) for similar reasons. I thought about mentioning it in the video but I ended up deciding to stick with higher level talk and using mechanics already somewhat familiar to most folks.
I broke a con game by simply hiring 30,00 Fighters and 1,200 Bards, clerics, and Sorcerer. Plus 2000 whatever misc tradesmen, and whatevers. I figured a few 100 would be Rogues :) Those youngins had never imagined that could be done at level 3. Needless to say all the opposition the DM could muster was flattened immediately.
Fredrick Rourk how did you manage to convince them all? The share size would have been shrunk so small to not make it worth it unless you were taking down a city made of gold and you couldn’t have possibly had enough money to pay any wages for all of them. EDIT: And I almost forgot- were you guys not playing with any limits on class-leveled companions?
Oh it was at a con so just needed to complete. Got a little lucky in that the adventure had been failed by a previous adventuring party. 2 deaths and lots of gold and magic items left behind. This allowed my bard to tap into quite the rumor mill. Our Paladin had been on a previous adventure and took part in the slaying of a Great Vampire Lord so more juice for my bard to spread. Total revenue of the adventure was just under 1,000,000 gold so not to bad of a haul. Just start adding it up 63 doors in the dungeon. Plus every door has a lock and 2 hinges. 4500 now dead humanoids wearing chainmail or leather. Each had a sword & dagger. 400 dead evil clerics in platemail with maces & shields. Can't forget the harvesting of magical components. That was another 200,000 gold. There was a red dragon we let buy her freedom 150,000 gold. What can I say there is more treasure than what is often in the chest.
Good encounter for open plains: gnolls in holes. You see an abandoned wagon near a small river; you approach to examine it and realize too late that not all those prairie dog yips you've been hearing were made by prairie dogs. You’ve stumbled across a gnoll lair of underground tunnels, & a dozen gnolls comes pouring out of holes all around you. The gnolls travel around with the wagon but from time to time dig tunnels for shelter & ambush near water.
Your example with the gnolls is exactly like how I enjoy running games. I set a stage in the beginning. A starting location, a few dungeons, a bit of local tension. But then I let the procedure, such as why are the gnolls here, generate the next question. Answering that, a rampaging sphinx has appeared, generates the next content. Maybe now those gnolls are going to move towards the human lands and we need heroes to go roust the sphinx so they will go back to their old tribal lands? Maybe the Sphinx was looking for something rather than wanting a new home but now that these adventures are here they can go get it for him from the dungeon under the gnoll burial ground, which despite him taking the space he still can't fit into... Etc, etc, infintum (or at least until real life burst the soap bubble of the campaign)
I always found the lair-system in 1e to be ass-backwards: first you roll for the kind of creature encountered, then for its number and *then* you check if there is a lair of the creature nearby (meaning the creature will be encountered in greater numbers). Normally, a fixed lair would mean I would see evidence of those creatures beforehand (more tracks, evidence of food being tracked to the lair, disposed carcasses), meaning I don't go there (or prepare better for it). Also, if two lairs of different kinds of monster are in close proximity to each other, it stands to reason they have some kind of relationship (feuding, mercantile, etc.) - you can't do that, if you just randomly spawn the lair when you roll the encounter. My idea is that you create lairs when you roll up your hex map (similar to how you roll settlements) and then when you roll for random encounters, you are more likely to encounter a particular kind of creature (or encounter a creature in greater numbers) when you are near a lair.
Rolling up lairs in advance is definitely my first choice. When we find ourselves with a blank hex that we need to fill with wandering creatures, determining the lair in the moment can work provided we've left ourselves narrative space to create those details (though in some cases, not many details are required-- a bear cave, for example, isn't going to have a ton of clues much distance away from the cave itself) for the party to interact with and base their decisions on.
It is important, I think, to remember that a typical hex-size is six miles across. That leads to a surface area of over 31 square miles! Just because the lair might be in that hex( "nearby") doesn't mean you'll trip over it at the same time as the encounter. Also just because you roll the encounter doesn't mean you have to have the encounter happen right then and there. You could, as you've suggested, present evidence of a nearby lair instead of the actual monsters to encounter.
@@starshade7826 But in 1e you don't roll for lairs when you enter a hex - you roll for lairs when encountering creatures (meaning you are close enough to notice each other). You roll random encounters... say, an Owlbear... then you roll if it is just wandering around searching for food or if you (somehow) stumbled into its lair. And that is not a good way to do it.
combining the level tables as subtables and the DM rolls for difficulty category seems like it could be a useful way to use those levelled tables as is
One can also use the Xanathar encounter charts not according to party level but instead the region level (ie, how far away from “civilization” or the “safe lands” it is).
I roll a 1d12 and then I have homemade chart's that I consult based on the region, terrain type and if I roll a 10, 11 or 12. Unless my PCs are deep in the wilderness, the roll of an 11 will result in a mostly humanoid encounter including wondering merchant's. If I roll a 12 my charts have more monstrous encounters, such as dragons, trolls or shambling mounds. On the roll of a 10 the charts will have predatorial animals for the region like tigers, mountain lions, griffons or giant alligators. I also have foraging charts and hunting charts when my players decide to look or hunt for food.
There's a way to do hex crawls and still have EL-based encounters. I mark each hex with a number corresponding to the EL (but converted to a 1-9 to match dungeon levels). Civilized hexes get a 1, frequently traveled hexes (i.e. patrolled roads) get a 2, and as the hexes get further away, the number steadily grows. Some particular bad hexes might be a few points higher than the adjacent hexes, but these are known danger spots that locals avoid. This gives the players a bit of control over how dangerous things are based on where they go as well as allowing them to head for known high level spots if they feel up to it. They don't have complete control as they don't know the actual numbers.
+Hedgehobbit nice! I’ve messed with similar but I’ve found that I like the idea that anything can happen (mitigated by the probabilities) our in the wilds.
I really liked you comment on non-combatant population in a group of hostiles. I'm pretty new to the OSR, but I've recently started running Mothership and having a blast. Pretty much on every single encounter with humans (and shall we say, mostly-humans) I included non-combatants to the scene. Even the most blood-thirsty bandits drag along some poor sap tasked with carrying their supplies or filling their cups. Cannibal mutants have women and children too! and even beasts start their lives as pups, get pregnant or are too old or sick to join the hunt. Give them a couple names and some quirks and It never fails to create interesting role-playing scenarios. Should we fight carefully not to harm them? Kill them? Nah, they're innocent... are they? Take them prisioners? Will they betray us if we show mercy? Maybe they are even thankful, we should keep them! And so on and so forth. Players come up with the funniest sh*t, just by arguing among themselves.
Really like this approach to choosing wandering monsters. So much information produced for 5e is about balancing encounters. Sometimes it just makes sense to run and save your ass. Edit- I'm looking for a great resource on random encounters that aren't monsters, but roleplay or exploration opportunities.
I have always hated encounter tables that just give you a creature. I like to create a story behind each encounter I put on a table. This takes longer but provides more reasoning and interests to an encounter rather than saying you run into a troll.
I don’t think the tables that give only a creature don’t mean there to be no story behind only that you, as the ref, will create a story in the moment. I think, as an aid, being able to provide the bones of a situation with a creature, can definitely be helpful as, sometimes, a story doesn’t spring to mind in the moment.
@@HexedPress I would agree, I am not a very good spontaneous DM. I tend to create tables ahead of time to help me resolve these issues as they come up. A good one I found was Worlds without number and some online sources as well. I enjoyed your video and response thanks.
@@HexedPress Nope, they stayed and fought, I even said after looking up a displacer beast stat block, "um guys.. you sure you want me to roll with this?" Lol makes for a funny story anyway
100% agree with your thoughts on "level appropriate" encounters. It's cool to come across stuff that's way out of your league and do something other than fight.
If you know you're always the correct level to overcome what's in front of you you cut yourself from the most fun part of sandbox games where you map out stuff you can't face now so that you can come back when you're more experienced / better equipped. You might as well run a story based scenario at that point.
What an underrated channel!
I created many of these things for my West Marches 5e game, and I think they are great additions when you want to increase the simulation aspects of the world, and can be expanded to weather effects, posture checks for encounters, and special events. I used foraging tables, random encounters, random interest sites, and mixed in plenty of set items on my hex map. Has been a really fun way to play D&D.
Only thing to keep in mind is you gather a party who is also interested in this style of game, then everyone has a good time.
Also great video!
Thanks! Sounds like you’ve got a really great toolbox of resources to use!
On page 25 of Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, he goes into detail about the OD&D encounter tables. In his system, if a DM rolls up 300 goblins, you'd first take the "% in lair" to populate the base. So, in the case of goblins, that means 50%, or 150, of the goblins are back at the lair. The remaining goblins are split into patrols that are used to populate the surrounding area. Therefore a party searching a hex containing a goblin lair are more likely to encounter a smaller goblin patrol rather than a giant goblin city.
IOW, the encounter charts in OD&D were not originally wandering monster tables, but hex stocking charts. Why they are listed as such, I have no idea.
+Hedgehobbit I’ve got FFC but it’s been quite a while since I’ve gone through it. In a sense, the random encounters do function as a stocking chart when you roll up large numbers of forces since they no-longer represent a normal, transient population. You get to decide what it means and either plunk down a marker denoting a lair of some sort or determine why a mass migration is taking place and what that means. Good stuff!
... for 30 years I've thought "% in lair" was a percentage chance that the PC's ran into the creature while it was in its lair; this makes SO much more sense, thank you!
The biggest thing that gets me about new-school D&D is that it is full of player facing mechanics that kind of rob the hexcrawling procedure of its mystery. Like morale, reaction, surprise is largely configured by what's on the character sheet since you're dealing with necessary abstraction due to large chunks of time. One of my favorite things to do with BECMI is that I got all kinds of situations the players have to deal with and they all may have an impact on the mechanics in different ways, lighting a campfire in the woods so you can dry your clothes from the rain? That will shrink the random encounter die from a 1-3 chance with a d12 to a 1-3 chance with a d6 otherwise you won't be able to properly rest. Or maybe your hirelings are getting crotchety from trail rations and want a chance to let loose for ONCE, penalty to morale if you don't humor them but the risk shifts somewhere else if you do. Rulings derived from the situation the fiction presents, ya'know?
You get the idea, there's just so much more you can do with old-school D&D because the system itself creates incentives for travel prep because the player characters are weak, need to respect the world and don't have tons of combat abilities. (That kind of game is cool if you like it, it's just def not for me)
The other thing that makes me salty is that like you touched on with the AD&D Monster Manual, in 5e monsters are presented less naturalistically (no lair %, variant # encountered, etc) and more as floating chunks of CR to slot into a "story" and I don't know about you but I'm not really interested in telling a story and more interested in being genuinely surprised by what happens in the session.
Sorry. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I like the idea of the 2d6 random encounter table (supplemented with a WHY? table if necessary) because it creates a bell curve and you have rarer encounter slots that helps to mitigate their danger (reaction helps with this as well). I like to run the suggestion from this blog that still helps to inject the flavor and show the threats you had in mind for your regions while creating encounters related to but not always directly using the monsters you have prepped:
retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-procedure-for-wandering-monsters.html
I still like to create 1d20 (all have equal chances of being rolled, no bell curve) "special" encounter tables that have preconfigured situations/encounters that show the weirdness of the region and usually throw the ball in the PC's court with a dramatic question "A wealthy weapon-thane with a retinue of mercenaries approaches the party and accuses them of thievery, a guard approaches."
There’s definitely more ways for player powers to short-circuit some of the traditional hexcrawl procedures but I think they can be adapted with effort (something I’m working on now though it’s early in the process).
I actually really like 2d6 for encounters (I’ve even toyed with 3d6) for similar reasons. I thought about mentioning it in the video but I ended up deciding to stick with higher level talk and using mechanics already somewhat familiar to most folks.
I broke a con game by simply hiring 30,00 Fighters and 1,200 Bards, clerics, and Sorcerer. Plus 2000 whatever misc tradesmen, and whatevers. I figured a few 100 would be Rogues :)
Those youngins had never imagined that could be done at level 3. Needless to say all the opposition the DM could muster was flattened immediately.
Fredrick Rourk how did you manage to convince them all? The share size would have been shrunk so small to not make it worth it unless you were taking down a city made of gold and you couldn’t have possibly had enough money to pay any wages for all of them.
EDIT:
And I almost forgot- were you guys not playing with any limits on class-leveled companions?
Oh it was at a con so just needed to complete. Got a little lucky in that the adventure had been failed by a previous adventuring party. 2 deaths and lots of gold and magic items left behind. This allowed my bard to tap into quite the rumor mill. Our Paladin had been on a previous adventure and took part in the slaying of a Great Vampire Lord so more juice for my bard to spread.
Total revenue of the adventure was just under 1,000,000 gold so not to bad of a haul.
Just start adding it up 63 doors in the dungeon. Plus every door has a lock and 2 hinges. 4500 now dead humanoids wearing chainmail or leather. Each had a sword & dagger. 400 dead evil clerics in platemail with maces & shields. Can't forget the harvesting of magical components. That was another 200,000 gold. There was a red dragon we let buy her freedom 150,000 gold. What can I say there is more treasure than what is often in the chest.
+Fredrick Rourk haha. What edition was this game?
Good encounter for open plains: gnolls in holes. You see an abandoned wagon near a small river; you approach to examine it and realize too late that not all those prairie dog yips you've been hearing were made by prairie dogs. You’ve stumbled across a gnoll lair of underground tunnels, & a dozen gnolls comes pouring out of holes all around you. The gnolls travel around with the wagon but from time to time dig tunnels for shelter & ambush near water.
Ooh, that's nice! You could also reward someone who speaks Gnoll with detecting the true nature of the yips.
Your example with the gnolls is exactly like how I enjoy running games. I set a stage in the beginning. A starting location, a few dungeons, a bit of local tension. But then I let the procedure, such as why are the gnolls here, generate the next question. Answering that, a rampaging sphinx has appeared, generates the next content. Maybe now those gnolls are going to move towards the human lands and we need heroes to go roust the sphinx so they will go back to their old tribal lands? Maybe the Sphinx was looking for something rather than wanting a new home but now that these adventures are here they can go get it for him from the dungeon under the gnoll burial ground, which despite him taking the space he still can't fit into...
Etc, etc, infintum (or at least until real life burst the soap bubble of the campaign)
I always found the lair-system in 1e to be ass-backwards: first you roll for the kind of creature encountered, then for its number and *then* you check if there is a lair of the creature nearby (meaning the creature will be encountered in greater numbers). Normally, a fixed lair would mean I would see evidence of those creatures beforehand (more tracks, evidence of food being tracked to the lair, disposed carcasses), meaning I don't go there (or prepare better for it). Also, if two lairs of different kinds of monster are in close proximity to each other, it stands to reason they have some kind of relationship (feuding, mercantile, etc.) - you can't do that, if you just randomly spawn the lair when you roll the encounter.
My idea is that you create lairs when you roll up your hex map (similar to how you roll settlements) and then when you roll for random encounters, you are more likely to encounter a particular kind of creature (or encounter a creature in greater numbers) when you are near a lair.
Rolling up lairs in advance is definitely my first choice. When we find ourselves with a blank hex that we need to fill with wandering creatures, determining the lair in the moment can work provided we've left ourselves narrative space to create those details (though in some cases, not many details are required-- a bear cave, for example, isn't going to have a ton of clues much distance away from the cave itself) for the party to interact with and base their decisions on.
It is important, I think, to remember that a typical hex-size is six miles across. That leads to a surface area of over 31 square miles! Just because the lair might be in that hex( "nearby") doesn't mean you'll trip over it at the same time as the encounter. Also just because you roll the encounter doesn't mean you have to have the encounter happen right then and there. You could, as you've suggested, present evidence of a nearby lair instead of the actual monsters to encounter.
@@starshade7826 But in 1e you don't roll for lairs when you enter a hex - you roll for lairs when encountering creatures (meaning you are close enough to notice each other).
You roll random encounters... say, an Owlbear... then you roll if it is just wandering around searching for food or if you (somehow) stumbled into its lair.
And that is not a good way to do it.
combining the level tables as subtables and the DM rolls for difficulty category seems like it could be a useful way to use those levelled tables as is
One can also use the Xanathar encounter charts not according to party level but instead the region level (ie, how far away from “civilization” or the “safe lands” it is).
Good idea!
People, even (especially?) those into dnd aren’t even CLOSE to this level man! But boy are they missing out! Great stuff!
Glad it spoke to you! 😁
I roll a 1d12 and then I have homemade chart's that I consult based on the region, terrain type and if I roll a 10, 11 or 12. Unless my PCs are deep in the wilderness, the roll of an 11 will result in a mostly humanoid encounter including wondering merchant's. If I roll a 12 my charts have more monstrous encounters, such as dragons, trolls or shambling mounds. On the roll of a 10 the charts will have predatorial animals for the region like tigers, mountain lions, griffons or giant alligators. I also have foraging charts and hunting charts when my players decide to look or hunt for food.
3.5e DMG has great biomecentric monster tables.
I'll give it a look!
Been watching your vids as I prep my first hex crawl. Thanks for the good info!!
Glad you like them! Good luck with the ‘crawl and feel free to send over any questions!
There's a way to do hex crawls and still have EL-based encounters. I mark each hex with a number corresponding to the EL (but converted to a 1-9 to match dungeon levels). Civilized hexes get a 1, frequently traveled hexes (i.e. patrolled roads) get a 2, and as the hexes get further away, the number steadily grows. Some particular bad hexes might be a few points higher than the adjacent hexes, but these are known danger spots that locals avoid.
This gives the players a bit of control over how dangerous things are based on where they go as well as allowing them to head for known high level spots if they feel up to it. They don't have complete control as they don't know the actual numbers.
+Hedgehobbit nice! I’ve messed with similar but I’ve found that I like the idea that anything can happen (mitigated by the probabilities) our in the wilds.
Hey, Hedgehobbit is still around!
I really liked you comment on non-combatant population in a group of hostiles. I'm pretty new to the OSR, but I've recently started running Mothership and having a blast. Pretty much on every single encounter with humans (and shall we say, mostly-humans) I included non-combatants to the scene.
Even the most blood-thirsty bandits drag along some poor sap tasked with carrying their supplies or filling their cups. Cannibal mutants have women and children too! and even beasts start their lives as pups, get pregnant or are too old or sick to join the hunt. Give them a couple names and some quirks and It never fails to create interesting role-playing scenarios. Should we fight carefully not to harm them? Kill them? Nah, they're innocent... are they? Take them prisioners? Will they betray us if we show mercy? Maybe they are even thankful, we should keep them! And so on and so forth. Players come up with the funniest sh*t, just by arguing among themselves.
Absolutely, haha!
Really like this approach to choosing wandering monsters. So much information produced for 5e is about balancing encounters. Sometimes it just makes sense to run and save your ass.
Edit- I'm looking for a great resource on random encounters that aren't monsters, but roleplay or exploration opportunities.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I have always hated encounter tables that just give you a creature. I like to create a story behind each encounter I put on a table. This takes longer but provides more reasoning and interests to an encounter rather than saying you run into a troll.
I don’t think the tables that give only a creature don’t mean there to be no story behind only that you, as the ref, will create a story in the moment. I think, as an aid, being able to provide the bones of a situation with a creature, can definitely be helpful as, sometimes, a story doesn’t spring to mind in the moment.
@@HexedPress I would agree, I am not a very good spontaneous DM. I tend to create tables ahead of time to help me resolve these issues as they come up. A good one I found was Worlds without number and some online sources as well. I enjoyed your video and response thanks.
@@jamesrizza2640 glad to help. WWN is great though, for me, sometimes I find it a bit overkill but I’d rather have too much than too little!
when I was a really new DM I used an encounter for 1-4 players (they were level 1) and got 2 displacer beasts, tpk in session 1 lol
Run away!!!
@@HexedPress Nope, they stayed and fought, I even said after looking up a displacer beast stat block, "um guys.. you sure you want me to roll with this?" Lol makes for a funny story anyway