On Wandering Monsters
I think wandering monster rolls are pretty great. Well, in the wilderness at least. Dungeons are a whole different thing.
One of the things I've been working on in my Blightlands game is building out what I call, "Layers." This is just my way of describing that instead of having something simple like entering a hex has a wandering monster, I have a hex could have locations. Those locations could have resources. Those locations are in regions. Those regions have their own encounters. Hopefully you get the idea.
A lot of this was inspired by writings on The Alexandrian and d4 Caltrops. Anyway, all of this stuff has been swimming in my head and I can be pretty slow about things so I thought, what other layers to "Wandering Encounters" can exist?
So, here is a list of things that could happen on a wandering monster roll:
- Monsters (Duh)
- Tracks of monsters
- Tracks to a lair
- A unique location
- A unique location with resources
- Interesting plants
- A weather event
- Sounds of nature
- Smells
- A vignette or "Meanwhile"
- An anomaly
- A dream-like or liminal moment
- Wild animals like horses, buffalo, deer, etc.
- Tracks and signs of something awful
Should you do all of this? I don't know! One good thing about overloading the wandering monster roll is that any and all of these can turn into interesting tables and sparks that offload that feeling I, and I suspect others, have of breathing life into the world.
I was up until 1 AM watching The Revenant. Its now 7 AM and I've already been up over an hour. I watched the movie in a haze and there are so many great scenes that are beautiful, odd, and desolate. One scene in particular has Fitzgerald standing by a riverbank as a meteor lands nearby and a piece of it splashes into the river. He just looks at it in wonder.
When I think of the feel of the world, elements like this are how you make that happen. It doesn't have to be in constant overt descriptions, but a drip that builds.
One concern here is that I'm basically saying I need a bunch more tables, and that is likely true, but I think the exercise is justified.
So here's a draft of what I'm thinking:
| Roll 1d20 | Encounter Type |
|---|---|
| 1-5 | Monster |
| 6-10 | Location & Remnants |
| 11-15 | Plant or Animal resource |
| 16-19 | Nature & Weather |
| 20 | Anomaly |
| I think this needs work, but if you remember that any roll on a 1d20 equates to 5% then you can adjust to create the right mix for your game. |
But wait, my list was much longer than this. Well, for monsters that breaks down into monster, tracks, and lairs.
Locations and Remnants are much closer to one another than different and so those are getting collapsed together. A location that would always be there but a remnant is something that might vanish like an old camp, dead animals, or something like that. Plant and animal resources should be pretty self-explanatory. Nature and weather seem to go together well because they're thematically similar and are momentary in nature. Anomalies are the bucket of weird things that every world needs but hard to explain like a meteor falling, magic that shouldn't be, relics, etc.
I want to close this draft with this note. It is easy sometimes to write ideas out like this without dealing with the practicality of using this stuff at a table. Having a bunch of tables you have to flip through for every roll is awful, but it might be how this idea has to start. Hopefully future updates to this will have something workable in place.