So I am always fiddling with procedures for creating dungeons. Sometimes it is just as fun as actually running the thing. My biggest bugbear are encounter tables, some are definitely better than others but all seem to lead to some incongruous results. Unfortunately whenever I use tables like that and get weird results, I feel slightly married to the result otherwise why would I have rolled in the first place?!
So this morning, I decided to move in the opposite direction of where I was going with d100 entries per level and scale it waaaaay back to something usuable but not too fixed. Here is what I came up with
Monster Table (d6)
1- Humanoid (Includes intelligent Monsters. Useful for factions but reduces chances of things going from a dungeon to a town)
2- Monster, Flyer (Low chance but also fun to have some pesky flying threats in the mix)
3-4- Monster, Ground (Standard beastial monster encounters)
5-6- Undead (Who doesn’t love spooky guys wandering around causing problems?)
Curious what folk think! I plan on running it through the paces tonight but really hoping this strikes the balance of giving me a framework/jumping off point to have interesting and useful encounters without ending up with rooms full of flies and goblins and that one alligator for no reason on level 4
just a side note, a dungeon with only flies, goblins and THAT ONE ALLIGATOR actually sounds really interesting! in fact, “That One Alligator” is a good title for an adventure.
another note, let me pause here and say, this is my great theory of FORUMS vs the rest of the internet. on the rest of the internet, its being kind of a debbie downer if you chime in and say, “wow, I don’t really stock dungeons this way at all. I just kinda wing it”. but in a forum it is appropriate? I think so.
so pretending that is the social rule for forums. I would add to “wow, I don’t really stock dungeons in this way at all. I just kinda wing it.” your d6 tool would work well with my style! really its just a sorta brain spark tool, and a way to get out of ruts. so in general I think I like it. I kinda wish that all my monsters were organized into categories like that though…
… not having the monsters categorized, made me think. I wonder if I could get something to categorize them? So, I quickly headed over to notebookLM (which i am finding is such a great tool), and loaded in my RPG notes and written materials. its honestly great at coming up with random monsters, AND you can ask it to thematically tie them together, even have it shoehorn some motifs onto the monsters and make them a bit more bespoke. it understands context so saying, “choose a random monster that can fly and also keeps with the overall dungeon motifs” will get you a good result. you might want to try it.
Yes, exactly! Spark tool is exactly that! I find for dungeon stuff, having some scaffolding there helps me a lot to keep out of certain creative ruts and maybe go in unexpected directions but too much detail can be suffocating. This level of detail the categories is, I think, perfect for me to build momentum from instead of trying to over-rationalize some pretty odd results, lol.
When you say wing it, do you mean at the table or when creating a dungeon/adventure?
“wing it” refers to creating a dungeon. my process is:
think big picture, what is this place from a story perspective. what is its history. what are the motifs and themes I am going to hit.
throw down a bunch of ideas, encounters, monsters, treasures related to that into a big pile.
make rough map. start pulling things from the big pile to POPULATE. sticking them on the map in a way that satisfies world/narrative/story logic as well as general game logic (mixing types of encounters, making sure the map is fun, making sure its not too hard/easy, etc). so I’ll think, OK, 1st or 2d room, i’ll want some sort of guard, what qualifies as a guard in the idea pile?
go back to step one. make sure that the GRAND VISION is still intact. adjust accordingly.
then its off to playing it!
so for me, populating isn’t that hard, its more like “organizing the pile”.
There have been lots of times in the past when I rolled on a small table that would just give me categories of monsters in the same fashion youlay out. Then I’d pull out my list of monsters in that category that were present in that terrain type or locale and pick one to use. It was a lot of fun!
Then there have been times where I’ve used detailed tables to roll specific monsters and numbers of monsters. Those also were fun! They also tended to transition more quickly from rolling for an encounter to getting it in play, which was really nice at times.
Right now I’m playing around with very large tables that indicate what sort of event happens–may not be an encounter–and exactly what beasties, how many, and how far when it indicates an encounter. There’s a lot more work involved in preparing such tables, yet so little work done at the table when using them. I’ve not enough experience with them yet to figure out if that’s how I really want to approach things.
When I want to use big tables for rolling encounters I’ll often roll about 10 or so before the session which helps my brain create a few connections or ideas so that I’m not totally surprised.
It still feels fun and fresh to me at the table because I don’t know when the players will trigger the encounter or what the situation will be.
I just posted about the tables on my blog. The short version: 2D6x6 tables, 66 entries; 2D6^2 tables, 121 entries. Breaking down the entries by how common they are is fairly easy, using a base 2D6 roll with its bell curve.
I’m also more inclined towards structured encounter tables. I’m also very lazy. I use a 2d3 system based on Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated. Using this, my tables are structured like this:
2 is a natural apex predator for the area
3 is the most common natural predator
4 recurring NPC, or harmless creature
5 common mook
6 the BBG
Not all encounters put players in danger. Often it can be evidence of the BBG, a sighting, or they are curious about the party.
If the nature of the encounter is uncertain I like this table:
Heh, thanks for the shout out about my Encounter Activity Tables. Eventually I hope to tackle the Advanced Monsters.
I also have a “harmless” Dungeon Fauna (and one for Dungeon Flora as well!) table that I enjoy using for a little more decoration. I like the these, and plenty of my other more “dungeon-centric” tables in my Dungeon Stocking - Expanded Resource.
Back in the Story Games forums Eero Tuovinen told me a couple of great lightweight encounter table procedures that I still use sometimes:
d6 table, but if you roll a 6 you then roll on a d6 sub-table for special or unusual encounters. Rather than trying to carefully tune a 2d6 or 3d6 bell curve you can just write down 5 ordinary things and a few rare ones.
Even simpler for when you having nothing prepped but still want to disclaim some control over the fiction:
What’s the first thing you think of? Heads you do that, tails you think of a another thing. Then, heads you do the second thing, tails you think of a third idea, and so on. So ideas that are more obvious or natural to you are more likely to enter the fiction, but sometimes you end up doing something more unusual.