SOMETHING Happens on Every Watch

Many games have dealt with “the boring campsite watch” problem. It goes something like this.

DM: “OK, so Stonks the thief will take the first watch, Sir Melvin will take the second watch, and Talita of Frond will take the third watch. OK, Stonks, let’s see… rolls dice… it’s a quiet night. Nothing happens during your watch, and so at the end of your turn, you wake up Melvin. Melvin, uh, it is pretty late now. The moon is overhead. Um, rolls more dice… looks like your watch passes uneventfully also. Talita, you’re on the last watch…”

Pretty boring, right? Dead time. What if instead something happened on every watch? Wouldn’t that be more interesting? What would that look like?

Use Random Events, Not (Just) Random Encounters

Depending on your preferred style of play, something happening on every watch may immediately sound like overkill. A positive hit on the ol’ random encounter table three or four times every night the party rests? Too much!

Part of the reason that random encounter tables and similar procedures have atrophied in modern play is that encounters in modern play have a strong presumption of combat, and combat takes a long time. The latter issue is hard to fix. You can nibble at the edges, but you’re not going to fully solve long combats in 5E and similar games without switching to another system and maybe even an entirely different style of play. 

But the former is much easier to solve. De-incentivizing combat in the first place is relatively easy. So easy that it was solved in some of the earliest iterations of the game, where encounter distance plus a reaction roll went a long way toward implying a situation that was not likely to lead directly to combat. Even the absurdly large “no. appearing” counts in early monster manuals communicated that rolls on wilderness tables were suggesting a factional presence or wildlife population, not a Final-Fantasy-battle-music sudden confrontation. Another lost art, “% in lair,” also provides a tool for avoiding obligatory combat, as a lair appearance suggests a creature at rest and perhaps provides a risk/reward choice for the players who can opt-in to risking danger, but aren’t obligated to do so.

The leveled up version of the old-school approach appears in tables like those in Hot Springs Island (still my favorite random encounter table) and Skerples’ Monster Overhaul. These tables give monsters something to do, imply pasts and futures, and often put monsters in conflict with other monsters. 

Campfire by Cody Claus

But even without using those tools, it is pretty easy to adjudicate interesting situations that do not necessarily force combat. Say for example “goblin” comes up on a random table, with no other elaboration. Here are d8 ideas that I came up with quickly, off the top of my head, without using any prompts or tables.

1. A single goblin scout. She is not individually dangerous, but will report the PCs presence to a larger group, if she leaves undetected.
2. Tracks from the goblins cross very close to the campsite; a PC stumbles on them when they go to relieve themself. 
3. Goblins are fleeing rival goblins, clumsily crashing through the campsite in the dead of night.
4. Sounds of goblin drums in the distance. A hunt? A ceremony? Something else?
5. The distinctive smell of goblin cooking, wafting up through a chimney vent in the ground. Unbeknownst to the players, they have camped directly above the goblins’ underground dwelling.
6. Goblins are looking for the PCs, but are unsure exactly where the party is. They are close by, noisily arguing about where to look next.
7. A goblin hunting party chasing a wild boar; for extra chaos, one goblin has a lasso around the hog and is being dragged through the undergrowth. If combat breaks out, the boar will gore both goblins or PCs indiscriminately.
8. A curious goblin spying on the PCs from a safe distance. Are they a thief? A potential hireling? Something else?

This is just scratching the surface, and most ideas like these imply yet more ideas. Practice producing ideas like these for a while, and hooks for non-combat encounters will start to feel like the default way to present random encounters, rather than obligatory fights.

Campfire by Cannonbreed

Offer More Robust Echoes and Omens

This is age-old advice, but warrants rebroadcast for the GMs who don’t already have it in their toolkit. One of the easiest ways to create something interesting based on a random table roll – but without incentivizing combat – is to simply contextualize it in the past or the future, instead of in the present.

Consider a random encounter roll for an owlbear. Spoor? Ominous hooting? Clawed-up tree bark? The screech of prey a few miles off, suddenly cut short?

An easy way to think of this method is in terms of echoes and omens. What has happened in the recent past and what will happen in the near future? What signs can the PCs find for what the monster was doing in this area just before they got there? What warnings can the PCs perceive that the monster is nearby?

Next week: Ends, Themes, Scenes, and Cuts