Musings on tabletop roleplaying. A mixture of homebrew ideas, observations, and theory discussion; plus occasional reviews, utilities and inspirations. Verbose, amateurish, under-edited, over-written, not especially serious.
The job of the GM is to cunningly predict the players' every move, weaving a seamless web of continuity that will accommodate their whims. This is, of course, impossible, but sometimes more impossible than others. In Episode 038: Well, that was unexpected, Ollie managed to do something I absolutely had not even remotely anticipated.
The random encounter has been a Thing in RPGs since at least the early days of D&D. Sometimes this makes more sense than others. Having your night's kip deep in the bowels of an abandoned cathedral crypt disturbed by prowling ghouls makes a fair amount of sense. Running into a manticore as you take the rough cart track from a farming village to the market town, not so much.
Like most parts of gaming, this is fine in moderation and in the hands of a judicious GM who thinks about the context. But that's not a very exciting statement, so let's have a further look at random encounters.