A popular OSR hack is to have a loaded encounter die, but I have to admit I find it kind of hard to remember what number is supposed to have what result. And then there is the issue is that sometimes the dice results will result in something wonky like a torch going out twice in a row, and so you’re supposed to imrpovise at that point, which feels against the spirit of the random encounter roll. I also find omen results as written kind of confusing. What happens if you roll an omen one turn, and an encounter on the next? So I have my own varient of random encounter rolls that I think simplifies things. It isn’t as dynamic a system as the loaded encounter die, but it is more interesting than the standard D&D encounter roll while also making my job as a GM easier. Here it is.

  1. Roll two dice.
  2. One die is for the number of turns until an encounter happens. Modifiers can be included depending on how dense or sparsely populated an area is. On a 1 the encounter surprises the party, on a 6 the party surprises the encounter.
  3. The other die corresponds to the encounter chart.
  4. If the party is noisy or does something to attract attention that would warrant rolling an additional encounter die decrease the number of turns before the encounter, and remove the party surprising the encounter bonus if applicable.
  5. After the encounter happens, repeat the procedure.

Some other things about random encounter tables. It is nice when they aren’t just stat blocks. Providing some details about what the random encounter might be doing is always good to include. Also, although I was complaining about the ambiguity of omen dice, I actually do like a situation where two random encounters are suddenly combined, you never know exactly what might happen, and that keeps things interesting. So it is cool to have like a d6 table where on a 6, you roll the dice two more times, and then include both your results in the encounter.

Addendum: I came across an older blog post over on Permanent Cranial Damage that has a similar procedure to the one outlined above if you’re looking for something like this, but a little different.