One part D&D History, one part DM Advice. What’s the history of Wandering Monsters in D&D? Why are they part of the game? How can you make them more relevant and useful in your own games? Find out in this video!
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*TIMESTAMPS*
0:00 Introduction
1:30 Superfans
2:30 History of Wandering Monsters
3:34 Blackmoor
7:23 OD&D
8:40 AD&D
13:09 Basic D&D
15:19 AD&D 2E
17:06 Story & Wandering Monsters
26:30 Why Use Wandering Monsters?
30:31 Resource Management
39:16 How I Use Wandering Monsters
39:29 Custom Tables
43:20 Reaction Rolls
47:40 Custom Monsters
50:43 Wrap-Up
52:20 Bonus Content
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I had no idea people have a negative impression of random encounters. I'm very focused on developing the setting the characters live and explore in and random encounters make the world feel fleshed out and larger than the current story. I think the key is to allow some of them to stay almost completely in the background (drakes are flying by and they seem to not have noticed you) while others need to directly engage and then disengage before they grind boring to kill or be killed (Now that you've bloodied the bear it turns and tries to retreat to find an easier meal somewhere else) while others are allowed to derail the plot momentarily if the players are digging the distraction (like if they hear about a village dealing with roaming wolf packs and they want to stay there for a few days to see if they can help while buying supplies and getting/giving training to/from npcs)
"I don't use wandering monsters because they ruin my planned-out story."
Wait 'til they see what the players are like.
Dragonlance is the pivot point in TTRPG history where sandbox play began to give way to "narrative gaming". Over time, DMing ceased to be an exercise in creative improvisation and became equivalent to a full-time job thanks to the mountain of preparation/work required to construct an elaborate world and a fully fleshed-out "story" for the players to be led through. For DMs who have neither the time nor the talent to do all the necessary work (which is probably most of them today), there are shelves full of pre-written "adventure paths" to take the players through, turning the DM into a glorified tour guide through someone else's imagination. Long gone are the days of emergent drama, where the "story" is what emerges from unpredictable player actions, not what is prescribed by a pre-written script.
Edit at 28 min you say all of this and more. For the algorithm!
To me wandering monsters were always from one area exploring another. It wasn’t a monster not in the game. I’d have wandering monsters not in their lair because they were elsewhere and it stopped the surgical strike syndrome that many groups devolved into. However I stopped using them in recent years. I think they need to come back.
Health torches rations VS ever ticking turns/random rolls. Saved you 52 minutes jfc
Random encounters was a big part of our game when I played ad&d//2e when they were current.
What about "wondering monsters" ? I always wondered what they are wondering! 😀
The D series were the worse for wandering monsters. As if it wasn’t tough enough!
The curse of strahd is story driven, but also treats him as a wondering monster, so I think there is room to mix them especially if it adds to the setting and in that case horror elements
+10 points for talking about the Dirty Projectors
in 5e Light is no longer a resource, because it's a cantrip now and you can cast infinite cantrips per day.
I refuse to play with a group that puts too much emphasis on the pre written story. It is meant to be an interactive, living adventure the story is irellevant and should be fluid. I love wondering monsters because it allows the DM to get creative and adapt to things they didn't plan. a DM that tries to pre determine everything is a BAD DM period. The players deserve a chance to affect and alter the game if the DM is railroading them into pre determined encounters and forcing the outcome then that DM should go write fantasy novels instead and get the hell out of playing a "game" because the game is the part of D&D so many people forget about. The idea of a shared story is a newer concept it was always a game with mechanics the story was supposed to develop organically as you played, not be pre written and pre determined. This is why I never played a game that used modules.
In my opinion, as soon as the story is predetermined, you are using the D&D mechanics to play out a novel/movie/modern adventure. There’s nothing wrong with that, it is certainly a way to play. Personally,I prefer (and have exclusively run for 37 years) a game where the story is created by the characters actions. Not knowing how anything will resolve until the characters decide is one of the true joys of being a DM. I don’t think I could run a game where I had to force the characters down a predetermined path.
I think this must be why so many DMs complain about players ruining their games.
I also think players ruin those games on purpose. I believe it is an immature act of rebellion against the loss of their agency. I bet most of them don’t even realize that’s why they do it.
Anyhoo… just some thoughts. Great stuff as always.
BECMI Forever!
Long Live King Elmore!!
Great episode!
I think an encounter doesn't have to be a combat is a huge concept
Hi Martin, just wanted to mention that your version of First Fantasy Campaign with 88 pages is the first printing. The later printings had less pages, but this was mostly due to a change to smaller typeface. The contents are almost identical otherwise, aside from some attempts to correct typos from the first print (and adding new typos in the process!).
Out of blue Youtube recommended me this video.
I am kind of surprised that young players not are fans of random encounters of such kind. I thought they grew up on CRPGs mainly and should be used to this kind of things.
I, personally, don't mind them. It helps world building. "It's dangerous place. Expect dangerous things, which live here"
This was a great video on WM's. You mentioned verisimilitude, and that is the most important reason in my campaigns for having them. Think of how boring travelling from town A to town B would be without wandering encounters. What I do: every WM encounter I have in my campaign has a reason and purpose, I still use tables and they are random. Here are two examples; Azra the Troll – An overturned beer cart lies in the road. Nearby, an enormous troll snores loudly, surrounded by empty kegs. Azra is drunk and passed out. Gojun the Terrible – An enormous dragon lands on the road in front of the group. It asks for directions to a certain village, gives the party a generous tip, and then flies off saying he intends to raze it to the ground. His name is Gojun. [He is a Brine Dragon and seeks revenge for the death of his spouse by a "Hero" of this village] I give myself a summary of what each creature is about, and how to roleplay the encounter. Some are combat as well, but I like to throw in a lot of social and unique encounters giving the players a chance to hobo kill [in the first encounter] or kill themselves [by attacking the dragon] in the second. Not every encounter should be combative, either because you simply can't beat it, or it was never meant to be combative in the first place. Furthermore, many of these, can form the basis of an adventure in and of themselves depending on how the players go about the encounter. Cheers.
My first experience with dnd was playing adnd 2e, 3 years later were still playing that game. It never occured to me that the game could be played without random encounters. For the past 14 sessions (6 months irl) weve been traveling from one side of the map to the other, and we spend 2/3 of our sessions fighting random encounter monsters in the overworld. Its been beyond insufferable.
“That isn’t real D&D”. Anyone who says that has no idea of the history and possibilities of the system. That’s the beauty of it. It can be played in so many ways and they can all be fun and “valid”.
If I ran a game where the simplest combat ate up an hour or more, I'd hate wandering monsters, too. Since I favor OD&D, however, I can appreciate how they add tension, foster verisimilitude, encourage smart play, and give the referee some delightful opportunities to be surprised by his own dungeon.
Brilliant stuff! I don't think you pointed out that you can always have random encounters that include one or more monsters that would usually be found in a keyed area – so if they are previously encountered elsewhere, they will not be found in that keyed area, or if they have already been found in the keyed area, they will not be randomly encountered elsewhere.
great video. I liked your charts at the end.Personally I love the challenge of random encounters on the fly.I switched to Shadowdark after the Hasbro OGL crap. SD has so many charts on encounters that i use on the fly. For example I rolled "cultist examining ruins" worked perfectly and added some intrigue as the players saw a lone man studying some old obelisk. Turned out that while watching him to determine his purpose, I ended up rolling another encounter, "horse gets pulled into water by a tentacled horror." I had to figure out what was happening fast. I decided the horse was the cultists horse and was down the river a way off and only visible to the keen eyesight of the elf. When the horse was pulled in the stranger yelled in panic about his steed "Chancey". In the end the players befriended the man and promised to take him back to town. They camped and the next day they explored some of the ruins and had one of the players die by a collapsing wall. His new character became the cultist. The wall was also a random encounter.So I feel the dice make the story more then I do, I am just a referee and interpreter. I try to keep my games very open with rumors to guide the players in the direction they wish to go. I would say Random encounters are a complete must have.
Random encounters have been the more memorable through the years.
I've learned over the years that random encounters in enclosed environments should reflect the creatures in that environment.
IE: the random bug bear from room #8 going to or returning from a bathroom break.
The best way I know of to keep a DM from throwing wondering monsters too much is set up ambushes with your group so he rolls the wandering monster check to see if you get the ambush someone it worked for me at least
Great point about the reaction rolls making things extra interesting, and possibly even beneficial, for the party!
Thanks for the video! I use wandering monsters all the time, every game I run, without fail.
There is no place in my setting where things are not wandering around. 🙂
Good advice
I'm wondering if there's any overlap between the people who played in these early versions of RPG's and those who created the unix game "Rogue" (which developed into hack/nethack/slash'em etc)?
I HATED wandering monsters! The DM usually designed the dungeons so that the pre-determined monsters were nearly equal to the party…so, that means the party fights a battle and barely survives, and while they are resting to recover, here comes a wandering monster that just cleans up and destroys everyone…and worse still is that WANDERING MONSTERS HAVE ZERO TREASURE!
I agree with the thrust of your argument re: resource management. But in the spirit of fairness and accuracy, two corrections on the 5e lighting rules:
1. 5e Darkvision removes the attack/defense penalties from being blinded, but you still retain disadvantage on perception tests. A darkvision-having player is still penalized against ambushes, traps, hazards, missing useful information, and any other perception-based risk management. On paper, it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
2. The 5e Light spell is at-will, no-cost, doesn't use concentration, and doesn't take up hands. It use up one of your cantrips-known, but players do not feel torn between the choices so it does not apply any pressure. On paper, it's a no-downsides infinite light.
In practice, most resource management rules are simply not enforced. The rules necessary to do B/X-style resource management are in 5e, they just don't want to use them. I think "goodberry solves food management" tends to be more of a cop-out than a considered belief — the starting position is "resource management is boring and pointless" and everything after that is back-explaining.
I find that the best way to sales pitch resource management is to describe it as being like Survival Horror video games. Younger people *get* that resource management in survival-horror video games is fun, and that can sometimes break the back of this belief. But that's a battle you fight on a per-person basis, and I don't believe the 5e cultural belief will ever really change on it, it simply has too much momentum.
17:40 If this sounds like you: "I have a story, and wandering monsters just screw it up. Because it's taking time to do something that doesn't move MY story forward…I know what they should be doing." Just know you aren't a Game Master, you are a train conductor. Go write a book, because that ain't D&D. Your players determine the story. You put story ELEMENTS in a world, and the players may or may not interact with them. Shame on anyone that GMs this way. Seriously.
The purpose for wandering monsters in a dungeon crawl is part of a system to heighten tension. The other part is traps.
Traps encourage you to go slow and check every corner carefully.
Wandering monsters counter the slow behavior and encourage the players to go fast.
If you go too slow, you get too many wandering monsters. If you go too fast, you blunder into more traps.
This creates a sense of tension because you have two competing motivations in direct opposition. Hurry up and slow down.
The players end up walking a tight rope.
I don’t know if I read this or just came to a realization. I can do more reading to find a direct quote.
I do know the description for the ear monster goes into detail about this. Basically players are encouraged to listen at doors to try and get information as to what is on the other side. This monster exists to discourage that. If the DM finds players are listening at the door too often, they are encouraged to use this monster.
It kinda has a bit of an oppositional feel to it. But it’s making sure the players are challenged.
For wilderness encounters, the wandering monsters is exactly how you described. A randomization aid in case you haven’t detailed the area yet or can’t think of something you want.
Dragonlance wasn't the way I played. I thought homebrew was great.
I did play dragonlance. It seemed too scripted.
I like the idea of wandering monsters and it being random.
It would be good to make them that makes sense. Makes sense to encounter.
I like the idea of another npc party adventuring. Drow npc party for instance. Or pirates.
Goblin party. Rats.
I always have a few “random” encounters up my sleeve, some have taken the party in a completely different direction, one memorable encounter had a highish level mage critically injured by an arrow in the forehead , something we have never forgotten , a double roll of a 20 for hit and crit with concealment ( his head was the only thing showing) with a bit of ad-libbed home brew created a great memory.
I love all Daddy Rolled a 1 videos! Agreed, I like both random encounters and resource management. Random encounters demonstrate that the world is not a static place just waiting for an adventurer to come strolling by. I like resource management because accomplishing goals with limited resources is a more satisfying victory than winning with everything you could possibly want always at the ready. Wandering monsters should make sense in the context of your environment. Where did the goblins come from? From the pool of monsters in the dungeon. The wandering merchant was on his way to the market in the next town. Etc. Thanks for this.