Building tension in your game, part 3

Today we’re going to talk about wandering monsters.

Yeah, I know.  The blog title says that this is supposed to be part 3 of a series about building tension in your game, and last week I said we’d start looking at location-based exploration, and how the Tension Pool mechanic worked in that mode of play.  And we will. But in order to establish time frames for the Tension pool, we will first need to talk about movement through a location, about how long doing things in a location takes, and about wandering monsters.

The Random Encounter, a memorial

Ah, wandering monsters…I can remember playing 1st edition D&D with my high school friends, rolling for wandering monsters as their characters explored such hallowed locations as the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl or White Plume Mountain.  How they hated those fuckers when a positive result was rolled! Sometimes characters died during these random bits of DM-inflicted torture; that style of play was de rigueur back then.  Quit your whining, grab your backup character and get back in the game! 

Somewhere during my years GMing 3.5 D&D, I started to ignore random encounters.  My players did not object to this at all. The group consensus seemed to be that random encounters were stupid.  First, they added nothing to the plot of the campaign. They tended to just be speed bumps on the road to their actual goal.  A bunch of rando ettercaps shows up and tries to eat you. Why? Skip it and get to the important stuff. Second, random encounters could often drain resources from the characters, resources that would be needed when they faced off against the important (i.e. plot-relevant) encounters.  Why should they have to waste a use of their fireball spell when the drow boss still awaits them somewhere in the location?  They need that shit!

So, all through 3.5 and into Pathfinder, I shoved random encounters into the closet, to keep company with other quaint but outdated ideas like frequency of monsters, or mapping a dungeon.  Into the collective dustbin of outdated RPG elements! Now characters were free to bring the full force of their collected abilities, health and gear to bear on the real enemies: Those that they had to face because they stood between the PCs and the big bad villain.

Every chapter of a Paizo Adventure Path has a bestiary in its back matter, which begins with at least one random encounter table, and possibly more if the adventure visits multiple locations.   I never paid much attention to them because of the above rationale. It didn’t occur to me until recently that the fact that they were still being placed in adventures meant that the designers considered them important.  Space in a published adventure is limited, and if content is included, it better damn well be relevant. At the time, I supposed that some poor, unevolved schmucks still used random encounters, and that’s why they were still included in the adventure path.  I shrugged and continued to ignore this section.

But in examining how to add tension to my game, I realized to my dismay that I was the poor, unevolved schmuck.  I never stopped to consider what effect random encounters could have in my game, nor how those effects could ratchet up uncertainty and drama during play.

See, random encounters are like a timer.  Every X number of time units, there is a chance for the PCs to encounter one.  Ice Tomb of the Giant Queen (Giantslayer chapter 4) lists it as a 20% chance every four hours spent in the hinterlands surrounding Skirgaard.  The Half-Dead City (Mummy’s Mask chapter 1) is 35% per hour spent in the necropolis of Wati.  If the PCs spend enough time in a given area, they have a chance to run up against a random encounter.  Consequently, the more time spent in a given area, the higher the likelihood of a random encounter. Time becomes an important resource to the PCs. 

What happens if they do roll a random encounter?  Usually, something bad, like a wandering monster, or an environmental hazard.  Something that forces the players to make a decision. Engage, avoid, negotiate, run away or whatever, it gives the players a decision point that has meaning.  If they fight, they may waste needed resources. If they hide, they risk both discovery and extra time to do so. If they negotiate, combat may still result if they fail.  Even if they succeed, they still must live with the uncertainty that the creature may betray them. Risk and reward must be measured in all these cases, and as we have discussed previously, it is risk and reward that make character decisions meaningful.

Why don’t we grab an example from an adventure path to see if the system that Paizo presents sufficiently adds the lever of time to increase the tension of the game.  In the first chapter of the Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path (The Half-Dead City), the characters spend the entire adventure exploring locations within the Necropolis of Wati.  Turning to the Bestiary section of that publication, we find a random encounter table for the Necropolis of Wati, ranging in Challenge Ratings from CR 1 up to CR 3. The Bestiary section also informs us that characters have a 35% chance per hour of a random encounter. That is good information to have, but it doesn’t really tell us how long the characters will spend in the Necropolis.  That really can’t be defined because each group’s experience in the necropolis will vary, as will the time they spend therein.

We also don’t know how often the characters will need to rest.  This will vary from group to group, but in order to establish some type of standard, why don’t we say that a group of characters will need to rest after 5 encounters with CR equal to their APL.  Per the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, the APL (average party level) of the group is equal to the total class levels of all characters in the group, divided by the number of characters, rounded to the nearest whole number.  For example, a group of 4 5th level characters and 1 4th level character = 5 (5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 4 = 24, 24/5 = 4.8, round up to 5). A group of six characters does the same thing, but adds one to the final result. My Mummy’s Mask group will have six characters all starting at 1st level, so their APL at the start will be 2 (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 6, 6/6 = 1, plus 1 = 2).

In my group, what that will mean is that the group should be expected to rest after encountering 10 CR’s worth of challenges (including monsters, traps, hazards, haunts, etc.).  Any random encounters the group faces should also be included in this calculation. Having this information allows us to determine if the group will be able to explore the entire location in one trip, or if they will have to break it up into multiple incursions.

Continuing on with our sample adventure, The Half-Dead City, I’m going to be a bit vague here, as I don’t want to spoil any of the adventure for my players (who might even possibly read this blog).  The first adventure location to be explored is about 4400 feet from the entry point into the Necropolis. Traveling at a speed of 20 feet (isn’t there always someone who moves at 20’?) it would take the group about 110 rounds, or 11 minutes, to arrive at their destination.  Then there’s this thing (again, being obtuse) that will take about an hour. After that, they enter the first location, and we can start calculating how far they will get based on the CR’s of the encounters they will face.

I just did some quick calculations based on the CR’s of the encounters in The Half-Dead City, and determined that my group of 6 characters will face a total of CR 10 worth of encounters before they finish exploring the first location, so a rest period is likely.  This will probably mean that the group will travel back to the living part of the city, and sleep in the comfort of an inn. That’s another 11 minutes of travel back from the first encounter location. So far, the group has spent 1 hour and 22 minutes in the necropolis, but this doesn’t account for how much time they actually spent inside the location.  To figure that out, we’ll need to make some assumptions again.  And when you assume…

Characters will move through an encounter area at the rate of their slowest member, usually 20 feet.  Traveling between rooms in the dungeon will occur at a rate of 40 feet every six seconds, or 400 feet per minute.  If a combat occurs in one of the dungeon rooms, it will likely be resolved within 10 rounds (or 1 minute), so for the purposes of simplicity, let’s just equate 1 encounter to 1 minute.  A trap or hazard could reasonably take up about the same amount of time, so let’s just say any encounter takes about a minute to resolve. There are multiple routes through the first encounter area, but on average, I figure that there will be six encounters before the group needs to rest, taking up another 6 minutes of time.  The distance traveled through the dungeon is again variable, but on average it is about 350 feet of travel. Since they cover 400 feet per minute, we can round up and assume another minute is spent moving between rooms in the dungeon.

But what about if they’re spending time in each room searching for hidden loot, or secret doors or compartments?  Doesn’t that take time as well? Yes Virginia, it does take time. And in our next post, we’re going to dive deep into the absurdity of this activity, and try to arrive at some reasonable rules that govern time and searching.