This post is part of my series on developing the sandbox. You can read other posts in the series here. The series will, when necessary, go into detail on the development of my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown, but will also discuss sandbox development more generally. You can read play reports from my B1 campaign here.
First, a preamble. The types of encounters I'm referring to in this post are those procedurally generated encounters which occur when the party is traveling overland. These are often colloquially referred to broadly as "random encounters" - which is not specific enough for my purposes - or as "wilderness encounters" - which suggests the party is navigating an untamed, dangerous outdoor environment, and which is too specific for my purposes. Here I will use the term "outdoor encounters" because they are neither city/town encounters - which I describe in my previous post on developing the town - nor are they necessarily wilderness encounters. These encounters can occur anywhere outdoors, and may take place in either wilderness or inhabited areas.
You can create outdoor encounter tables for your sandbox at various points throughout the development process. In many traditional "old school" campaigns, the dungeon which is the initial locus of play is situated very near to the "home base", so it is unlikely that the characters will have many outdoor encounters when traveling to and from that destination.
Indeed, it is even suggested in the AD&D DMG that the local municipality actually maintains a road leading to the dungeon. In that case, your initial outdoor encounter table probably needs little more than bands of fellow/rival adventurers, patrols from the nearby settlement, or groups of bandits and brigands which might prey upon such travelers.
However, Dungeon Module B1 relies upon the premise that the dungeon, Quasqueton, is remote, its location lost to history and local knowledge. Few if any know of its whereabouts, which serves as justification as to why it hasn't yet been plundered. It wouldn't make sense for it to be right next to town, and certainly not for a road to lead right to it. The player characters have the fortune of coming into possession of a map pinpointing the dungeon's location, but that doesn't mean the trek should be easy.
This meshes well with my own preference for remote dungeons and low level wilderness exploration. In older editions of D&D, the wilderness is a wildly variable and dangerous place, unsuited for prolonged expeditions by low level characters or those traveling without formidable armies. That doesn't mean low level characters can't adventure there. In fact, I think they should! They just have to be careful. They might encounter an orc warband, see a giant prowling on a far away mountainside, or spot a dragon flying overhead.
These encounters not only inject some variety and unpredictability into your game, but present the players with dangerous situations they will have to carefully navigate, reminding them that the world is not carefully curated to accommodate their characters - that they are small fish in a big pond and will need to act accordingly until they acquire some power and have more agency.
In the first session of my last AD&D campaign, the party had seven random encounters before finally arriving at the first dungeon. Many of them were potentially deadly, but a combination of mitigating factors like distance and reaction rolls plus the players' own savvy and my wise and benevolent restraint allowed them to reach their destination unscathed. Spotting a lone hill giant wandering in the distance filled them with fear. A dozen or so sessions later, they encountered another such wandering giant and laid a trap for it, slaying it with ease. The characters' growth in power over that span of time was self evident.
In my sandbox for B1, Quasqueton is located about a day and half's travel from town over settled farmland, across a river, through the forest, and atop a high, wooded black crag. It's not a super deadly trek, but it provides a decent chance that a 1st level party on their initial expedition may get wrecked by a band of hobgoblins or worse. That may not be to your or your players' taste, but I find the possibility tantalizing.
Since reaching the obvious first adventure site for the campaign would require some overland travel (both through inhabited lands and the wilderness), creating my outdoor encounter tables would need to be a priority. How would I go about it?
There are more ways to write outdoor encounter tables than I could possibly summarize here. Here are some of my favorite blog posts on the subject. If you want more, Google "D&D encounter tables blog" and go on a voyage of your own making. It's not my job to educate you.
The primary conflict when deciding how to structure my outdoor encounter tables was whether to draw my encounters from a preexisting, generic, all-encompassing table (such as those found in the AD&D DMG) or to populate my tables only with those creatures that would reasonably be found outdoors in my sandbox, based on the settlements, strongholds, and monster lairs which dotted the landscape.
For example, the cultivated farmlands and wild grasslands surrounding Timbershore would be populated mostly by farmers, patrols, merchants, and the like. Brigands would prowl the lands surrounding Fayette's Hold. The forest would be home to ogres, owlbears, giant eagles flying overhead, and the occasional chance encounter with the leprechaun, Jinglepuff.
While this makes plenty of sense, it's also rather dull. It's not super exciting if the only people found in brigand territory are brigands. It forces me to think about what sorts of mundane animals are found in which environments, and to think of which factions have overlapping territory or which might venture into one another's spheres of influence. Most importantly, it eliminates any possibility of being surprised myself.
Using a more generic outdoor encounter table is certainly good for producing results which surprise even the DM: "Huh, I didn't expect there to be a green dragon living in the woods. That's exciting. What does it portend for my campaign?" But it also produces incongruous results: "Uh, so why is there a sphinx hanging out a couple of miles away from the brigands' castle?"
The solution I eventually came up with was to use two encounter tables - a generic one which I used almost like a spark table (in this case, the outdoor encounter tables from the AD&D DMG) to then populate my own curated encounter tables for the region. Basically, I would roll first on the AD&D encounter tables, try to come up with some rationale for the result, add it to my curated encounter table if it made sense, and discard it if it did not.
This was easy enough with many of the most common encounters - merchants in the grasslands were probably traveling to town, pilgrim encounters were with devotees of the Evil cleric Blanchefleur, brigands were from Fayette's Hold, orcs were from Quasqueton, and the like.
But I also ended up with some unexpected results, like the sphinx just outside of Fayette's Hold (which I discarded, but now think I could have actually used - it would be cool if the brigands had made an alliance with a Chaotic Evil hieracosphinx), or some truly strange things hanging out around Quasqueton (one of which turned my preconceived notions about one of the region's important NPCs on its head, which I won't spoil here).
My sandbox wound up needing seven encounter tables: inhabited/patrolled forest (the hexes bordering Timbershore, Ebongrove, and Fayette's Hold), uninhabited forest, inhabited/patrolled forested hills (Zerelda's Camp), uninhabited forested hills (Quasqueton), inhabited/patrolled barren hills (Fayette's Hold), inhabited/patrolled grasslands (which was all of the grassland on the map), and rivers and lakes.
For each table, I generated four results. If the result was a creature which could be encountered only during the day or night, I generated another "mirror" result for the opposite time of day. To keep things interesting, I rerolled duplicates, so "brigands" was only ever one of the entries on the table. At most, the table for any given terrain type would have eight entries, so I would have to generate a maximum of 56 encounters. I ended up with 39.
Since this is a lot of encounters, I tried to keep them light, but I also wanted to have most of the work done for me ahead of time so that I wouldn't have to roll much at the table. If the encounter is with people or creatures who can speak, what is their leader's name? How do they react to the party, why, and what do they do or say? If their reaction is indifferent, how can I make that into an encounter which is still engaging? What treasure are they carrying? Where are they from? Where are they going? What are they doing? If the encounter includes spellcasters, what spells do they have prepared?
Some encounters are easier than others. Animals and unintelligent monsters are easy. Mounted patrols with mixed arms and multiple character-type NPCs among their number are more challenging. But it's worth it to put in the time to prepare them properly.
Throughout the process, I tried to keep in mind a few things: logic, but also fun, and variety. There's no proper orc lair in the region, so it didn't make much sense to have a band of 100 orcs wandering the forest. However, a group of a dozen or so orcs venturing into the region from just off the map would suit my purposes. Thee would be no bands of roaming giants, but a single wanderer passing through the region seemed within the realm of possibility.
While I do enjoy the idea of the wilderness being an unpredictable and dangerous place with huge groups of monsters prowling about, I also had a mind for balance - again, because it makes more sense to me. It seems appropriate that the party would be more likely to encounter a handful of brigands rather than a giant army of them.
Thus, I loosely "balanced" these encounters based on a d100 roll: a result of 01 to 65 would be an encounter for 1st to 3rd level characters (1d3), a result of 66 to 85 would be for 4th to 7th level characters (1d4+3), 86 to 95 would be for 7th to 12th level characters (1d6+6), and 96 to 100 would be for characters 9th to 20th level (1d12+8). Most encounters will be with small groups, but there is the chance of running into a large force which must be evaded or negotiated with.
This roll was made only after I had determined the general type of creature encountered, so if I rolled up a dragon and could make sense of it (easy to do, since dragons fly all over the place, whether they live there or not), then there would be a dragon, balance be damned. The roll only determined whether it was a singular dragon or a gang of teenagers.
As we play out this campaign, I replace those encounters I've already rolled as makes sense. For example, the hobgoblins encountered in the forest during our first session were merely frightened away, not defeated, so they are still out there. The giant tick which was slain is gone from the encounter table until I roll up another giant tick to replace it. There are certainly more giant ticks in the woods, so I could simply reuse this encounter, but again, two of my priorities when creating these tables are fun and variety, and encountering a giant tick 25% of the time in the forest is neither.
Hopefully, as the campaign continues, the party will have more outdoor encounters, and I'll be able to showcase some of the work I've put into them in my forthcoming play reports.
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