Maps
Ubiquitous to original style roleplaying is the map. For the upper world, just as in the dungeon,
the players will have a mostly blank sheet of paper. The referees map will be fuller - full enough
to cover at least the evenings’ gaming. Since the players themselves draw their own
map as they go along, if they draw something wrong, or make a wrong guess about
some location, the referee should only correct them unless it's an obvious
mistake the characters wouldn't make.
The referee’s map will have a few fixed locations, more or
less fleshed out – key villages or ruins or whatever it may be, as in the Loch
Gloomen example, but at least some of the referee’s map should remain
undetermined in terms of the inhabitants and their lairs. This is because the encounter roll is a key
feature of wilderness adventure.
Checks
Ultimately, how often and when an encounter check should be
made is a decision the referee must make.
For overland travel Underworld and
Wilderness Adventures dictates but one check and that at the end of the
day. This method would seem to miss
opportunities as characters travel en route.
The First Fantasy Campaign
does not specify how often to check, but the underlying assumption seems
clearly to be that a new check will be made for every 10 mile Hex entered. Adventures
in Fantasy is more explicit
however, “The area is a 10 x 10 mile section” (Book of Adventure p 28) and “For
each area traveled there will be one die cast… to determine if anything is
encountered by the party during that day.
…each party traveling (horse or foot) one Area per day. (Optionally, a completely mounted force could
travel two Areas per day. All water
movement is three Areas per day (three chances for an encounter)…” (ibid p. 36) Travel rates in the FFC are also one 10 * 10 mile hex per day for open areas
but are half as much for woods and deserts, and cut by 2/3 for mountains and swamps.
Personally I prefer to check once per 5 mile hex entered,
regardless.
% Lair
When the players enter a Hex. I do an encounter roll, and
then if positive a % Lair roll to see if the party has found a lair or just
some of the lair inhabitants. If the characters have found a monster but not
its’ lair, the lair will still be somewhere in that hex from that moment
forward.
The Monster
So far the approach followed is about the same as in
OD&D, but the next step in OD&D would be to roll a d6 encounter chance die followed by a d8
on the "Encounter types" table (animals, flyers, lycans, etc.)
followed by a d12 on the monster lists under each type. Back in 1971, Arneson simply rolled a d20 on
a single table that had some specific monsters (Ogres, Trolls etc.) and some
blank spaces indicating no encounter; see Encounter Matrix I, (FFC 1977, p
34). My approach is a compromise. I use the category titles created for
Champions of ZED, (because they are a little more flexible than the “flyers” or
“giants” of D&D), but I’ve put them into Dave’s Blackmoor encounter matrix
to create Blackmoor style wilderness and encounter chances, while allowing for
a greater variety of monsters. So for
example, where in Dave’s table he had “ghouls” I put “undead” in mine; where he
had “goblin” I put “Humanoid” (called Giant in OD&D) and so forth. Non-Hmnd
(non-humanoid) encompasses the OD&D categories of Flyers, Swimmers, and
Animals, but also includes any kind of monster that does not fall into one of
the other categories, such as Medusae or Basilisks. Trolls were the only really tricky one to
deal with on Arnesons table. I
categorized trolls/ogres as humanoid, and True Trolls as Non-humanoid, mostly
because it seemed to work better that way. Here is the table:
D20
|
OPEN
|
RIVER
|
MOUNTAIN
|
DESERT
|
WOODS
|
SWAMP
|
1
|
Lycan
|
Lycan
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Dragon
|
Humanoid
|
Lycan
|
2
|
Undead
|
Humanoid
|
Dragon
|
Lycan
|
Humanoid
|
Humanoid
|
3
|
Humanoid
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Undead
|
Undead
|
Lycan
|
Non-Hmnd
|
4
|
Human
|
Undead
|
Dragon
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Humanoid
|
Humanoid
|
5
|
Lycan
|
Humanoid
|
Humanoid
|
Humanoid
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Undead
|
6
|
Human
|
Human
|
Lycan
|
Human
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Non-Hmnd
|
7
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Undead
|
Humanoid
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Undead
|
Humanoid
|
8
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Human
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Human
|
|
9
|
Humanoid
|
Human
|
Humanoid
|
Non-Hmnd
|
||
10
|
Undead
|
Human
|
Dragon*
|
|||
11
|
Humanoid
|
Lycan
|
||||
12
|
Human
|
Lycan
|
||||
13
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Humanoid
|
||||
14
|
Non-Hmnd
|
Non-Hmnd
|
||||
15
|
||||||
16
|
||||||
17
|
||||||
18
|
||||||
19
|
||||||
20
|
So from this table, go to the specific list and either pick
or roll for the exact monster. A d20
result landing on an empty space indicates no encounter. Note: I cheated with the dragon in the
swamp. Earth elemental was listed twice
here in Arnesons list, and it really seemed that a dragon should be there
somewhere.
2 comments:
Great writeup and some good advice as well!
Very nice, when I begin customizing encounter charts I'll refer back to this post. now I have much to think about.
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