Close Encounters of the 3d6th Kind

I’m here to wave a flag. The flag of randomization.

Sustainable randomization at the table is a glorious standard to fly in the fight against narrativism and the rule of arbitrariness. Randomization needs to be deft and flexible, and necessitates a sharp GMing mind to process the results into something that makes sense and can be slotted seamlessly into the game world.

There’s a quintessential example that has sadly fallen into disuse: the classic “3d6*10 feet encounter distance".

5th edition criminally makes absolutely no mention of it, choosing instead to pore over mind-numbing “challenge rates” accounting, oblivious to the fact that a fatefully placed encounter can punch a lot harder than what its CR might announce… or be calculated for.

This is one of the prime examples of fiat by default, and one that seriously weighs on character survivability at a table where most of the rolls are made in the open and the holds are definitely not barred: at what distance is the opposition spotted or spawned into existence? At a convenient distance for some? At an inconvenient distance for others? Who’s to decide?

While reading LotFP’s Encounters chapter I followed that dotted line of reasoning into realizing the gaping maw of implications created just by skipping over this simple dice roll…

Seriously, chuck those three suckers a couple of times and tell me you’re not faced with this string of intriguing possibilities, albeit all of them being, of course, simple variations of the duality “rolling high or low” since the only variable here is distance but wherein, with just this humble deference to fate, the encounter may unexpectedly:

- Clearly be placed out of range of the party’s sight, either in an entirely different room or, also interestingly, outside the party’s light-source radius.

- Be spotted right in the party’s direct vicinity, meaning it’s either an ambush or something else quite atypical (an Ogre spotted thirty feet from the party in the middle of a featureless room is clearly dead or asleep, not attempting an ambush, unless he’s just playing dead).

- Be spotted at such distance as puts the opposition on the other side (or inside) of a chasm or some other challenging terrain feature. The situation then being free to evolve into a firefight or whatever else.

- Be placed at a standardly accessible point but already within charging distance, prohibiting the use of ranged weapon options. You may skip to Initiative and pray.

- Appear at such a distance as to allow the party to make a clean getaway if they so wish it or to prepare more elaborate measures.

Note that I don’t wish for things to get too algorithmic and videogamey here, if the returned result does not serve, discard it and exercise discretion. But not rolling these and skipping straight to the arbitrariness feels like missing out. You can have an encounter with the same old patrolling Orcs play out in completely novel and unexpected ways.

All you need is some contextualizing topography, meaning encounters in the dungeon are easiest to make work, whereas the more abstract wilderness will necessitate some fleshing out or additional randomization procedures to gain significance, but otherwise note how, after the single toss, the encounter already breathes some life of its own as you’ve yet barely lifted a finger.

I’m considering the addition of some things besides, as an attempt at enriching the information returned by this single roll for pretty much the same overhead:

- Making one of the d6s a Jeff Rients’ activity die (high result meaning “activity/awareness”, low result meaning “idleness/unawareness”).  If the party’s been noisy, one can count the highest roll, if the party’s been cautious, the lowest roll can be it.

- Assigning another one of the d6’s for the encounter’s bearing relative to the party (1-4 for the cardinal directions, 5 for “below or ambush”, 6 for “above or lurking”. Another option worth exploring might be to employ some kind of secondary visual interpretation of the die roll: drawing an imaginary line from highest rolling die to the lowest or vice versa, to act as a scatter die.

- Making the final d6 a rough marker, in 5’ increments, of how scattered the elements of the other group are.

And, of course, I release this post into the wild without even having broached the expansive vistas of tampering with the distance multiplier or the dice tipology itself, for 3d6 * 10’ is but the gateway to this particular drug.

Here too I find myself pondering if urban and wilderness encounters might not be better abstracted with much bigger distance multipliers, also inviting the opposite idea of shrinking the distances for a more claustrophobic underworld experience as being a definite possibility, one that might even turn into a distinct motif for certain dungeons or monster behaviour: “these things always appear breathing down your neck in the ancient tunnels!”.