2010 Aug 18 8:42 AM

Wandering monsters: frequency and uniqueness

In the comments to a Grognardia post about wandering monsters, Wayne Rossi described his wandering monster method, which I thought interesting enough to repeat here. Create a custom wandering monster table for each area. Check for wandering monsters every turn (presumably with a 1 in 6 chance of encountering a wandering monster). If a monster is encountered and killed, cross it off your wandering monster table. If that number on the table is rerolled later, treat it as no wandering monster encountered. However, if a party flees from or otherwise fails to kill a monster, that particular monster is still wandering around the dungeon. It will remember the PC’s if encountered later. The only downside I see with this method (and I’m not sure it’s a problem) is that the probability of encountering a wandering monster would drop over time, as the table is depleted.

2 comments:

Wild Bill November 21, 2010 at 6:02 PM

Then instead of always having that numbered rolled be “no wandering monster” encountered, let it be just the one time. So the monster is killed, leaving a “no wandering monster” spot on the table. The next time that number is rolled, no wandering monster is encountered. After that, put some other wandering monster in that spot. So you are constantly re-populating the table after one “no wandering monster” is rolled.

Paul November 24, 2010 at 9:56 AM

Perhaps. I’d have to see how this works in actual play. It might be enough that the table was repopulated between dungeon excursions.

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