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I tried rolling on random tables once but the players were more comfortable when I didn't leave the room every time and rolled on our normal table instead.
@@WebDM Not to shit on you guys at all 'cause I think you do great work all around... I personally dislike it more. It feels redundant. If the big show came out first, I'd just watch it and not watch the second one because I've seen it already, but now I'm stuck watching sections twice. I think this is fine either way, just mentioning it to add to the feedback pile!
@@francoisbaldo51 Sorry man but i have to desagree, to many of us is kind of difficult to get a full hour to see/hear the episode in the weak, with these arrenge we can get a preview of the topic and hear the full thing in the weekend which was when we heared it anyway.
You know what else would make for a neat table? "What The Thief Finds In The Pockets" table. Rogue characters love to pick pockets. Make a table for items they might find there. Includes randomly determined coins and gems, of course, but also random personal items. Carving knives. Bags of tobacco. Lucky charms (like actual objects, not the cereal). A dead mouse. A live mouse. A live mouse _giving birth._ A puzzle box. A ball of (collected) lint. Letters or notes written on tree bark (a common Real Life medieval practice). Half whittled wooden owlbear figurine. Etc.
Look up "kender pocket table" or "kender pockets table." I'm certain there are plenty of pickpocket tables, but I find kender tables more interesting (if generally less lucrative).
What about a live mouse giving birth to a dead mouse? Or a dead mouse giving birth to a live mouse? Or a mouse eating a mouse? Or two mice making a third mouse? If you roll mouse on the random table, you then have multiple more random tables to roll on that determine how many mice and what they're doing in there. Lol
"Goblin fight club" is not only a great band name, but also a premise I have made great use of over the years! Psyched that Pruitt ran into that fertile space.
wow, what a great video. so much practical advice here. i love theory talk as much as the next guy but some real, concrete advice for running and prepping the game was exactly what I needed right now. I'm running a ravnica game soon and that book is full of tables, I can't wait to dig in and hack them up according to your guidelines. in particular I loved the dice probability chat. the idea of getting double usage out of a 2d6/1d12 table to adjust according to odds is awesome... maybe after the denizens of a dungeon are on alert you switch dice. you can do the same thing with a 2d4/1d8 or 2d10/1d20 table if that suits your fancy, too. seriously guys this is one of my favorite videos you've ever made. great job.
One of my favourite tips is: Roll everything (or as much as you can) before the game starts. This saves time during the game, and it gives you a blueprint/skeleton of how the game is going to turn out. The only con is when DM's want the players to see them roll, to show that it there's a chaotic element to the game. Another tip that I adhere to a lot is to curate heavily the tables you work with. Only include items in the tables that you think will have great stories. They can be as big as you want, sure, but make sure each item is your FAVOURITE. Sometimes I split my encounter tables in half or in thirds (if its a d12) and give branching options for each pair or trio of outcomes. Let's take a d12, for instance. I usually use a d10 when I have 5 items on my tables (let's say, an encounter table), but want each encounter to go one of two ways. For instance, on roll 1-2 the party encounters a pair of wandering storm giant children. On an odd number roll (so, 1) it's a combat encounter. On an even number roll (so, 2), they ask for help to get them back to their cloud... or try to find a way to make their "momma" find them. This saves the time of rolling a monster reaction table.
I heard about the 'click' thing from Dael Kingsmill over on MonarchsFactory before hearing it here, but I think she said it was an idea that she stole from someone else.
Regarding the PC question at the end: In a gaming group I used to play with, we called that "the Rule of Pants." In other words, "I didn't actually *say* that my character put pants on this morning, but we're all assuming that he did, because that's just what you do." Certain things become standard procedure for a character, whether it's using a certain class feature for bonus damage or taking certain precautions when approaching a door or whatever, it becomes "Unless I say otherwise, assume I'm doing X."
This isnt exactly for DM tables regarding prep work, but random tables have been coming back into my interest just to get away from the carefully balanced math of 5E. Things like DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics) give me that feeling of *anything* being able to happen at the cast of a spell
the longform/ short form format is amazing. truly intelligent design on this plane of the youtube cosmos. I dig it tons. love love love listening to the boys ramble
My go to random encounter table is a d6. 1-2 being nothing out of the ordinary, 3 as an environmental tell, either in nature or in the feel of a city, 4 is a social encounter, 5 is a potentially dangerous encounter, and 6 is a dangerous encounter. I made the template for a goblin campaign venturing off into the wilderness to find a new home and it has served as a good template. It can lead to a lot of fights and it forces a lot of improvisation on my part, but I’ll usually have a list of potential encounters to draw from. The bit about names and random NPCs, as well as the d66 was pretty inspiring and I may develop that more in our games!
I actually like the idea of using random tables as a way to establish the mudane, so that the actual plot feels more fantastical. In this context, these random tables appear in travel between two settlements, where some of the results might be bad weather, bandits, road-side signs graves, other people on the road and such, so when they go out on an adventure and something outside the norm happens, they know it might be a clue. In the same vein, I once used them in Swamp mega-dungeon that was the domain of a black dragon that was a boss, so the would face a lot of swamp-based creatures or dragon worshippers, but when the dragon's liutenets were involved, stuff would get weirder.
Your intros are that kind of funny that make me go "i hate this", which is my favorite kind of funny lol I really like the d4+d12 distribution. Adding any small die to a large die does neat things to the curve, making the center of the curve more random but removing the likelihood of doing really well or really poorly. I like the idea of using a d12 plus a coin flip and using 1 and 13 as special rolls to do some triskaidekaphobia inspired occult magic stuff, its such a weird combo it feels occult lol
I love your content like this that is practical to all roleplay systems. I'm making a little hexcrawl for my players in Mausritter, a game that makes extensive use of encounter tables, and this was quite helpful. To share an insight from that game that 5e people might find useful, rather than ask your playesr to keep tracks of their torch time/etc, just have one of the results on your encounter table be "your torch sputters out the last of it's fuel." This works for just about anything with a limited indeterminate lifespan. Food going moldy on a daily encounter roll for long distance travel, that kind of thing.
I made a d100 table for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign. There are only 7 monsters listed on the entire table. Vampire fledge. Vampire minion. Vampire master. Demon. Necromancer. Cultist. Big Bad. A fledge basically has the zombie stat block. Minions are vampire spawn. Masters are full vampires. And the Big Bads use the stat blocks for Strahd Von Zarovich or some CR 10 to 15 demon. Rolling an encounter with a "demon" would cause another roll on a table with a few dozen monstrous humanoids, aberrations, or monstrosities to figure out which "demon." The table itself is broken down into five d20/d12+d8 tables that can be mapped to different parts of town the party will patrol. Graveyards. Night Club. Sewers/Caves. Woods. Back Alleys/Warehouses/Streets. Most of the 20th entries are "The Big Bad shows up." But most of the rest of the entries include something to distinguish them, like townies in trouble, demon poker games, demons fighting vampires, or the local mean girls showing up after the fight to say something snippy. The night club section is fun because each entry from 1 to 18 is 1d6 vampires in one specific room or part of the nightclub, but 19 is "Vampires have overrun the nightclub. Roll 1d4-1 on entries 1 through 18 to see how many vampires are in the building and where they are." 20 is of course "The Big Bad is getting a drink."
I think there was one un-mentioend value to having multi-dice / curved-ranges like the 2 or 3d6 => adjustments have a major impact. I think keeping this in mind with regards to the random NPC mood table is important. 2d6 where 6-8 does produce really same-y results of nuetrality if you never adjust the dice. However what situation really has no influeners? The way the party looks, acts, the time of day or season, etc can all have an impact. So, adding or subtracting a 1 or 2 from those rolls can have a bigger impact than the same adjustment to a 1d12 - and that is presuming an out of bounds role ( 13 on a d12 / 2d6 ) is a re-roll. If 12 is actually 12+, then the +1 on a d12 actually favors the least likely outcome disproportionately. That extreme outcome favoring is mitigated more with a curve. As an addendum to the above bit regarding random NPC moods, if the goal is to really have "random" ( in the sense that the GM isn't applying a personally developed modifier to the role ) but not "same-y", a 2d6 role can always be suplimented with a random modifier: 1 => -3, 2 => -2, 3=> -1, 4=> +1, 5 => +2, and 6 => +3.
Some tables I have taken a small liking to even though they aren't all too practical is the dgross table and it's just like a d66 table but using d12s instead. It is useful when I want more than 100 results but don't want to go all-in like a d1000 table. The other one I have taken a liking two is the deck table, it's really useful for encounter stuff in my experience because you can have the 2-ace table giving you 14 initial encounters but then you can take the suits into account. The way I do it is that I have clubs mean it's an encounter that is bad to begin with, diamonds and hearts are neutral, and spades means the encounter starts off bad.
44:30 I like to run a setting heavily influenced by the Classical Mediterranean. Keep a copy of Plutarch open next to me. Guy name drops about 10 guys and places per page in some parts of the Lives.
Here's an impromptu chart I came up to determine the kind of a judge my PC was to face in a semi-civil dispute. 1. A nakedly partisan judge. Roll again if necessary to see which side he is partisan for. 2. A baby splitter. Tries to find an even handed solution even if one side in the wrong. 3. An inquisitor. Asks questions themselves and tries to get to the bottom of things and find for one side. 4. An adversarial judge. Lets the two sides fight it out then does their hardest to find a truly equitable solution. I could have expanded it beyond d4. The key is high=principled judge, low=shallow/unprincipled judge, odd=willing to take a side, even=tries not to take a side.
I helped my DM set up the D66 and D66 nested tables on Foundry when he wanted to switch over to Traveller. Lots of data entry. A little bit of work figuring it out, but Foundry is a very powerful system for table building. This would work really well for D&D tables, as well. Even when it's an entry of D6 goblins, you can link it to a nested table that's just D6 goblins.
I'm a D10 man all the way. Also I like the idea that random tables shouldn't just be utterly random crap happening. It should be like rll 1D10: 1) 6 ork raiders from the ork camp , 2) 4 Men at Arms patrolling for orks, 3) 2 bugbears from the ork camp patroling for humans, 4) a lawful nuetral elf ranger patrolling the area to protect the elves from the orks (and humans), 5) a small pack of 5 wargs who've broken away from the ork camp, 6) a 0 level NPC who works for the blacksmith in town carrying an ingot to deliver to his master, is lost and scared of orks, 7) stirges, just out being stirges looking for blood, the orks hate teh stirges, 8) an owl bear with scars on it from ork attacks that has been driven from the woods by the orks and is very hungry because of that, 9) 1 scared ork fleeing from his camp, 10) a chaotic nuetral 5th level fighter who wants to hunt the orks, and wants to stop the party from finding the ork.
I tend to use tables as a menu - Instead of rolling I usually just glance and decide which I like for the situation or am in the mood for or just as an inspiration point to come up with something.
I LOVE RANDOM TABLES! YES MORE! I just got some of the PDF's of content you recommended last video! Currently printing them out now after purchasing on Drivethru RPG! They are amazing and bring me intense joy! Early Christmas presents from loved ones... I Could wait to use them until Christmas, but it improves Dming for myself and my Players NOW so ....
In Torchbearer there’s a random table whenever you camp or get to town. It’s weighted towards the middle and there are really bad things for low rolls and good things for high. You can get plusses for a few things, having an elf in the party in the wilderness, setting watch, etc. The great thing is that it allows bad things to happen to the party without it just being the GM arbitrarily saying “that orb of power... a pickpocket got it.” I rolled, got that result, yep, it just so happens that you lose something like that. I’ve never managed to do something like that in any other game. That orb of power? It’s back in the game world situation so it’s not just gone. Going to become very prominent next session.
For a D100 you can always say 00 on the tens is a non combat reward like an abandoned wagon or the ranger found food. A 90 can be a similar reward, lightly defended by the enemies determined by the one's D10, etc. So you're making ten D10 charts.
I find the Neutral Reaction on the 2d6 reaction to be very important. The first roll is a "first impression", and you don't apply any modifiers from Charisma or roleplay. The neutral result gives the PCs a chance to mess up, or make a good impression on the subsequent round.
-You hear several tiny clicks in rapid succession. Let them try to figure out what to do about the trap that was just triggered. ... eventually they find out it was the shell of a dead bug one of them stepped on and crushed. Even mundane nothingburgers can create a fun, tense moment. :)
A point about the end. My players were going into a dungeon environment, so I asked, "Are you moving at half speed to check for traps?" and they legit said no. Ran into a trap the first room lol
For instance say for a loot table money or gems 1 mundane items 2 magic items 3 story items 4 and tools 5 as an start now you only need to 5 20 charts and mix them
Alternatively good if you want to weight a smaller table so some things are possible, but much rarer in a way that a bell curve isn't fitting quite right.
If running four players, you can make a 3D6 table that's only activated when one of them rolls a 1 on their D6 when you ask them all to roll to check for an encounter. They're secretly rolling on the table for you.
I’ve started using reaction rolls in my game - fun stuff. One question I would ask though, do you let your players know what they/you are doing and what the roll means?
When you were describing the d66 table, I thought about the "risk assessment" matrix we used to use before starting an evolution. Severity was one axis, probability was the other. Seems like it might fit. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_matrix
My favourite resource for spicing up my encounters is the colossal work on this blog - blog.d4caltrops.com/p/ose-encounter-activity-tables.html - individual d100 'What are these monsters doing?' tables for loads of standard D&D monsters / NPCs. Our current campaign which features a lot of usually dull, inactive undead has been greatly enhanced by these tables which really get the creative juices flowing for those random or room-based encounters
I think the moral of this video is: if you haven't at least half-prepped the encounter, don't include it in your random table. Or at least just do a prepped "random" encounter instead of your rolled one. Your players will enjoy it more.
I don't like d100 tables for encounters in play because they usually don't have details on how the encounter supposed to play out so the dm has to improve which can be time consuming. If you roll the encounters before hand, then it's fine. I like random tables to make backstorys for my characters and NPCs. This prevents me from making the same general character background.
@@WebDM I will say I don't mind and even like having you guys return to topics, but it was confusing when RUclips notified me of the second video. RUclips often sends notifications for videos a few days later, so I thought it was the same one.
So, Pruitt got this idea of a random table for this show from a random table he made which itself was generated from a random table he made.....Aw, just forget it. Cheers
I've got a buddy who made a D100 table for a character who is insane. The table had an option for TPK and he rolled it while in a dungeon. I wish I could have seen that game.
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At around 41 minutes, Pruitt's mannerisms did not quite seem to fit his words. Kinda like a kung fu movie with that 1-2 second delay.
I tried rolling on random tables once but the players were more comfortable when I didn't leave the room every time and rolled on our normal table instead.
That took me a minute...
Lol awesome
I get it
I really like this new short -> long format. Sort of like a “DVD with bonus behind the scenes content.” In my opinion at least
Thank you for the feedback!
@@WebDM Not to shit on you guys at all 'cause I think you do great work all around...
I personally dislike it more. It feels redundant. If the big show came out first, I'd just watch it and not watch the second one because I've seen it already, but now I'm stuck watching sections twice.
I think this is fine either way, just mentioning it to add to the feedback pile!
Thank you for that feedback as well! This content actually does come out first in podcast form, check out the links in the description!
@@francoisbaldo51 Sorry man but i have to desagree, to many of us is kind of difficult to get a full hour to see/hear the episode in the weak, with these arrenge we can get a preview of the topic and hear the full thing in the weekend which was when we heared it anyway.
@@WebDM I would gladly trade you 8 minutes today for 1 hour 5 minutes tomorrow.
You know what else would make for a neat table? "What The Thief Finds In The Pockets" table.
Rogue characters love to pick pockets. Make a table for items they might find there. Includes randomly determined coins and gems, of course, but also random personal items. Carving knives. Bags of tobacco. Lucky charms (like actual objects, not the cereal). A dead mouse. A live mouse. A live mouse _giving birth._ A puzzle box. A ball of (collected) lint. Letters or notes written on tree bark (a common Real Life medieval practice). Half whittled wooden owlbear figurine. Etc.
The pocket is an interdemionsial space full of whirling blades
@bluechou There is one over at donjon! I saw it in the index while searching for a stone age encounter table.
Or you could just save time and its always mousetraps or scorpions.
Look up "kender pocket table" or "kender pockets table." I'm certain there are plenty of pickpocket tables, but I find kender tables more interesting (if generally less lucrative).
What about a live mouse giving birth to a dead mouse? Or a dead mouse giving birth to a live mouse? Or a mouse eating a mouse? Or two mice making a third mouse? If you roll mouse on the random table, you then have multiple more random tables to roll on that determine how many mice and what they're doing in there. Lol
"Goblin fight club" is not only a great band name, but also a premise I have made great use of over the years! Psyched that Pruitt ran into that fertile space.
I like the new long form release, but I will say that I get that Deja Vu feeling after having previously watched the short one.
seconded👏🏽
wow, what a great video. so much practical advice here. i love theory talk as much as the next guy but some real, concrete advice for running and prepping the game was exactly what I needed right now. I'm running a ravnica game soon and that book is full of tables, I can't wait to dig in and hack them up according to your guidelines.
in particular I loved the dice probability chat. the idea of getting double usage out of a 2d6/1d12 table to adjust according to odds is awesome... maybe after the denizens of a dungeon are on alert you switch dice. you can do the same thing with a 2d4/1d8 or 2d10/1d20 table if that suits your fancy, too.
seriously guys this is one of my favorite videos you've ever made. great job.
One of my favourite tips is: Roll everything (or as much as you can) before the game starts. This saves time during the game, and it gives you a blueprint/skeleton of how the game is going to turn out. The only con is when DM's want the players to see them roll, to show that it there's a chaotic element to the game. Another tip that I adhere to a lot is to curate heavily the tables you work with. Only include items in the tables that you think will have great stories. They can be as big as you want, sure, but make sure each item is your FAVOURITE.
Sometimes I split my encounter tables in half or in thirds (if its a d12) and give branching options for each pair or trio of outcomes. Let's take a d12, for instance. I usually use a d10 when I have 5 items on my tables (let's say, an encounter table), but want each encounter to go one of two ways. For instance, on roll 1-2 the party encounters a pair of wandering storm giant children. On an odd number roll (so, 1) it's a combat encounter. On an even number roll (so, 2), they ask for help to get them back to their cloud... or try to find a way to make their "momma" find them. This saves the time of rolling a monster reaction table.
Last time I was this early, Jim and Pruitt were actually in the same room.
awww :(
Ah, but they actually ARE in the same room. They're good, you see. Just keep it under your hat. Know what I mean? He said knowingly. Wink and a nudge.
Wow now I know what to listen to while I paint! This is honestly exactly what I've been waiting for
Happy painting!!
I’m listening to it while gardening
The 'Click' thing sounds like The Angry GM. He's got quite the catalog of interesting insights on dnd, although good heavens he can be a bit wordy.
I heard about the 'click' thing from Dael Kingsmill over on MonarchsFactory before hearing it here, but I think she said it was an idea that she stole from someone else.
Regarding the PC question at the end: In a gaming group I used to play with, we called that "the Rule of Pants." In other words, "I didn't actually *say* that my character put pants on this morning, but we're all assuming that he did, because that's just what you do." Certain things become standard procedure for a character, whether it's using a certain class feature for bonus damage or taking certain precautions when approaching a door or whatever, it becomes "Unless I say otherwise, assume I'm doing X."
This isnt exactly for DM tables regarding prep work, but random tables have been coming back into my interest just to get away from the carefully balanced math of 5E. Things like DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics) give me that feeling of *anything* being able to happen at the cast of a spell
That was a good intro :D
Gonna watch the video tomorrow though; it's only half an hour until bedtime because of D&D :)
SO SO happy for the longer format . the deeper probing of these wonderful minds machination XD
the longform/ short form format is amazing. truly intelligent design on this plane of the youtube cosmos. I dig it tons. love love love listening to the boys ramble
I will never not be impressed by Pruitt's intros
The intros are the best part tbh
My go to random encounter table is a d6.
1-2 being nothing out of the ordinary, 3 as an environmental tell, either in nature or in the feel of a city, 4 is a social encounter, 5 is a potentially dangerous encounter, and 6 is a dangerous encounter. I made the template for a goblin campaign venturing off into the wilderness to find a new home and it has served as a good template.
It can lead to a lot of fights and it forces a lot of improvisation on my part, but I’ll usually have a list of potential encounters to draw from.
The bit about names and random NPCs, as well as the d66 was pretty inspiring and I may develop that more in our games!
I actually like the idea of using random tables as a way to establish the mudane, so that the actual plot feels more fantastical. In this context, these random tables appear in travel between two settlements, where some of the results might be bad weather, bandits, road-side signs graves, other people on the road and such, so when they go out on an adventure and something outside the norm happens, they know it might be a clue.
In the same vein, I once used them in Swamp mega-dungeon that was the domain of a black dragon that was a boss, so the would face a lot of swamp-based creatures or dragon worshippers, but when the dragon's liutenets were involved, stuff would get weirder.
D12+d8 is my favorite. Nice curve and a d12!
Your intros are that kind of funny that make me go "i hate this", which is my favorite kind of funny lol
I really like the d4+d12 distribution. Adding any small die to a large die does neat things to the curve, making the center of the curve more random but removing the likelihood of doing really well or really poorly. I like the idea of using a d12 plus a coin flip and using 1 and 13 as special rolls to do some triskaidekaphobia inspired occult magic stuff, its such a weird combo it feels occult lol
I love your content like this that is practical to all roleplay systems.
I'm making a little hexcrawl for my players in Mausritter, a game that makes extensive use of encounter tables, and this was quite helpful.
To share an insight from that game that 5e people might find useful, rather than ask your playesr to keep tracks of their torch time/etc, just have one of the results on your encounter table be "your torch sputters out the last of it's fuel." This works for just about anything with a limited indeterminate lifespan. Food going moldy on a daily encounter roll for long distance travel, that kind of thing.
Mausritter is fun! Played it for the first time this week
I made a d100 table for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign. There are only 7 monsters listed on the entire table.
Vampire fledge.
Vampire minion.
Vampire master.
Demon.
Necromancer.
Cultist.
Big Bad.
A fledge basically has the zombie stat block. Minions are vampire spawn. Masters are full vampires. And the Big Bads use the stat blocks for Strahd Von Zarovich or some CR 10 to 15 demon. Rolling an encounter with a "demon" would cause another roll on a table with a few dozen monstrous humanoids, aberrations, or monstrosities to figure out which "demon."
The table itself is broken down into five d20/d12+d8 tables that can be mapped to different parts of town the party will patrol.
Graveyards.
Night Club.
Sewers/Caves.
Woods.
Back Alleys/Warehouses/Streets.
Most of the 20th entries are "The Big Bad shows up." But most of the rest of the entries include something to distinguish them, like townies in trouble, demon poker games, demons fighting vampires, or the local mean girls showing up after the fight to say something snippy.
The night club section is fun because each entry from 1 to 18 is 1d6 vampires in one specific room or part of the nightclub, but 19 is "Vampires have overrun the nightclub. Roll 1d4-1 on entries 1 through 18 to see how many vampires are in the building and where they are." 20 is of course "The Big Bad is getting a drink."
Jim asking Pruitt questions, I like this
SO much helpful info in this video - one of your all-time best! Thanks guys :-)
When I roll random tables, I like to roll a few times, and mix up those rolls into an encounter.
I think there was one un-mentioend value to having multi-dice / curved-ranges like the 2 or 3d6 => adjustments have a major impact. I think keeping this in mind with regards to the random NPC mood table is important. 2d6 where 6-8 does produce really same-y results of nuetrality if you never adjust the dice. However what situation really has no influeners? The way the party looks, acts, the time of day or season, etc can all have an impact. So, adding or subtracting a 1 or 2 from those rolls can have a bigger impact than the same adjustment to a 1d12 - and that is presuming an out of bounds role ( 13 on a d12 / 2d6 ) is a re-roll. If 12 is actually 12+, then the +1 on a d12 actually favors the least likely outcome disproportionately. That extreme outcome favoring is mitigated more with a curve.
As an addendum to the above bit regarding random NPC moods, if the goal is to really have "random" ( in the sense that the GM isn't applying a personally developed modifier to the role ) but not "same-y", a 2d6 role can always be suplimented with a random modifier: 1 => -3, 2 => -2, 3=> -1, 4=> +1, 5 => +2, and 6 => +3.
It took me longer than I would like to admit to understand the random coffee table. Well done sir.
Some tables I have taken a small liking to even though they aren't all too practical is the dgross table and it's just like a d66 table but using d12s instead. It is useful when I want more than 100 results but don't want to go all-in like a d1000 table. The other one I have taken a liking two is the deck table, it's really useful for encounter stuff in my experience because you can have the 2-ace table giving you 14 initial encounters but then you can take the suits into account. The way I do it is that I have clubs mean it's an encounter that is bad to begin with, diamonds and hearts are neutral, and spades means the encounter starts off bad.
44:30 I like to run a setting heavily influenced by the Classical Mediterranean. Keep a copy of Plutarch open next to me. Guy name drops about 10 guys and places per page in some parts of the Lives.
Here's an impromptu chart I came up to determine the kind of a judge my PC was to face in a semi-civil dispute.
1. A nakedly partisan judge. Roll again if necessary to see which side he is partisan for.
2. A baby splitter. Tries to find an even handed solution even if one side in the wrong.
3. An inquisitor. Asks questions themselves and tries to get to the bottom of things and find for one side.
4. An adversarial judge. Lets the two sides fight it out then does their hardest to find a truly equitable solution.
I could have expanded it beyond d4. The key is high=principled judge, low=shallow/unprincipled judge, odd=willing to take a side, even=tries not to take a side.
I helped my DM set up the D66 and D66 nested tables on Foundry when he wanted to switch over to Traveller. Lots of data entry. A little bit of work figuring it out, but Foundry is a very powerful system for table building.
This would work really well for D&D tables, as well. Even when it's an entry of D6 goblins, you can link it to a nested table that's just D6 goblins.
That intro deserves a slow clap that was brilliant
Huzzah for long form videos! Hip hip, huzzah! :D
I'm a D10 man all the way. Also I like the idea that random tables shouldn't just be utterly random crap happening. It should be like rll 1D10: 1) 6 ork raiders from the ork camp , 2) 4 Men at Arms patrolling for orks, 3) 2 bugbears from the ork camp patroling for humans, 4) a lawful nuetral elf ranger patrolling the area to protect the elves from the orks (and humans), 5) a small pack of 5 wargs who've broken away from the ork camp, 6) a 0 level NPC who works for the blacksmith in town carrying an ingot to deliver to his master, is lost and scared of orks, 7) stirges, just out being stirges looking for blood, the orks hate teh stirges, 8) an owl bear with scars on it from ork attacks that has been driven from the woods by the orks and is very hungry because of that, 9) 1 scared ork fleeing from his camp, 10) a chaotic nuetral 5th level fighter who wants to hunt the orks, and wants to stop the party from finding the ork.
I tend to use tables as a menu - Instead of rolling I usually just glance and decide which I like for the situation or am in the mood for or just as an inspiration point to come up with something.
I LOVE RANDOM TABLES! YES MORE! I just got some of the PDF's of content you recommended last video! Currently printing them out now after purchasing on Drivethru RPG! They are amazing and bring me intense joy! Early Christmas presents from loved ones... I Could wait to use them until Christmas, but it improves Dming for myself and my Players NOW so ....
Started watching starward bound and have started getting ready for a spelljammer game very excited another great video!
Awesome! Enjoy it!
Thanks for all the good DM insights
That intro was great. Got a good laugh out of that. :)
Glad you enjoyed it
I love a well prepared table from time to time when I prep. You can run the exact same map and changing the encounter make is very different.
In Torchbearer there’s a random table whenever you camp or get to town. It’s weighted towards the middle and there are really bad things for low rolls and good things for high. You can get plusses for a few things, having an elf in the party in the wilderness, setting watch, etc.
The great thing is that it allows bad things to happen to the party without it just being the GM arbitrarily saying “that orb of power... a pickpocket got it.” I rolled, got that result, yep, it just so happens that you lose something like that. I’ve never managed to do something like that in any other game.
That orb of power? It’s back in the game world situation so it’s not just gone. Going to become very prominent next session.
The spice (of life) must flow!
I must steal the goblin fight club idea...
I wish that you guys would link to your other videos when you reference them. I'm sure I'm not the only one coming to your wonderful program in 2021.
That is a nice sweater on Jim
For a D100 you can always say 00 on the tens is a non combat reward like an abandoned wagon or the ranger found food. A 90 can be a similar reward, lightly defended by the enemies determined by the one's D10, etc. So you're making ten D10 charts.
45:15 We met a hobgoblin named Jak. but since the setting was french inspired he is now known to us as Jacques.
31:42 - like maze rats! amazing random tables there. :)
I find the Neutral Reaction on the 2d6 reaction to be very important. The first roll is a "first impression", and you don't apply any modifiers from Charisma or roleplay. The neutral result gives the PCs a chance to mess up, or make a good impression on the subsequent round.
This opener is so good lol
Thanks!
-You hear several tiny clicks in rapid succession.
Let them try to figure out what to do about the trap that was just triggered.
... eventually they find out it was the shell of a dead bug one of them stepped on and crushed.
Even mundane nothingburgers can create a fun, tense moment. :)
A point about the end. My players were going into a dungeon environment, so I asked, "Are you moving at half speed to check for traps?" and they legit said no. Ran into a trap the first room lol
I've never thought of situationally rolling different dice on the same table.
Also a trick to makes d100 table easier to either choose a few categories the more of these the easier it gets.
For instance say for a loot table money or gems 1 mundane items 2 magic items 3 story items 4 and tools 5 as an start now you only need to 5 20 charts and mix them
Alternatively good if you want to weight a smaller table so some things are possible, but much rarer in a way that a bell curve isn't fitting quite right.
If running four players, you can make a 3D6 table that's only activated when one of them rolls a 1 on their D6 when you ask them all to roll to check for an encounter. They're secretly rolling on the table for you.
For some places you can visit for tables that have already been created, check out the subreddits r/d100 and r/BehindTheTables.
anydice was a great suggestion, thanks!
I’ve started using reaction rolls in my game - fun stuff. One question I would ask though, do you let your players know what they/you are doing and what the roll means?
Can't forget about the magnificent d66 table
I'm glad that my like brought the video to 666, because Math is the devil
A crazy way I've done wandering monsters is to write them all on index cards and shuffle them up.
Long form is the best form! 👍🏼
When you were describing the d66 table, I thought about the "risk assessment" matrix we used to use before starting an evolution. Severity was one axis, probability was the other. Seems like it might fit.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_matrix
well done intro. here's a like
I believe the click thing is a Monarchsfactory thing!
I use them all(1d2, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10,d12, d20, d100).. even let the players throw. It works for 17 years
My favourite resource for spicing up my encounters is the colossal work on this blog - blog.d4caltrops.com/p/ose-encounter-activity-tables.html - individual d100 'What are these monsters doing?' tables for loads of standard D&D monsters / NPCs. Our current campaign which features a lot of usually dull, inactive undead has been greatly enhanced by these tables which really get the creative juices flowing for those random or room-based encounters
This video is slaad approved.
Loved the intro
Liked before the show even started due to the great Intro lol
I have a great d100 table for "schlubby city jobs" because for some reason I could never come up with them on the fly and everyone was a chimney sweep
goblin fight club...
I'm stealing that one.
Best intro to date.
I think the moral of this video is: if you haven't at least half-prepped the encounter, don't include it in your random table. Or at least just do a prepped "random" encounter instead of your rolled one. Your players will enjoy it more.
I love the d12 for my tables..... must under utilized die of all time.
So many new videos!!!! 🎈 🎈 🎈 🎁
Play TOR and you’ll roll d12 as a base mechanic! :)
I'm all about that 4d6-4
I don't like d100 tables for encounters in play because they usually don't have details on how the encounter supposed to play out so the dm has to improve which can be time consuming. If you roll the encounters before hand, then it's fine.
I like random tables to make backstorys for my characters and NPCs. This prevents me from making the same general character background.
I’m a big fan of the d36 table, like a d66 but with the “tens” d6 is used as a d3
What was the nested d100 table thing he was talking about?
And another day passes that I miss web dm
I did wonder why the first one was only 8 mins long!
that's how we're gonna be doing it for a while! short and long every week on related (but not the same!) topics, something for everyone/every time.
@@WebDM I will say I don't mind and even like having you guys return to topics, but it was confusing when RUclips notified me of the second video. RUclips often sends notifications for videos a few days later, so I thought it was the same one.
Yeah this is a great intro
So, Pruitt got this idea of a random table for this show from a random table he made which itself was generated from a random table he made.....Aw, just forget it. Cheers
Jim mentions nested d100 tables. Does anyone know of a book that uses these?
Imagine a weighted d100 table where you can have 6 options still
ROLL ON!
49:46 goblin fight club
How about a 2d6 table where you build a table from 11 to 66 where you start at 11, go up to 16, then go to 21 up to 26, and so on?
That would be a huge table but fun!!
It's basically a 1/36 chance for any result. It just sounds complicated. I built one using a pair of d8s, for a 1/64 chance.
Thanks.
Isn't a D30 just a D6(as aD3) and a D10?
i like d100 tables because i can easily have different persentage chance for different encounters.. 5%trader 10%goblin 1%dragon and such...
I've got a buddy who made a D100 table for a character who is insane. The table had an option for TPK and he rolled it while in a dungeon. I wish I could have seen that game.
I have a d200 for my random encounters...lol
Them being at different framind.merates is confusing my small
I'm early! Hi Jim! Hi Pruitt!
Hi Matthew Leman!
I can't tell if Jim was actually annoyed at the intro, but I thought it was funny.
I got a D100++ nested table for travel non-combat encounters in temperate plains. I am willing to share if anyone wants.
The mundane allows for realism. Why both with just putting the unrealistic on a chat that is random.