I was talking with my wife the other day and she suggested something that seemed like old school heresy to me, that I pre-roll the random encounters for the trip to the mura of Hondo. Now I got to thinking about this, and I know the path they are taking to Hondo. I know what pre-existing possible encounters there are in hexes along the way. The only thing that slowed ME down during the game at all on Sunday was rolling the encounters and setting them up, coming up with plausible explanations for them, giving them their treasure, establishing encounter distance, surprise, etc. So, IF they stick to their plan and follow the path they're already on, I can pretty easily pre-roll all of their daily encounters. So far, they have not deviated from the plan, even a little bit; I guess it helps that the two party leaders are Samurai that are under orders, and most of the rest of the party have similar obligations to proceed directly there too, including the Yakuza. Really only the Shugenja and the Wu Jen are loose cannons here, and they both have compelling reasons for wanting to go.
But is it right to roll random encounters ahead of time?
Oh, and I forgot to mention in my last post that the party was under the effects of a Bless spell from a roadside shrine they ran across and left offerings at when they encountered the Bandits, that really made a difference for them, even though they were unaware of it. It pays to be pious, although my son John was having flashbacks to an old campaign where his character accidentally offended the goddess Epona with an offering at a roadside shrine and was forever cursed with bad luck with horses.
Nothing wrong at all, you have merely moved the randomness to the prep phase rather than actual play.
ReplyDeleteI don't see a problem. It only gets weird if you roll up X number of encounters and the PCs encounter them in order no matter what path they choose.
ReplyDeleteBut it's not unreasonable to roll up ahead of time. Heck, stat up the monsters on the random charts as encounters and roll to see if they come up. So maybe #7 on the table is "bandit ambush, 11 bandits" instead of "3d6 bandits, 25% chance of an ambush" and you did their HP and treasure ahead of time. If they don't get encountered, you can always recycle bits of it.
The only reason I'd see not doing it is if you end up wasting a lot of time rolling up and statting up encounters and then not using them. But if you're sure they'll go down the road to the mura, well, save everyone some time and pressure during play and roll 'em up tonight.
Just IMO.