'Reasons for reactions' to improve random encounters

You don't want your encounters, especially random encounters, to be susceptible to is-this-a-combat-or-do-we-ignore-it thinking.

Plenty has already been written about giving encounters extra contextual details (where are the creatures, what are they doing, what are they hiding, etc).

But it's also important to give the encountered characters the appearance of agency by varying their reactions. The orcs don't always attack on sight. The halflings don't always ask you to join them in a meal.

So how do they feel about you?

Different games go to different lengths with this.

🟩🟩✅ Varied reactions: The rules randomly modify how aggressively a particular set of encountered creatures react, in some way. Most games do this.

🟩✅✅ Default reactions: The rules specify a creature's or group's default reaction (friendly, suspicious, wary, indifferent, curious, issues challenges, hostile, fearful, neutral...), and modify this with a dice roll.

✅✅✅ Motivated reactions: The rules provide plausible reasons for encountered creatures deviating from the default reaction (in case the GM struggles to tie it all together).

That last approach, motivated reactions, is a very useful tool but few games do it. So here are some appropriate options you can roll or pick.

1d10 possible reasons the encounter is unusually friendly:

1. unusual individual/leader
2. need a favour
3. recently sated
4. intimidated and trying not to show it
   
5. hiding a secret
   
6. smell food on the party
7. recent festival, harvest, windfall, or celebration
   
8. hoping to steal / other deceit
9. feeling secure after recent victory
   
10. party is a reminder of old friend(s)
    

1d10 possible reasons the encounter is unusually hostile:

1. on high alert after recent attack
   
2. mistaken identity
3. resource-starved and desperate
4. rabid or maddened
5. hiding a secret
6. already in bad mood
   
7. subject to tyrannical orders
8. party inadvertently breaking taboo/custom
   
9. fear of reprisals from a greater threat
10. bandits, soldiers, hated nemeses sighted in area
    

"The minotaur is trying not to disturb a spider's web by moving, and settles for glaring at you balefully."

It's infamously difficult to get across motivations, secrets, and motivations at the table, so signal the reasons as clearly as you can to the players. Your encounters will have more verisimilitude, be more engaging, and be easier to improvise.

Out-of-character knowledge: A solvable problem

Note: This primarily applies to trad RPGs, played as trad RPGs. I doubt it has much relevance for story-telling games, or people running a trad TTRPG as a group story-telling exercise.

 

I often think about the player knowledge / character knowledge dichotomy, and in particular the problem of out-of-character or "meta-game" knowledge.

It boils down to this: in any game, within the world a character has capabilities (skills, powers, a viewpoint, certain possessions) that the player doesn't. But the player has information that the character doesn't.

Players, as they get experienced, inevitably end up having knowledge of X that their characters don't. Even if they learned something during the game, they'll eventually have a new, know-nothing character.

People are usually concerned about X being 'monsters' or 'enemy powers and vulnerabilities' or 'magic item properties' or the like. But it can include other, more meta-level, stuff:

• Players hear about what's happening to other player characters, even when they're not together.
• Over-arching information about the scenario, which the player has played or read a review of.
• The GM just said "oops, forget I mentioned that".
• Savviness to the genre of the universe being played in. Players know that pleasant tidy off-ramps in Call of Cthulhu won't be what they seem.
• We remember where our last characters bit the TPK, and the layout of the dungeon level.
  
• The GM brought a whole box of fire imp models to the game.
• The player has read a mathematical analysis of which spells/weapons/feats/etc are optimal.
  

 

Separating player knowledge and character knowledge

I think it's fairly obvious that at least in trad TTRPGs, it's desirable to reduce the impact of out-of-game knowledge on gameplay. Players ideally should have just the information their characters have, and make decisions accordingly.

Otherwise, why not just play with all the GM's stats and maps laid out on the table? Or better yet, given to the players to study before the game? Why not let the players roll to see whether they would succeed or fail at something before deciding whether to try it?

There are solutions, of course

I listed out all the solutions I could think of to "experienced players having knowledge about X that their characters don't". Then, as if I didn't have enough to do today, I rated and ranked them according to my

personal scoring rubric:

✅ Effective

✅ Low-effort

✅ Widely applicable

✅ Incorporates game mechanics

😠 Reduces immersion

😠 Requires doublethink

😠 Culture of play I dislike

😠 GM has to remember something

 

From best to worst, then:

👍 Players who know about X are required to put character points into character knowledge/skill relating to X.

Simple, effective, works with many but not all game engines. Aligns the character knowledge with the player knowledge neatly. Completely passive, but requires some honesty and introspection while setting up. Doesn't work with some kinds of meta-knowledge. Score: 5

👍 The GM uses mostly unique or procedurally generated new forms of X.

Unique monsters, custom-made scenarios, etc. This works well in most situations but is a lot of extra effort. Doesn't work with some kinds of meta-knowledge. Score: 4.5

👍 Any player knowledge of X is rumour, and rumours about X don't match the truth completely.

Very effective and fairly easy for grounded stuff like monsters and setting lore. Much more difficult (possible, but probably not worth doing) for other kinds of meta-knowledge. Risk of it feeling like bait-and-switch. GM has to stay on their toes. Score: 4

👍 Accept that X is well-known within the world.

Very easy, but only narrowly applicable (doesn't work with most kinds of meta-knowledge). Score: 3.5

🤏 Set things up so that knowledge of X has less impact on player decision-making. 

Difficult to do even in the best cases, but can pay off. For example, you can play with time and scene order so that players knowing what's happening with each others' characters at remote locations has less impact on play. Onerous for the GM and there are ways it can all go wrong, but impressive if it does work. Score: 3

🤏 The GM uses lots of deliberate misdirects about X, with in-world justifications.

A partial solution and one that eventually gets tiresome in practise. Technically works on a surprisingly broad set of meta-game knowledge, but doing that would take a ton of work and creativity on the GM's part. Score: 2.5

🤏 Treat the whole thing as not an issue.

I think this is pretty common, especially for sloppier/lower-stakes/beer-and-pretzels play. Players end up using doublethink or feeling vaguely guilty. As low-effort as it gets, but not great pay-off in terms of an actual solution. Score: 2

🤏 Shift the focus of gameplay into identifying that something is X.

Difficult to do, and only works on a narrow set of gameplay content; doesn't help with most meta-game knowledge. Generally requires the GM to be comfortable tinkering with the fundamentals of how the game works. Can be effective within its wheelhouse, but it's high-risk, low-reward. And what happens when players get player skill at identification and then start over at level 1? Score: 1.5

🤏 Players pretend that their characters don't know about X, but play as if they do.

Doublethink all the way. Thoroughly immersion-breaking. Leads to a narrative that seems plausible from the outside, but not from within, even done right. Is it worth it? I know some tables default to this all the time, but I'd rather keep it to just to the most necessary circumstances. Score: 1

👎 GM uses deliberate misdirects about X for no good in-world reason, so players learn they can't rely on any knowledge they have.

Yuck. Takes a lot of effort for pretty much no upside and a lot of downside. Don't do this. Score: 0.5

👎 Players have to commit to their characters not knowing about X, and therefore make deliberately bad decisions. Optional extra: Players get unrelated, perhaps even out-of-game, penalties for (seeming to) act on player knowledge of X.

The worst of all worlds. I've never seen this but I bet it happens. Score: 0

Putting it together

I recommend combining multiple 👍 solutions for best effects. I know that the 🤏 solutions work for some people/games/styles. Steer clear of 👎 solutions.

Did I miss any?

Quality and Quantity of Player Choices

Just some brief design musings.

Player choices are perhaps the most important component of TTRPG play. They're certainly one of the very most fundamental parts of any game.

We know that having more, and more compelling, choices means more fun when it comes to (for example):

• Spells or powers that are one-use, very limited, or come with a dramatic cost
• Systems where combat is dangerous and clever play gets you a huge edge
• Traps, in the style of play where traps are fundamentally puzzles and roll-to-disarm isn't an option
• Exploration, in an environment where there are (a) resource costs + (b) threats + (c) a goal which can (only) be accomplished here + (d) no clear-the-whole-map expectation

So a natural question to ask is: Can we improve certain game loops by adding more, or more compelling, choices?

Some areas come immediately to mind – places where many RPGs, big and small, have struggled in the past.

• Researching and investigation. In some games these are a simple matter of GM fiat, or just an in-world-time commitment plus a few dice rolls resulting in binary success or failure.
• Social relationships. In the (unfortunately common) absence of mechanical support and game structures, the need for these puts a burden on the GM. Social relationships ought to have mechanical impact on gameplay and emotional impact on the player... but all too often you hear them relegated to meaningless flavour. Some games don't really even ask: how do you live your character's life?
• Wilderness journeys. These can sometimes become somewhat performative/menial resource juggling or a matter of having the prescribed One Combat Encounter.
• Trade. When it comes to selling loot / buying equipment, some games skip past it, make it abstract or automatic, or reduce it to a haggle mechanic. Playing out the 'social encounter' with every trader isn't any better, if it doesn't involve compelling choices!
• Dying. Why not give a dying character things to do with their last breath? Or offer a decision between a slim chance to survive and using one's last strength to attempt something?
• Hacking archetypes/minigames. My impression is these often have a poor reputation even in otherwise-good games.

Some of these certainly could be improved with a greater centering of player choice.

More choices; more compelling choices

It's far from trivial to solve, of course.

Adding player choices may actually make things worse unless you meet the criteria for quality, which I would say at a minimum are:

1. The choice is interesting, urgent, or otherwise compelling to players
2. The choice has enough risk or potential mechanical impact to be worth the game time
3. The choice can't just be resolved with a straightforward calculation in terms of concrete or absolute costs, preference ordering of relative outcomes, etc
4. The choice is presented alongside enough grounded detail for the players to actually make informed decisions

Worth thinking about.