Mysteriously Missing Monstrosities Pt V: Using the Re-worked Hypogean Travel Shenanigans Tables

Back in May 2017 I wrote about how I re-worked the encounter tables to make them easier to deal with at the table and I ended that post with a promise telling you how this worked out. Using these tables changed a couple things, and some more changes followed a bit later on ...


Handling encounters at the table was much more fluid for me as referee, which already was a good result. Having all the important information at my fingertips also helped, especially with the monsters that were missing from Chthonic Codex Cryptic Creatures (because it was safe to assume they were available as a standard monster with Swords&Wizardry, or because it was simple enough to build them with the AFG Mostrotron).

But, my goal of more seamless encounter handling was not fully realized. A bit later I started to move the procedure of rolling dice for encounters from players to myself: They do not (need to) know the tables, so they need to wait until I tell them what other dice to roll for an encounter (i.e. the number of beings encountered, their speciation, levels, equipment). Doing this myself sped things up considerably because a) it allowed me to do rolls in advance, and b) there was no back-and-forth about die rolls, only about actual content. And it allows me to interpret the results in a way that I think is interesting, like replacing the generic Giants! result with an appearance of the Broodmother Skyfortress ... which is the current place the campaign is at, but through another passage.

I have used the new encounter tables over a year now and they are good. Encounters are still exciting for the players even if they lead to the occassional death of inattentive adventurers wandering off on their own, but that hasn't happened a lot lately. I am planning to start up an Ultraviolet Grasslands game soon and making encounter rules accessible there is even more important because the basic rules allows or multiple/simultaneous results on one encounter check (to offset the fact that it's only done once per week of in-game time).