[Remarks] Random Acts of Violence

To this day, I remain an adherent to the concepts of the wandering monster and the random encounter. There are a number of ways to handle things, but I like the idea that sometimes the players find the monsters, and sometimes the monsters find the players, adds a whole level of interesting to a game. It’s an easy way to keep players on their toes, and often creates plot complications and new twists. As a gamemaster, I actually like it when things don’t go according to plan.

Random Acts of Violence is simply a table with 100 random acts of violence. As I am currently running a city-based compaign, this is my new random encounter table. The party is out shopping, walking down the street to the temple, just coming back after a trip to the country side when (roll a percentile) The “drunk wagon” pulls up to the prison to drop off the drunks pulled from the streets, but when the captain of the guard unlocks the door to the back of the wagon he finds all 12 prisoners dead and blood everywhere. Oooh! Does that dovetail into my current plot? Is this a teaser of my next plot, or a current subplot? What do the players think of this, that I can say “yes!” to and act like that was my plan all along?

At the very least, it adds some background color to show that there are things going on in the city other than what the player characters are doing. A cool idea, a cool product. At 6 pages, it’s going in my GM notebook as a resource. 

Buy it at RPGNow