Hello, folks!

Please no ranting about how awful it is to not have random encounter tables.  I know, you hate it, WotC's full of swine, etc.

Also please no ranting about how random encounter tables are useless.  I know, you hate them.  It's okay, I'm not a huge fan most of the time either.

As I mentioned, I'm giving more oldschool gaming a shot for a while, and I would like some way to get decent random encounter tables at varying ELs for varying terrain types.  This is for my Wilderlands game, if that helps.

Heck, if it incorporates a lot of varying sources, that's even better.

I've used Dire Kobold's encounter generator, but that one seems a little on the limited side.  And, it has way too many dragons coming up for my taste.

Any good sources?  Web publishing, paper publishing, or anything?  PDFs?

-O

Quote from: obrynHello, folks!

Please no ranting about how awful it is to not have random encounter tables.  I know, you hate it, WotC's full of swine, etc.

Also please no ranting about how random encounter tables are useless.  I know, you hate them.  It's okay, I'm not a huge fan most of the time either.

As I mentioned, I'm giving more oldschool gaming a shot for a while, and I would like some way to get decent random encounter tables at varying ELs for varying terrain types.  This is for my Wilderlands game, if that helps.

Heck, if it incorporates a lot of varying sources, that's even better.

I've used Dire Kobold's encounter generator, but that one seems a little on the limited side.  And, it has way too many dragons coming up for my taste.

Any good sources?  Web publishing, paper publishing, or anything?  PDFs?

-O

Hmm, it doesn't have varying sources, just the SRD list of monsters...  but I've found it helpful when constructing random encounter tables to go to here and use the monster filter by terrain type and CR range.  Then cherry-pick which ones you want to show up.  Remember that lower CR critters can appear in groups to raise the EL if need-be, and just assign dice rolls dependent on the Organization entry in their monster statblock.  Fill in some empty spaces with NPC types if it's a wilderness (i.e. "Caravan of 2d6 nomads with trade-goods for Nearest City.") and you'll be good to go.

If you have other sources than the SRD, then you've got to look at the list of monsters by CR in the back of your books and then reference the environment portion of any that interest you to make sure they fit.  You can put ones outside of their normal territory, but come up with a good reason for it.

Well, I have a generic 'encounter chart' that I threw together based on the DMG...

It amounts to something like...

01-30: Below EL
31-70: EL
71-90: Above EL
91-95: Way above EL
96-00: Environmental thingamabob

Now remember, in Wilderlands, each location has an EL; it's not tied to the character level.  By and large, JG made it easy on us - they just use the default EL from the example table in the DMG.  Still, I'd like more options.

-O