A Table of Connections: Random Encounters in Cities
Random encounters are a staple of adventuring, and for good reason. In the way I run them, they serve to amplify what makes a certain area interesting; and in the traditional setting of a dungeon, which is made interesting by its danger, random encounters that make the area more dangerous, i.e. monsters, are extremely effective, as demonstrated by their multi-decade-long history.
But in city-spaces, made interesting by the people the players can meet, this danger-based conception falls apart; the players will be frustrated that, say, 2d6 skeletons spring out of a pothole and attack them while they're trying to strike a deal with a wealthy patron to sell them their latest treasure haul, while that same encounter would be interesting in a dungeon where they have to work around the natural hazards of the adventure site during the combat.
How the Connection Table Works
So, to run random encounters in cities, I use a different method, which I call the Connection Table, inspired by Luke Gearing's Reputation Table.
At its most basic, it's a d100 table containing all the connections the players have made to other NPCs (most entries will be empty at the start, of course).
When the players enter a new area in the city, roll d100 on the table: if you roll an empty entry, the players encounter whatever place or event you prepared for that area. If you roll an entry containing a connection, the players instead encounter someone pertaining to that connection.
Whenever the players meet an NPC they would be reasonably interested in meeting again, add that connection to the table.
An Example: Gurney's Connections
To show the table in action, let's take a random character from Electric Bastionland.
- Gurney - STR 10 DEX 13 WIL 9 - 1 HP - £4
- Failed Career: Newspaper Intern
- "WHAT WAS THE WORST STORY YOU HAD TO COVER?" Snooker Tournament: Take a flask of very strong coffee.
- "WHAT DID YOU TAKE FROM THE PRESS OFFICE BEFORE YOUR INTERNSHIP ENDED?" Paper-Boy that has nowhere else to go (DEX 15,2HP) and blindly obeys you.
Just from character creation, Gurney has plenty of connections. He was an intern in a newspaper agency, he wrote about a snooker competition at some point, and has a paper-boy following him around, so maybe his family's looking for him. Like the rest of the party, he's also in debt to the Society for the Punishment of Wayward Students.
From just these things, the Connection Table might look like this:
| d100 | Connections |
|---|---|
| 1 | Newspaper Agency |
| 2 | Snooker Club |
| 3 | Paper-Boy |
| 4 | Student Punishment Society |
| 5 | ... |
It's small for now, but when you add all the connections all the PCs have made, both in-backstory and during the campaign, it fills up quickly. Naturally, it works best in systems/settings where the characters are given connections at character creation (which is, in my opinion, a good thing independently of if you're using this system or not).
Interpreting the Results
But Connections don't just represent the thing the PCs are directly connected to, but the whole space that surrounds it. Rolling "Student Punishment Society" might mean the PCs encounter a victim of the Society they used to play pranks with, or a professor they played a prank a prank against that holds a grudge against them, or a crowd of students rioting against the Society...
So how do we choose what the players encounter? Simple; roll on any Reaction table you like.
- A Hostile or Wary reaction means players encounter someone hostile to them (eg. a councilman or the Student Punishment Society, or a pranked professor).
- An Indifferent reaction means the players encounter something that doesn't interact with or involve them directly. (eg. a group of unruly students heckling a professor).
- A Kind or Helpful reaction means the players encounter someone who can help them or that can trust/work with them. (eg. an old friend they used to play pranks on professors with).
Optimizing the Table
The ultimate goal of the Connection Table is that players always meet people they want to interact with. To ensure no encounter is uninteresting for the players, the only encounters possible from the Connections Table are either ones to which the players come (Indifferent reaction) or ones in which the character has shown interest before, either in-backstory or during play (the other reactions). Therefore, what we want to avoid in the encounters keyed to the city map is that the character are forced to interact directly with them; the players are meant to drive the action, after all.
The solution to this is simple: all keyed encounters are Indifferent by default. Things like peculiar shops or special NPCs by the side of the road or unruly pack animals make great encounters of this kind; players can ignore them if they don't care in that moment, but if they interact with them, more often than not, a new Connection to add to the table will be made, whether the players like it or not.
Connection Table Hacked: City-Specific Tables
An easy modification to make is, for each city or part of a city the players visit, have a table of Connections on d20 specific to that city. This way, it creates a new tactical element: if the players need to get back to town to rest or sell treasure, but they want to avoid a city with particularly risky Connections, they might have to choose between a city that is close by but might result in a problematic Encounter or a city that is farther away but safer.
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