Speaking in terms of your typical fantasy RPG... if you include wandering monsters in a setting (Dungeon, ruins, cave or whatever) do you ensure there is some logic in their presence or just let it go?

Is there a food source for such creatures? Can the various monsters co exist peacefully? Is there a rhyme or reason to their even being there?

Now Im not in anyway badgering or picking on anyone's approach to wandering monsters. Ive had my share of games where an Owlbear, a den of Drow, some giant ants and a gelatinous cube all live in the same set of halls as a Neo Otyugh or whatever in a sealed up dungeon where the only entrance was the one the players just made.

Im just wondering how prevalent it is in today's gaming to logically work out such factors or just leave them to magic and mayhem?

Quote from: rgrove0172;916103Speaking in terms of your typical fantasy RPG... if you include wandering monsters in a setting (Dungeon, ruins, cave or whatever) do you ensure there is some logic in their presence or just let it go?

Is there a food source for such creatures? Can the various monsters co exist peacefully? Is there a rhyme or reason to their even being there?

Now Im not in anyway badgering or picking on anyone's approach to wandering monsters. Ive had my share of games where an Owlbear, a den of Drow, some giant ants and a gelatinous cube all live in the same set of halls as a Neo Otyugh or whatever in a sealed up dungeon where the only entrance was the one the players just made.

Im just wondering how prevalent it is in today's gaming to logically work out such factors or just leave them to magic and mayhem?

Had this tread allready. Look it up for insight into how mentally stunted some people get over this.

Short answer. Gronans M'cDonalds stuck in a dungeon. Parties opening a "Rat on a Stick" fast food franchise in the dungeon. Some players going totally fucking insane because they cant wrap their little peanut brain around the concept of "Its there but doesn't need to be stated every damn time."

As for wandering monsters. D&D had both a general table for totally on the fly stuff and instructions to re-roll things that didnt fit. And advice that it was better to make wandering monster tables tailored to the locale. 5e follows the "Tailored to the Locale" ideal.

Note that wandering monsters are not supposed to be in every adventure and more than a few modules drop the idea completely. Yep. As usual. Varies wildly from one to the next.

To me its usefull when you have chances of bumping into someone on paroll or hunting, or on their way to or from other levels even. Sometimes the "Why the heck is a skeleton wandering this mostly orc infested complex?"

I put real effort into the dungeon making sense. If it's a sealed vault, you better believe the dungeon will be based around traps, undead, demons, devils, and elementals--things that generally don't die or have much to keep on existing. Naturally, such dungeons are a little limited on wandering monsters (there are exceptions), so I try to put some sort of time limit, to keep players from going 5', taking a long rest, repeat.

On the other hand, if dungeon is a cave, then I do try to have it make sense (not necessarily geological sense, but ecological). So, yeah, there's almost always a water source, there's some explanation for what the denizens do for food (I explain to players that caloric requirements aren't the same in fantasy land, which is also why the players carry a week's worth of food and water without falling over), and when I have wandering monsters, they come from somewhere, either nearby rooms (investigating noise the players make), or nearby caves (investigating why the usual guards seem to be dead), or, well, wandering up from lower caves.

I'm not saying my dungeon set-ups are viable enough to pass a economics class...but they're at least feasible for a few days, which is all that is necessary for most dungeon expeditions.

Wandering monsters are really a mechanism to encourage focus.  If you talk for ten minutes your characters talk for ten minutes and a wandering monster is apt to appear and sap your precious resources without providing much in the way of rewards.

I tend to make them appropriate to the setting and adventure but they can be a patrol or a ravening beast at need.

Whatever it takes to keep the game moving.

Quote from: David Johansen;916119Wandering monsters are really a mechanism to encourage focus.  If you talk for ten minutes your characters talk for ten minutes and a wandering monster is apt to appear and sap your precious resources without providing much in the way of rewards.

Um... False?

Wandering monsters may be on patrol, may be hunting, any number of reasons other than "sap your resources". And they might not even be hostile.

So, since the last time we had this conversation I had some time to think on this subject and it occurred to me that my 'dungeons' have always had a logical consistency to them.

Ruined undercroft of an old mansion?  90% of the 'monsters' would be undead.  A jungle temple to the Snake Gods?  Well, jungles have a lot of edibles, and growing a garden isn't all that hard, really.  Most of the dungeons I created have always had a thread linking them that, to me, always made sense as to why and what was wandering it's halls and corridors.  Even the trap filled ones had a reason as to why they had traps in the first place.  I remember one of my early designs, had traps that would activate AFTER the PC's, which meant it always happened as a back attack.  Why?  The compound was a prison designed to keep the big bad monster IN, as opposed to keep intruders OUT.

The only Dungeon I have ever run that might be similar to Gronan's silly (and fun) idea of having a McDickles in a Dungeon was Undermountain, which I've been running as a home session, and to which my players have finally left this last session for a sea adventure.  And Undermountain is actually maintained by a mad wizard as a giant rat's maze, experimental complex and garbage disposal, named Halaster Blackcloak AKA The Mad Mage.

Quote from: rgrove0172;916103Speaking in terms of your typical fantasy RPG... if you include wandering monsters in a setting (Dungeon, ruins, cave or whatever) do you ensure there is some logic in their presence or just let it go?

Like anything it depends, but the advantage a human has over a simple computer is the ability to analyze the random outcome, look for a pattern that fits, and adjust or reject the roll if the outcome really doesn't fit. Using customized encounter tables helps avoid some of the crazy gonzo random outcomes. I just created a custom set of encounter charts for some upcoming city adventures in Orleans, France in my H+I game.

When discussing wandering monsters one cannot forget that a "monster" in D&D terms is anything that isn't a PC. A city without wandering monsters is effectively a ghost town. Most living things (and quite many unliving ones) have tendency to move about for various reasons. Looking at a typical bestiary or monster manual would reveal that the vast majority of creatures are quite mobile.

In fact, a creature that stays put and never moves is in the extreme minority so I never got why the concept of wandering monsters was met with such disbelief.

I always have customized wandering monsters for the location (and, in this context, NPCs are "monsters", too, as Exploderwizard said), generally based on a mix of creatures already known to be living in the area and minor vermin (rats, snakes, etc.) appropriate to the terrain.  In a wilderness context, I use an automated system of selecting lairs in nearby hexes and (if occupied), that's the monster you meet, which both makes it tied to the location and has the nice side-effect that, as you clear out monster lairs, an area becomes safer organically.  In a dungeon (or other interior) context, I make encounter tables by hand, but I'd ultimately like to come up with something similar to what I use in the wilderness.

On the implied question about dungeon design, I generally do make at least a token effort to consider things like food and water sources, waste disposal, etc. and to make most of it logical (with a few areas that are deliberately illogical, if appropriate to the setting), but I don't get too worked up about it.  If there's no viable ecology in an area, I'm completely willing to handwave it in favor of just getting on with the game.

My random encounter charts have a good deal of thought put into them. I want them to reflect stuff you may bump into while wandering around a particular place, as well as stuff that may bump into you.

Sometimes this includes tracks or spoor of a monster rather than the monster itself. Many of my monsters have home ranges within which they are more likely to be encountered than other critters.

Back in the day when I ran old school dungeons stocked high with whatever tricks, traps, monsters and treasures my fiendish mind could devise my wandering monster tables were just lists of monsters with no real thought given to why those monsters. When you have a Giant's bowling alley, a Humongous Hall of Fungus filled with all the fungoid monsters, and Rat-on-a-Stick franchises totally random monster encounters are par for the course. We just didn't worry about what the hobgoblins ate when they couldn't get adventurer.

I notice that even when I run the old rules today my aproach has changed. I like things to make more rational sense now. I think this may be down to no longer being a kid, but now a middle aged man. My taste in adventure has changed.

Like many others who've responded here, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to put wandering monsters into some kind of context. Just because something is 'gonzo' or 'dungeon as mythical underworld' doesn't mean it has to be dumb. One of the keys to making sense of them is to construct your own tables as opposed to just using some generic and terse Dungeon Level XX table from the DMG or something. One good rule of thumb is to have a general idea of the population of say, orcs, in the vicinity. If the party comes across a group of 10 orcs on patrol, and slaughters them all, it goes to reason that there will be 10 fewer orcs in some other area (like the barracks for instance). If you do that, the party will eventually be able to completely cleanse an area or at the very least alert the main body of monsters that an intruder is about. Personally, I also have created a set of tables for repopulating a dungeon over time. If the party leaves and comes back weeks or months later, they may discover the local monster population has started to bounce back or been replaced by an entirely different group or groups. Some things, like carrion crawlers, rats and spiders, may be difficult or impossible to completely eradicate - so it's not as important to think about where they're coming from.

I'd also echo Dave's point about including all manner of possible things that a wandering monster encounter could be - spoor, menacing sounds, even a corpse. In city-based random encounters, I usually interpret results in terms of what the party is able to handle. If they're all a bunch of 1st-level characters, a 'vampire' result can just be rumors of a vampire in the area, rather than the vampire itself suddenly bursting into their room at the inn. Conversely, if a 10th level party encounters a single random 3rd-level thief, I might have the murder of that lowly thief set off a vendetta with the local thieves' guild which could indeed pose a problem for the party.

Just reading off a result on a random table and not putting any more thought into the encounter isn't 'gonzo', it's just really shitty gamemastering.

Oh, yeah...and I really hate the Rat-On-A-Stick approach. That's not funny, just dumb. It might be 'old-school', but only in the sense that it's old juvenilia.

I started off as most kids do I guess, not worrying about anything making logical sense in favor of the perceived "cool factor". Very soon after being introduced to D&D however and GMing for only a few months, I was introduced to a group of College students that invited our little highschool group to a game. Man was it an eye opener. They were a weird, almost scary lot, of academic egg-heads, I mean way out there wearing robes and costumes, using made up languages and stuff that in time I could come to identify as LARP and RPG mesh. We didn't last long with them but they did influence my gaming a great deal. There was none of the Rat on a Stick stuff in their games nor cohabitating monsters with no visible means of support. They took the whole thing very seriously and their GM (a Proff at the school) wove an amazingly detailed and consistent world complete with a rich history, court intrigue, fascinating locations and twists on monsters that somehow made them more realistic and logical.

We went back to our own game but we were never the same after that. We had been schooled and tried very hard to measure up to some of what we had experienced.

Quote from: rgrove0172;916103Speaking in terms of your typical fantasy RPG... if you include wandering monsters in a setting (Dungeon, ruins, cave or whatever) do you ensure there is some logic in their presence or just let it go?

Is there a food source for such creatures? Can the various monsters co exist peacefully? Is there a rhyme or reason to their even being there?

The thing is, your follow-up questions imply an expectation of logic that is quite illogical.

Food source, for instance. Suppose there is none. The player characters are there, aren't they? That would seem to demonstrate that there need be no correlation between food sources and wanderers. Even if the wandering monsters in question are of strictly animal, or animal-like nature and care only about food, the mere fact that they are "wandering" suggests that they haven't found food yet. Until, of course, the scrumptious player characters come along.

And co-existence? The old, finger-wagging school of thought on dungeon ecology was that the dungeon ought to be in some sort of equilibrium state. The precise advice I've seen printed was to try and imagine what would happen in your dungeon left alone for a few months to see if it makes any sense. That's great advice, up until the "to see if it makes any sense" part. Because "equilibrium", I will grant, may be a realistic state of things, it's not a real state of things. Better to see what happens if your dungeon is left alone for a month, make a note of any conflicts that emerge, and then go live. Now NPCs and monsters will have some pretty strong, clear-cut motives.

As for rhyme or reason, I've always felt wandering monsters served a long list of purposes that make a good game. Those who have tossed them out as adolescent then go scrambling for ways to compensate.

1) Wandering Monsters are part of the "character sheet" of the locale. PCs have skills that make them different from the rest of the party. Locales have "wandering monsters" that differentiate them from other locales. In their absence, GMs try to compensate for the lack of atmosphere with long-winded narration full of cliches, frequently involving the word "bustling." It's one thing to describe a rowdy tavern scene. It's another thing for there to be a random table that includes things like, "Patron accidentally bumps into you causing you to spill your drink. Your CHR is at -2 until you get cleaned up."

2) Wandering Monsters are a pacing mechanism. If PCs are spending too much time arguing, or too much time planning, or too much time walking in circles, the periodic appearance of wandering monsters maintains a sense of urgency to move forward. I've heard some use the tool "Whenever the game gets dull, have ninjas attack." Well, wandering monsters fill those shoes quite well.

3) They provide springboards into further adventure. Whether it's the harlot table with their random chance for information, a group of fanatics recruiting for their cause (or for someone to kidnap for ritualistic sacrifice), or even just surviving a random dragon attack in the wilderness and then realizing where there's a dragon, there is treasure. A lot of GMs flat-out ask the players what they want to see in the game. Of course, people are often unhappy getting what they wish for. Seeing how players react to odd, random encounters clues the GM in as to what will in reality engage the players.

4) There's a lot of talk about "optimal" vs "sub-optimal" play. If a player can derive a formula and crunch some numbers about the most efficient way to move forward, that is a problem. Your game has essentially been "solved" and it's all merely academic at that point. A lot of GMs have turned to giving XP, or "Fate points" or some other rewards for players who admirably suffer some sub-optimal play to better role-play the characters. Well, wandering monsters provide a way of shaking up the status-quo so there ain't no such thing as optimal play. There are only choices and trade-offs and different paths you can go down, so you don't have to hand out Scooby snacks to reward players for doing what they should have been doing all along--playing their characters.

5) It's part of a dynamic world. This one may be more specific to how I run campaigns. If you randomly encounter a gang of bandits twice in the same country side, chances are it's going to be the same gang. (Or maybe there are two rival gangs.) This means your actions in one random encounter may influence how the next random encounter goes. This gives the players the feeling that this really is their world, their choices do matter, and the things they do, positive or negative, have further reaching consequences than the current session. Even when it's not part of The Big Story.

I put a lot of thought into my wandering monster tables. Around half are monsters from nearby locations/lairs who have a reason to be out moving around. They will often have a prescribed purpose (hunting, patrolling, looking for an item or person, etc.). The ones that are strictly wandering and don't appear in a keyed location usually fill some kind of ecological niche. And local static encounters take them into account. For example, if I have a wandering basilisk in an area, the nearby inhabitants take special precautions against it. If there are black puddings, then nearby inhabitants have fire at the ready.

I typically use wandering monsters to represent patrols, vermin scuttling about, that kind of thing.
A completely random table would be... well not silly but it'd better still fit the dungeon/area somehow.