Monsters in Motion

Sometimes I run across something that seems so simple and so obvious it feels like it doesn't need to be said, and then I'm surprised when other gamers say, "I never thought about that before."

I was reminded ot this by JDJarvis' post this week at Aeons & Auguaries, "Monsters don't have to stay in their rooms."

Many published dungeons seem to treat the monsters in any given room and the entire room itself as if it is frozen in amber waiting for the PCs to turn up. The used of pre-written description text sure doesn't help dispel this notion (I recall one adventure with 6 or 7 paragraphs describing a room and in the last sentence it mentions the 1st thing PCs would notice... a Beholder). Many critics, DMs and publishers seem to forget that while the published dungeon may be fixed and as is on the page the monsters don't have to stay in their rooms.

As I'm preparing to run Flashing Blades again, this seems particularly relevant to me, 'cause it's tied very closely to how I run my games. I have a list of locations; I have a list of non-player characters - families, really. Characters are associated with certain locations, sure, but then I populate my chance encounters - my preferred term-of-art for 'random encounters' - all over the city with those characters. The chevalier de Rochebaron, knight-captain of the military Order of Saint-Jean, is of course associated with the order's commandery in Sainte-Argene-sur-Barmie, but he can also be found in a chance encounter in the Place du Vicomte, or on the Quai Sainte-Barbe, or in Le Dauphin tavern.

I find this makes the setting feel like a real place more than just about anything else in my referee's quiver, and it also creates coincidences, something that can feel very forced without a random element behind it. Frex, you may run into Lèbre, a "seller of holy water" - one of the random encounters in a church from the FB core rules - at Saint-Papoul's on Tuesday, then run into him again at the abbey of the Cordeliers on Saturday, without specific intent on my part as the referee beyond a non-player character showing up in places where it makes sense for him to appear.

Now, adventure designers can encourage this sort of thing pretty readily, to wit:

Key to Level One -
30. Abandoned Storeroom Nine kobolds took up residence in this abandoned storeroom, from which they search for a dragon medallion they believe is somewhere on this level of the dungeon. From 2-4 kobolds will be out searching at any given time.

Random Encounters -
1. 2-4 kobolds from room 30, out searching for the lost dragon medallion

And Bob's your uncle.