Wandering Monsters in TFT

[Jim Kane]

One of the more initially fascinating elements of the Original D&D game was the concept of Wandering Monsters. Interestingly it was one of the few staples of running an Underworld Adventure, which did not appear in TFT:ITL as a detailed and devoted section within the rules, stated as such per se. Our friend Rick recently brought this interesting reference out as an aside during a larger topic elsewhere, but thinking it through, I felt the topic of Wandering Monsters in TFT deserved it's own thread for those who wish to explore the subject in detail.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

... And if you are in a dungeon, 30 minutes gives you two wandering monster rolls. :-D Warm regards, Rick.

I know I *adopted* my version of the rule into TFT, and unless the conditions were special, in which case I would adjust the Time or Frequency intervals of the roll itself, my basic standard roll for a Wandering TFT Monster appearing was:

• Roll d6 every 30 Minutes of Game Time (360 5-Second Turns)
• Monster appears on a *6*
• Roll Monster from Random Monster Table for that level of the Labyrinth (Your own random tables of TFT Beasts)
• Roll 3d6 to determine the Monster's starting location by the number of MH's away from the Party it will enter play.
• Roll d6 to determine it's general direction in relation to Party (1-N, 2-NE, 3-SE, etc)
• Monster begins play on next Movement Phase, headed in the direction of the Party.
  
  What method did you use; if any?

JK

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

One of the more initially fascinating elements of the Original D&D game was the concept of Wandering Monsters. Interestingly it was one of the few staples of running an Underworld Adventure, which did not appear in TFT:ITL as a devoted section within the rules, stated as such per se. ...
JK

Hi Jim, everyone.
Actually random encounters appear in ITL on page 24 for the Outdoor Encounter Tables. However, Steve J. didn't say how often you should roll on these tables.

On page 28 Steve J. wrote a wandering monster table for nuisance Encounters. Players should roll every 30 hexes, or every 10 minutes.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Jim Kane]

Yes, it's true, we do have those encounter rules for the smaller Nuisance Creatures (slimes, rats, bats, etc) in TFT:ITL.

However, the Monsters I am talking about here are the larger Monsters and Beasts - the bigger stuff you can run into in the Labyrinth which isn't just sitting in a fixed place waiting for the party to show up - they're Wandering... and they're Monsters... not the smaller nuisance creatures encountered in the Labyrinth, and that is why we rolled the Monsters and Beasts much less frequently, as the scale of danger was significantly deadlier. Thanks for clarifying that Rick.

JK

[Kirk]

We don't do too much "wandering monster" stuff. Feels real D&Dish and doesn't make a lot of sense, to us.

We'll have wolves in a forest, or invading a village because of starvation, rats, insects, etc. but most creatures with a brain have some purpose to what they are doing and why they are where they are, and we have more plot behind presence, so to speak.

There were a few programmed adventures from Metagaming etc. that had a lot of "move your party, then roll on the appropriate random monsters for the terrain", then "set up a random encounter combat map using the" ...

This always felt hollow and to me, personally, interpreted as an element of suffering in life and to be avoided. At its base case, akin to flipping a coin to see the results, and repeating, to avoid crushing boredom. We never played these adventures more than once or twice.

I know random things can be incorporated into a story by a GM, but the characters don't know that necessarily, so that can work at times.

[Chris Rice]

I must admit to not using random wandering monsters much myself in D&D or TFT. However, I think they can have value in injecting a sense of pace and urgency into adventures (although there are other ways.)

If characters are always painstakingly searching every nook and cranny of the dungeon or aimlessly wandering the wilderness then there should be a penalty. The longer they spend in the danger zone the greater the chance that something bad will happen.

I'd be all for some expanded encounter tables in the new game. Even if I don't use them!

[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
The purpose of wandering monsters is to add the feeling of peril when in a high danger area. If you are in a dungeon, you could clean out one room, rest up and recover fST, heal wounds, have a nap, etc. With random monsters, people are encouraged to pick up the pace, or leave the dungeon if they need to spend some serious time recuperating.

I don't see a random monster table as an indicator of lazy design. They usually take up a trivial amount of space in the adventure, and go a long way to setting the default pace of the adventure.

That said, when I use them, the details of table, (and how often they generate monsters), depends entirely on how dangerous that wilderness or dungeon is.

Generally, if the players KNOW that there are wandering monsters, you don't have to generate them constantly. I think that a low chance of a fairly dangerous monster is more motivating than constant nuisances.

I often will ignore the wandering monsters if the players are not dilly dallying. Or throw one or two in early (so players know that they are a concern) and then cut them back. The threat of them is the key thing.

Warm regards, Rick.

[JLV]

Originally, I did something fairly similar to the original D&D concept for this, but dropped it for two reasons. One, most D&D style wandering monsters are incredibly lethal in TFT, and the party already had enough trouble surviving as it was, and two, given that lethality, I didn't need to harass the party nearly as much as D&D needed that sort of resource and time "sink" to weaken the party.

Later I adopted a technique from the computer game Diablo, which I found worked quite well. Basically, I "stationed" a "wandering monster" at some particular point in the dungeon, and then gave it a radius in which it would freely roam and engage targets, but beyond which it wouldn't normally go. (This also works extremely well in the wilderness.) So you might have a Cave Bear, say, in room X, but it won't go more than, say 10 or 20 or 30 hexes (I use megahexes in the wilderness) from it's starting hex. However, if it catches anyone within it's zone of control, it will attack and/or pursue them until they leave it (and if it's close enough, it will pursue them beyond it -- much like the county sheriff can chase you beyond his jurisdiction if he's in "hot pursuit").

Of course, the "wandering monster" WAS the monster, so you wouldn't normally find a wandering giant lizard in an area which also had a room full of Orcs (unless the Orcs were trapped there by the Lizard, in which case, that's a completely different thing).

The whole concept worked well, because it improved the "logic" of the dungeon for the players and also made the whole thing feel more organic -- especially when, as you were fleeing the Cave Bear, you crossed into the Giant Lizard's "territory" and it too gave chase (or sometimes, stopped to fight the Cave Bear -- but you could never count on that happening!).

Of course, when you killed that wandering monster, its entire Zone was free -- at least until something else (or several somethings) moved into that area and took up residence there. Which would eventually happen, if you wait long enough. In this case, though, Zones would be repopulated based on their proximity to "uncleared Zones." Meaning that if you cleared several zones, the ones closest to zones which still had their monsters in them would be repopulated first -- either by a monster of the same type as was in the uncleared zone (offspring, or tribe members, or something similar), or by a creature that was fleeing the populated zone (a lesser creature that the other one looked upon as food, or something similar). Similarly, cleared zones close to an entrance (whether the players knew about it or not) would repopulate more easily than ones in the heart of the dungeon would. The upshot was that *usually* the new monster(s) would be weaker than the preceding one, and the Players would find it easier to traverse the previously cleared areas than they would entirely new (to them) areas. Though, admittedly, occasionally I would throw them for a loop and have something big and bad move back into an already cleared area -- gotta keep them players on their toes, ya know!

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by JLV

...
Later I adopted a technique from the computer game Diablo, which I found worked quite well. Basically, I "stationed" a "wandering monster" at some particular point in the dungeon, and then gave it a radius in which it would freely roam and engage targets, but beyond which it wouldn't normally go. ...

Sweet idea JLV.

You could also make a table with a few minor critters, and one entry which triggered the nearest 'stationed' monster.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Skarg]

At first I did have wandering monsters, but especially after running Tollenkar's Lair at age 12, decided that they should always be moderated by some sort of accounting for what all is actually at the location.

That is, you should at least know how many of what kinds of things are at a location, and if you use random encounters, then some of them are located by that and tracked, and if a significant number of them have been encountered, then the chance of them being encountered in future will go down unless they weren't killed and you lost track of where the encountered ones went, or new ones arrived.

Later on, I also took to rolling for more encounters, but not having them mean the party will necessarily face them or even notice them. It meant they were somewhere nearby but starting out of sight and the GM should think what they're doing at that point, and then game it out.

That is, I don't like people or creatures to teleport into existence right by the party, by random roll. I want the players to be in an environment that makes more sense than that, so the way they travel and scout and what they notice has a significant part in what happens and how.

[JLV]

That's true, Skarg -- you definitely have to track attrition, especially if your wandering monsters are part of say, a tribe of orcs, or bandits. That was true even in my Diablo-ish system.