The Bell Curving Encounter Table

“You can tell you have reached civilization because you are standing on a street, and there is a beggar on it” — Archmage Hann, writing to a pupil whilst secure in his tenure

“Some describe the wilderness as a land with no law. I prefer to think of it as a place with fewer witnesses” — ‘Scarlet’ Findlayson, robber of the rich and occasional investor in smaller communities

“Not too much town, not too much mountains. Yeah, I like it here in the borderlands. You get all sorts — even had three bears move into the old cabin across the lake.” — Farmer Thrissell, interviewed during the search for a missing child.

For the purposes of this post, we’re going to talk about some very broad terms as a common shorthand for the areas your players might explore during a hexcrawl or other equivalent sandbox in need of an encounter table.

“Civilization” — There is a central authority (often oppressive) and a sedentary population producing sufficient excess to support non-subsistence occupations such as priest, merchant and landlord.

“Borderlands” — People work to gather natural resources (often traded with the nearest civilization) whilst living in smaller/less dense communities. These might be moved or rebuilt to respond to changing fortunes. There is also more space for wild creatures.

“Wilderness” — Very few permanent settlements due to a combination of unsuitable terrain, weather and other natural hazards. Vast spaces and limited knowledge of the inhabitants creates a vacuum for stories, myths and legends to arise in.

The goal here is to create a unified encounter table – one table that can be adapted to the changing geographic position of the party.

But first, a word about bell curves.

Bell Curves

Roll a single die, and you get an even distribution of results — each is just as likely as any other.

Roll two or more dice and total them gives you a bell curve distribution — some results are more likely than others. Furthermore the range of possible totals becomes larger. Let’s look at the classic example of 1d6, 2d6 and 3d6:

Lots of options to generate interesting results!

And those profiles remind me of something…

So, the genesis for a unified table:

• Roll 1d6 when the party is close to civilization.

• Roll 2d6 when the party is in the borderlands.

• Roll 3d6 when the party ventures into the wilderness.

1d6 results will be evenly split, whereas the 2d6 and 3d6 table entries should reflect the relative likeliness/unlikeliness of results at the middle/ends of the spread.

Entries that “crossover” between the different distributions should reflect the fiction of why a creature might be in 2 or 3 different regions.

Example Table

1. A quintessential member of civilization (a noble, baffled and bewildered by a mundane task)

2. The backbone of civilization (a farmer, tired from driving sheep to market)

3. A product of civilization (giant rats, grown plump on an unguarded cornfield)

4. A beneficiary of civilization (a merchant, suspicious of armed adventurers)

5. A guardian of civilization (soldiers, asking for spurious fees and taxes to pass them)

6. An interloper from the borderlands (bandits, roaming for easy loot)

7. A beast wary of civilization (wolves, hunting isolated creatures)

8. A representative of the borderlands (foragers, using unusual traditions to avoid danger)

9. A borderlands scavenger (wyvern, hunting for carrion)

10. A roaming creature of the borderlands and wilderness (ogre, hungry)

11. A wilderness traveller (nomads, distinct from you with their mounts, weapons and culture)

12. A herald of the wilderness (harpies, luring with song into dangerous terrain)

13. A wilderness lurker (giant spider, waiting patiently in a web)

14. An exile from civilization (cultists, performing dark and forbidden rituals)

15. A wilderness predator (a chimera, feasting on a huge elk)

16. A wilderness legend (a giant, striding through the landscape with ease)

17. A sign of lost civilization (automaton, wandering with incomplete instruction)

18. A mythical creature of the wilderness (a dragon, searching for equally wondrous prey)

Further Experimentation

You could do one or more of the following:

• Roll different dice sizes when the environment is ‘in flux’ (possibly due to player actions)

• Create different tables for different regions

• Create multiple entries, activities or motivations for the more likely results

• Modify the reaction roll based on where a creature is from

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