Eyes Unclouded - Encounters
Artist unknown. "A particularly savage wild boar fighting with another over the females behind."
In a previous post, I took Eyes Unclouded, a book of 11 5e adventures inspired by Studio Ghibli films, and sandboxified them by way of Against the Wicked City's "Old-School Space vs. New-School Time". Now I am building out the other tables and resources I'll need to run the game on the fly.
First and foremost, I need a random encounter table for the Blue Wood, the cursed forest that is growing at a supernatural rate. I anticipate players spending a lot of time navigating that area and I can have those encounters spill out into the surrounding country-side as a portent of the the forests looming threat.
Taking Stock
To start, I assembled a list of every animal or monster mentioned in the canonical adventures set in a forest. For now, I set aside unique creatures and key characters. The list includes:
- Deer
- Young Troll
- Hawk
- Boar
- Owl
- Giant Spider
- Constrictor Snake
- Wolf
- Fire Spirit
- Cinderling
- Faerie Dragon
- Pixies
- Guard
- Bandit
- Satyr
- Sprite
- Gorilla
- Falcon
- Dryad
- Assassin Vine
- Chwinga
- Vine Blight
I note a few categories here:
- Animals like deer, hawks, boars, owls, snakes, and wolves
- Fey and spirits like fire spirits, pixies, sprites, satyr, chwinga, and dryads
- Monsters like trolls, giant spiders, vine blights, and assassin vines (kind of a loose category, but these feel like the things most likely to be overtly hostile to the party)
- Humans like guards and bandits, notably these are connected to factions: the Royal Army and Purple Stove Outfitters respectively.
To this mix, I'll also add an "Iron Defender" found in a desert adventure I have resituated to the forest.
Roughing in a Table
So, usually, I roll with something akin to the Mausritter encounter table format - a d6 table broken up as follows:
- 1-3: small groups of weak creatures
- 4-5: weird and flavorful solitary creatures
- 6: something big and terrifying
Instead, I want to go for a jagged table by category:
- 1-2: animals
- 3: spirits
- 4: monsters
- 5: humans
- 6: roll twice and take both results.
If we jam that into a table, it might look like this:
| d6 | Category | Encounter |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Animal | 1 Boars | 2 Deer | 3 Falcons or Owls | 4 Apes | 5 Constrictors | 6 Wolves |
| 3 | Spirits | 1-2 Chwingas | 3 Cinder Spirits | 4 Dryads | 5 Satyrs | 6 Faerie Dragon |
| 4 | Monsters | 1-2 Vine Blights | 3 Ancient Automatons | 4 Giant Spiders | 5 Assassin Vine | 6 Young Troll |
| 5 | Humans | 1-4 Ducal Guard | 5-6 Purple Stove Outfitters |
| 6 | Roll Twice |
So now we're rolling 2d6: one for a category, then another for an encounter. The encounter odds are all vibes-based. For instance, I think the Royal Guard are just more likely to be out in the woods than the Outfitters, who are mostly trying to run a protection racket in town. Note also that I've cut some creatures. Sprites and pixies feel redundant to chwinga, which are so apt to the Ghibli-esque setting we're going for.
Rolling twice has been a delight in recent micro-campaigns, so I've decided to incorporate it here, even if it comes at some cost in terms of ease of use at the table.
How Many?
The final thing we need here is some sense of how many of any given monster there should be. If this were a Cairn or GLoG game, I'd just spitball the numbers, but running 5e I feel marginally more obligated to calibrate to the party's capacity.
Sly Flourish writes that for 5e parties from levels 1 to 4, an encounter has a high risk of being deadly if the combined CR of its monsters equals 1/4 the combined levels of the party. It seems reasonable to calibrate an average encounter to be just at that threshold for a party of rookies.
With that in mind, I cobble together my stat blocks and punch in the following values:
| d6 | Category | Encounter |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Animal | 1 d8 Boars | 2 2d10 Deer | 3 d2 Falcons or Owls | 4 d4 Apes | 5 d8 Constrictors | 6 d8 Wolves |
| 3 | Spirits | 1-2 2d10 Chwingas | 3 d8 Cinder Spirits | 4 d2 Dryads | 5 d4 Satyrs | 6 d2 Faerie Dragon Youth |
| 4 | Monsters | 1-2 d4 Vine Blights | 3 d2 Ancient Automatons | 4 d2 Giant Spiders | 5 Young Troll | 6 Assassin Vine |
| 5 | Humans | 1-4 2d10 Ducal Guard | 5-6 2d10 Purple Stove Outfitters |
| 6 | Roll Twice |
This feels like it preserves some of what I want out of an old school encounter. Almost every combat should have significant risk with some that are well out of the capacity of a party of beginners. Threats like an assassin vine, a young troll, or even maybe some of the d2s are pretty likely to be lethal. Once the party gets a level or two under their belt, they should be able to handle a few combats like this but still be significantly threatened by high rolls. By the time they get up to level 3 or 4, I want them to be focusing more on bigger fish in the campaign setting and less about whether they will be able to make it to the dungeon and back.
A Little Something Extra
For flavor, I want to add two additional modifiers:
- On a 3-in-6, any organic creature is suffering from the hate curse that emanates from the heart of the Blue Wood.
- On a 2-in-6, any animal is giant and capable of human speech.
Those should add a significant amount of variety without and setting specificity without incurring too much complexity cost.
We'll see how it goes.