Run Through the Jungle... (Thoughts on Random Encounters in the Indicara)

Run Through the Jungle... (credit "Jungle Chase Song")

Although in my review of UK6 I initially considered the inclusion of wilderness random encounter tables a positive, on further reflection the tables are quite inadequate. With only eight different wild jungle animal options across the three biomes (jungle, swamp, mountain) and the possibility of a single somewhat bland Atem encounter only in the jungle (all with only combat statistics presented and no "motivation"), the table isn't much use for anything but an occasional diversionary encounter along the default river path railroading original module text.

It's definitely an area that needs expansion, particularly if a cross-country route is taken, as suggested in an earlier post considering the wider range of consequences of a party using an overland approach. In fact, the whole jungle can be expanded upon greatly but let's stick to the topic.

I've already detailed a revised table for the Temple of Automata-Perion, using a "verb" based approach to promote action, but the Indicara is more complicated given the meagre amount of included material. There's the "Amedio Jungle" section of 1E The Scarlet Brotherhood supplement by Sean K. Reynolds to draw on for more setting appropriate creature ideas and fortunately, there are several reasonable freely available and published resources for jungle encounters to draw on:

• Fire in the Jungle Fantasy RPG Supplement (Dustin Brandt) *free PDF*

• The Divine Wight (Dark Jungle series of posts, Dungeon of Signs)

• The Divine Wight Part 4 - Jungle Introduction 

• The Divine Wight Part 5 - Jungle Encounter Table 1: Monsters 

• The Divine Wight Part 6 - Jungle Tables 2 and 3: Landmarks / Hints

• The Divine Wight Part 7 Animals in the Jungle of Midnight

• Tomb of Annihilation (5E, WoTC)

• Tomb of Annihilation Companion (DM's Guild)

• d100: Jungle Encounters (DM's Guild)

• Encounters in the Savage Jungle (DM's Guild)

• FRM1 The Jungles of Chult (1E, WotC)

• ONS1 The Jungle Ruins of Madro-Shanti (Frog God Games)

There's probably more if you take time to search DM's Guild or DriveThruRPG for "jungle".

This helps cover the creatures and in some cases non-creature encounters (caches, skeletons of past explorers, traps or hazards, other jungle related events like diseases). Coupled with some excellent suggestions (weather, monument backdrops, mixing up two encounters, grouped days, 13th Age style montages) and a plea for more randomised inspiration from Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) in his "Exploring Chult" post, there are plenty of ingredients to mix in to address this issue.

The Difference Between Dungeon and Wilderness Encounters 

So making more interesting jungle encounter tables should be simple enough right?

However, I realised that like most wilderness encounters, the UK6 tables (for both the Indicara and the Ash Mire) and many of the above resources lack an element implicit in dungeon encounters - namely a specific physical backdrop for the scene (OK, so Mike Shea suggests monument backdrops, but not every encounter needs a monument setting). All dungeon random encounters traditionally occur in corridors, rooms, caves, or similar spaces but most wilderness encounters are set only against the generic terrain setting, forcing a referee or DM to improvise rapidly and well or produce a less optimal experience compared to a set piece encounter.

Fortunately, I recently came across an approach suggested by Gus L. back in 2017 in his review of Tomb of Annihilation over at the now sadly defunct Dungeon of Signs - one that I think has particular merit for particularly the Indicara Jungle section of UK6, one which incorporates elements of inspiring randomness :

...use nesting tables - providing interesting spots for encounters to occur in (meadow, shell field, a maze of termite mounds etc) by biome, what the creatures encountered might be doing, distance, and some way of manufacturing reaction. Additionally weather effects, strange occurrences, landmarks, trail events/obstacles and some sort of actual descriptions for the biomes and regions... would go a long way to making the hex crawl feel less an excuse for endless wandering encounters and more a journey.  

- Dungeon of Signs Review of Tomb of Annihilation (Gus L.)

One good example of this "nesting table" approach for a jungle adventure is found in the 2017 release 5E/NGR dual-statted adventure Shadows of the Forgotten Kings (SotFK) by Canadian OSR author Zzarchov Kowolski, creator of Neoclassical Greek Revival (NGR). The module incidentally has maps created by Dyson Logos, which is a huge plus for me as I'm definitely a fan of his style and prolific output, having adapted one of his maps over at my Derropedia blog.

Across 4 pages, the author details a random encounter system based on three different die rolls:

• d8    The Where   (notable landmark)
• d6    The What     (creature encountered)
• d4    The Weird    (odd occurrence or effect)

This "Kowolski method" or KNeE (Kowolski Nested Encounter) table, as I'll now dub it, makes the implicit physical backdrop explicit, merely using a different or even reverse engineered means to achieve a seemingly "random" element.  Missing in the SotFK tables is the "motivating verb" descriptor or "The How" however - perhaps to reduce the degree of cross-referencing and time taken (see below), or intentionally substituted by the "Weird" element - I'll have to check other NGR adventures to see if it's a consistent style. This could easily be added by using 1d8's "What are those wandering monsters up to?" 2d6 table.

So I think I need to create a couple of KNeE tables for the Indicara - one for the actual Jungle, one for the Riverbank and perhaps one for the Mountains or the area near the Barrier Shrine...

This approach makes sense - even without "The Weird" element or the necessary "motivating verb" (perhaps let's refer to it as the "How" as in "how to use" element) to help distinguish the encounter from just being cardboard cutout abbreviated statistics block entry, even conventional dungeon encounters have an implicit "where" which is semi-randomised by being linked to the location the party currently occupies on the map (itself merely a product of time elapsed and the chance of a random encounter).

It's also notable that the "What" entries are *not* just creatures (in fact there are only two creatures possible in the base table), there are examples of traps and passive threats (the "death flies" for example) and a "Nothing" encounter designed to just heighten tension. For example, rolls of 1 (d8), 2 (d6) and 1 (d4) results in: Open Grove / Nothing / Complete Silence. The addition of complex encounters based on "triples", "doubles", "sequentials" and "totals 18" adds an opportunity to add in special encounters closely keyed to later adventure elements.

In any case, according to a few posts I've read, this type of "nesting table" for random encounters is a recurring feature of Zzarchov's often excellent adventure design, although using such complex random tables does have a specific drawback worth mentioning according to one reviewer. Andrew Shields suggests that this approach is:

....no good for rolling something and describing the outcome while at the game table, in the heat of the action. Too many results for the DM to keep in mind while keeping everything rolling. I adapted by generating a bunch of random encounters for each zone ahead of time, typing them into a point list, ready to check off as we went. That took prep time and effort, absorbing my finite time before running the game so I was not as focused on some of the other elements as I needed to be. It would have been useful to have some pages dedicated to encounters to check off, and the encounter generator behind them so you could make more as you wished.

- Under the Waterless Sea Review (Andrew Shields, Fictive Fantasies 2014)

I like Andrew's suggested fix, although I note that in SotFK Zzacharov does in part address the "prep work" aspect he highlights by detailing the specifics of the "triples", "doubles", "sequentials", and "totals18" encounters, which means that there are actually 11 "special" encounters already detailed and ready to use that can be picked by a time-pressed DM or referee.

Addit: as I finished writing this post and before the planned scheduled publishing date, I sourced Zzarchov's earlier work that Andrew references, Under a Waterless Sea. Published in 2014, it contains encounters with "motivating verbs" and uses the same style of "Kowolski method" d8/d6/d4 "nesting tables" or "KNeE" table. It would appear that if the "special" encounters detailed for specific dice roll combinations in SotFK aren't an intentional attempt to address Andrew's comments, they certainly improve upon the original design by giving the flexibility of either a set or a random approach. The development seems to have evolved out of the earlier "trips", "dubs", and "max" modifiers in the earlier module being locked into a specific special encounter description thankfully. It seems that the slightly earlier "The Gnomes of Levnec" (2013) has a similar KNeE table design - the SotFK tables are then perhaps limited more by the module's specific plot and single biome featured than any oversight.