Fill In The Gap

Random Plot Encounter Table

by Matt Turnbull
Sep 05,2005

Random Plot Encounter Table

The plot in an RPG is often simply a MacGuffin, an entity solely designed to get the players from point A to point B, with the journey and the adventures along the way being the important part.

Many GMs don't have the inclination or the energy to come up with complicated or involved plots. They're too busy with the minor details, the dungeons and monsters to be faced along the way, the towns to be visited, the challenges to be overcome. Who has time to create something solely to help string all this together?

That's where the Random Plot Encounter Table comes in. If you've ever played a Fantasy-genre RPG, I'm willing to bet you're familiar with the concept of an Encounter Table. Basically put, it's a chart that you reference a roll to, which determines an outcome, event, or encounter. In some games, there are random tables for everything from town names to treasure piles. What follows is a handy and easy to reference chart, to be used in the creation of a random Fantasy-genre RPG plot.

The way this table works is almost like one of those word-replacement games I won't mention due to copyright infringement concerns. Let's just say it's like an angry person who opposes abbreviations of conservatives. You replace the variables (whose value is determined by rolling a D20 and referencing the appropriate random tables) in this phrase: We need to rescue the A from the B, because he/she is the only one who knows the location of the X of Y. We need to find it/them if we want to have a chance at stopping the Z from D!

See, easy! At the bottom are some sample plots created by this table. The charts are found below.

A:

1. Princess
2. Scholar
3. King of Thieves
4. Court Jester
5. Librarian
6. Pixie Queen
7. Queen
8. King
9. Town Magistrate
10. Daughter of the Great Wizard
11. Insane Child
12. Royal Historian
13. Court Shaman
14. Tribe's Chief
15. Town's Cook
16. Orphan
17. Empress
18. Seer
19. Reformed Villain
20. Village Idiot

B:

1. Carnivorous Dinosaur
2. Dragon
3. Dracolich
4. Undead Horde
5. Lizard People
6. Earth Elementals
7. Orcs
8. Bandit King
9. Cannibals
10. Mutated Forest
11. Merfolk
12. Evil Wizard
13. Demon Lord
14. Neighboring Kingdom's Prison
15. Dark Amulet's Power
16. Himself/Herself/Themselves!
17. mind-control spell
18. Cave-Dwellers
19. Dark Council
20. Gallows

X:

1. Gem
2. Sword
3. Dirk
4. Amulet
5. Spell
6. Scroll
7. Tablet
8. Statuette
9. Eye
10. Heart
11. Bow
12. Arrows
13. Writ
14. Word
15. Winged Boots
16. Jewel
17. Potion
18. Council
19. Sand
20. Helm

Y:

1. Darkness
2. Light
3. Death
4. Power
5. Prophecy
6. Omens
7. Awakening
8. Hawk Sight
9. Beauty
10. Obedience
11. Antiquity
12. Divinity
13. The Holy
14. Righteous Indignation
15. Flight
16. The Sun
17. The Moons
18. The Heavens
19. Fortune
20. Yore

Z:

1. Elder God
2. Forces of Evil
3. Ones who watch from the edge of the world
4. Beings of Pure Chaos
5. Mage Lord
6. Lich's King
7. Beings of the Outer Worlds
8. Neighboring Kingdom's Leader
9. Childlike Queen of the Undead
10. Roll on Table B again, re-roll if a location is rolled.
11. Horseman of The End Times
12. Wrath of the Divine
13. Kings of the Night
14. Roll on Table A again, re-roll if the same result as was rolled orignally for A is rolled.
15. Sun-Dwellers
16. Creatures that crawled out of the meteor
17. Underworlds's Guardian
18. Last of its kind
19. Oldest of the Elementals
20. Inventor, driven insane by his own genius

D:

1. Poisoning the Water Supply
2. Destroying the last hope for peace
3. Devouring the world
4. Plunging the world into perpetual night
5. Opening a terrible portal
6. Summoning his/her/their true leader to our world
7. Leading all of the children into the ocean
8. Eradicating life as we know it
9. Turning everyone into stone
10. Causing the greatest unnatural disaster ever seen in this kingdom
11. Creating a rift in space and time that could prove to be the end of all that is known
12. Spawning his/her/their twisted progeny
13. Being used as the vessel(s) that bring the ultimate evil to this world
14. Killing the world-famous diplomat who is our last chance at peace
15. Unleashing a plague that could kill millions
16. Toppling the kingdom's government
17. Causing a famine the kind of which has never been felt by these people
18. From capturing the (roll on A again, re-roll if the same result as was rolled orignally or subsequently for A is rolled.) and forcing him/her to help him/her/them
19. Bringing about his/her/their treacherous rule
20. Reaching the fruition of his/her/their terrible scheme

So, that's it. Not too hard, and the results can be very useful indeed. Here's some examples as rolled from above:

We need to rescue the King from the Merfolk, because he is the only one who knows the location of the Tablet of Prophecy. We need to find it if we want to have a chance at stopping the Beings of the Outer World from Turning everyone into stone!

We need to rescue the Pixie Queen from the Dark Amulet's Power, because she is the only one who knows the location of Powder of Light. We need to find it if we want to have a chance at stopping the Inventor, driven insane by his own genius from Poisoning the Water Supply!