Random Wilderness Encounters

For the purposes of Wilderness Encounter Tables it is recommended the most prevalent terrain within the party's current hex be used. This means a party in the foothills of a mountain range, a hex with mostly hills and a few mountains, would use the "Hills" encounter table. With a little imagination, these tables should allow the GM to generate interesting and challenging encounters. The user should bear in mind that many terrain types encompass many different lands and dice may dictate an encounter the GM feels inappropriate to the situation. If this should happen feel free to re-roll, choose arbitrarily from the list, or find a way to make an unusual encounter work. The "Special" encounter column included with each terrain type is aimed specifically at introducing these chaotic types of encounters into your milieu.

Unlike dungeon encounters, wilderness encounters are not keyed to party level or strength. As a rule of thumb, the GM should use the "No. Encountered" entry in the rulebook to generate specific numbers. Players, for their part, should learn and develop the fine art of running away. Wandering about the wilderness of most campaign milieus is a hazardous pastime.

The Human (and Demi-human) Encounter Table lists various settlements and strongholds. These may be used to insert adventure hooks into the campaign, or give the party a relatively safe place to rest and re-equip. They may, of course, be ignored if they do not fit with your plans. We have limited the encounters to hamlets, villages, and small keeps in order to not interfere with the GM's carefully designed maps.

The NPCTables, explained more fully below, maybe used to generate lone NPCs or complete adventuring NPC parties. Tables are provided for generating NPCs and NPC parties in the Dungeon Encounter Tables section of these rules.

Regarding the Lost World Encounter Tables:

Lost World settings are chaotic places. OSRIC adds a little chaos into the tables but feel free to expand upon this idea. You may wish to add encounters with UFO aliens, Tarzan™, present day humans from non-magical and high science worlds, even a giant ape which fancies itself a King.

The Past, Present, and Future time travellers are labels relative to the player character's "normal" time.

Dinosaurids are man-sized evolved dinosaurs roughly equivalent to humans in terms of stats, particularly intelligence.

Cavemen are roughly equivalent to Neanderthal proto-humans. The advanced cavemen referred to by the tables are akin to Cro-Magnon proto-humans.

The Time-Lost Village encounter refers to a settlement of humans or Demi-humans that is "unstuck in time" and randomly relocates to various eras, perhaps even changing physical location when time-shifting. One may look to various sources for inspiration, including the musical "Brigadoon", the UK television series "Dr. Who", and the US television series "The Time Tunnel."

Explanation of NPC Types

Decoys: serve either to distract the party from something else, or put the party at ease and lure them into a dangerous situation. For example: a group of charmed humans who seek to lure the PC party into the den of a rakshasa.

Escapees: these NPCs have escaped from imprisonment by some nearby entity. The NPCs may have little or no equipment or weapons and are either under pursuit from their captors or will be shortly.

Joiners: seek to join the PCs. The GM is free to manufacture motivation appropriate to his or her needs, either malevolent or benevolent.

Runners: The NPCs are fleeing or avoiding an encounter. Whatever they are fleeing is probably chasing them, whatever they are avoiding may or may not be aware of their presence. Unlike escapees, these NPCs will be appropriately armed, armoured, and equipped.

Searchers: are looking for something, usually an item or person. The possibilities are myriad, a few examples are: seeking a powerful artifact, weapon, stolen item; or, seeking a friend, arch-enemy, or kidnapped daughter of the local woodcutter.

Survivors: 1 or 2 demoralized survivors of an otherwise wiped out adventuring party. They may have limited equipment and be in need of healing.

Wolves (in sheep's clothing): an encounter with something that appears human but is not. This category includes were-creatures, doppelgängers, polymorphed creatures, and the like. The disguised creature may not necessarily mean the party harm, the avatar of a benevolent deity who doesn't wish to reveal his or her divinity to the party is one example that comes to mind.

+Specific encounters from the wetlands table should be rolled on either the aquatic or the marine subtable (GM's option, or 50% chance of each).

Random Wilderness Encounters - Aquatic

Random Wilderness Encounters - Arctic

Random Wilderness Encounters - Desert

Random Wilderness Encounters - Forest

Random Wilderness Encounters - Graveyard

Random Wilderness Encounters - Hills

Random Wilderness Encounters - Jungle

Random Wilderness Encounters - Lost World

Random Wilderness Encounters - Marine

Random Wilderness Encounters - Mountains

Random Wilderness Encounters - Plains

Random Wilderness Encounters - Rural

Random Wilderness Encounters - Tundra

Random Wilderness Encounters - Dinosaur Encounter Sub-table

Tyrannosaurids & Allosaurids

Hadrosaurids

Sauropods

Ceratopsians

Other Dinosaurs I

Other Dinosaurs II

Marine Dinosaurs

Flying Dinosaurs