Back to designing Zharillia, now that I actually have some free time.
I came up with an interesting twist on the encounter table format that can be extended to all sorts of interesting uses. The way I'm using them for Zharillia is to combine day and night encounters into one table, though you could just as easily use this frequency shifting method for other separations - dungeon levels, war and peace, cliffborne and airborne, whatever you can think of.
Here's the trick: whatever slightly different situation you come up with, add a few numbers to the die roll. This has two major effects.
Below is the table I use for the Spring Hills region of Zharillia. I don't actually have the Frequency columns on my charts, I put them there to show precisely what happens with the die shift modifier.
* Roll d6
1 Copper
2 Gold
3 Green
4 Red
5-6 White
** Roll 2d8
2 Minimal, Cave Bear
3 Minimal, Mountain Lion
4 Minimal, Black Bear
5 Minimal. Brown Bear
6 Minimal, Badger
7 Minimal, Warthog Boar
8 Minimal, Wild Horse
9 Minimal, Bull
10 Minimal, Stag
11 Minimal, War Dog
12 Minimal, Wolf
13 Minimal, Lion
14 Minimal, Mammoth
15 Minimal, Rhinoceros
16 Minimal, Tiger
*** Roll d10
1-3 Brown Men
4-6 Orange Men
7-9 Green Men
0 Red Men
Hunting parties have 2d6 individuals
Camps have 3d10 individuals and defenses
**** Roll d6 (+1 at night)
1-4 Poisonous
5-6 Giant, Poisonous
***** Roll d6 (+2 at night)
1-4 Skeleton (3d6)
5-6 Zombie (2d6)
I came up with an interesting twist on the encounter table format that can be extended to all sorts of interesting uses. The way I'm using them for Zharillia is to combine day and night encounters into one table, though you could just as easily use this frequency shifting method for other separations - dungeon levels, war and peace, cliffborne and airborne, whatever you can think of.
Here's the trick: whatever slightly different situation you come up with, add a few numbers to the die roll. This has two major effects.
- First it eliminates the low rolls and adds new encounters to the upper rolls. So, in the table below, Large Falcons are only seen during the day, while Stirges are only seen at night.
- Second, it changes the frequency of encounters. This means that in the table below, Wild Boars, a largely diurnal creature, is an Uncommon encounter during the day, and a Very Rare encounter during the night and Large Spiders are Rare during the day and Common during the night.
By fiddling with the number added to the die roll, you can adjust what patterns emerge, +5 gives Uncommon/Very Rare and has no overlap between Daytime-Common with Nighttime-Common. In places where there's less variation between day and night, a +3 or +2 shift would work well.
One interesting thought would be to make a dungeon encounter chart that provides continuity between levels for encounters by having a +5 shift for every level, turning Common creatures on DL1 into Rare creatures on DL2 and not appearing at all on DL3. A smaller shift modifier would signify a more mobile dungeon population and a higher shift modifier would signify a more strictly stratified environment.
In the table below, I used the 1e D&D encounter table format (Roll 1d12+1d8 for 2-20) because I like the nice flat area in the middle for Common encounters and 19 encounters seems like a good balance. 2d6 is too small for getting really interesting results, IMO. Rolling 2d10 is okay, but that huge spike of 10% of all rolls at 11 seems excessive. For comparison, rolling 1d8+2d6 gives a nice bell curve, but the lowest and highest rolls almost never happen. To see what I mean, type the following into http://AnyDice.com and hit Calculate.
One interesting thought would be to make a dungeon encounter chart that provides continuity between levels for encounters by having a +5 shift for every level, turning Common creatures on DL1 into Rare creatures on DL2 and not appearing at all on DL3. A smaller shift modifier would signify a more mobile dungeon population and a higher shift modifier would signify a more strictly stratified environment.
In the table below, I used the 1e D&D encounter table format (Roll 1d12+1d8 for 2-20) because I like the nice flat area in the middle for Common encounters and 19 encounters seems like a good balance. 2d6 is too small for getting really interesting results, IMO. Rolling 2d10 is okay, but that huge spike of 10% of all rolls at 11 seems excessive. For comparison, rolling 1d8+2d6 gives a nice bell curve, but the lowest and highest rolls almost never happen. To see what I mean, type the following into http://AnyDice.com and hit Calculate.
output 1d12+1d8output 2d10output 1d8+2d6
Below is the table I use for the Spring Hills region of Zharillia. I don't actually have the Frequency columns on my charts, I put them there to show precisely what happens with the die shift modifier.
| Dice Roll: 1d12+1d8 (+5 for Night) | Daytime Frequency | Nighttime Frequency | Keep Environs |
| 2 | Very Rare (1.04%) | Dragon* | |
| 3 | Very Rare (2.08%) | Griffon | |
| 4 | Very Rare or Rare (3.13%) | Lycanthrope (Techno-Rat) | |
| 5 | Rare (4.17%) | Minimal** | |
| 6 | Rare (5.21%) | Falcon, Large | |
| 7 | Uncommon (6.25%) | Very Rare (1.04%) | Boar, Wild |
| 8 | Uncommon (7.29%) | Very Rare (2.08%) | Raiding Party*** |
| 9 | Common (8.33%) | Very Rare or Rare (3.13%) | Merchant |
| 10 | Common (8.33%) | Rare (4.17%) | Character Party |
| 11 | Common (8.33%) | Rare (5.21%) | Patrol |
| 12 | Common (8.33%) | Uncommon (6.25%) | Cattle, Wild |
| 13 | Common (8.33%) | Uncommon (7.29%) | Wolf |
| 14 | Uncommon (7.29%) | Common (8.33%) | Toad, Giant |
| 15 | Uncommon (6.25%) | Common (8.33%) | Centipede, Giant |
| 16 | Rare (5.21%) | Common (8.33%) | Wolf, Dire |
| 17 | Rare (4.17%) | Common (8.33%) | Spider, Large |
| 18 | Very Rare or Rare (3.13%) | Common (8.33%) | Raiding Party*** |
| 19 | Very Rare (2.08%) | Uncommon (7.29%) | Snake, Poisonous**** |
| 20 | Very Rare (1.04%) | Uncommon (6.25%) | Human Camp*** |
| 21 | Rare (5.21%) | Skeleton/Zombie***** | |
| 22 | Rare (4.17%) | Stirge | |
| 23 | Very Rare or Rare (3.13%) | Cyborg Bears (Ogres) | |
| 24 | Very Rare (2.08%) | Lycanthrope (Wolf) | |
| 25 | Very Rare (1.04%) | Dragon* |
* Roll d6
1 Copper
2 Gold
3 Green
4 Red
5-6 White
** Roll 2d8
2 Minimal, Cave Bear
3 Minimal, Mountain Lion
4 Minimal, Black Bear
5 Minimal. Brown Bear
6 Minimal, Badger
7 Minimal, Warthog Boar
8 Minimal, Wild Horse
9 Minimal, Bull
10 Minimal, Stag
11 Minimal, War Dog
12 Minimal, Wolf
13 Minimal, Lion
14 Minimal, Mammoth
15 Minimal, Rhinoceros
16 Minimal, Tiger
*** Roll d10
1-3 Brown Men
4-6 Orange Men
7-9 Green Men
0 Red Men
Hunting parties have 2d6 individuals
Camps have 3d10 individuals and defenses
**** Roll d6 (+1 at night)
1-4 Poisonous
5-6 Giant, Poisonous
***** Roll d6 (+2 at night)
1-4 Skeleton (3d6)
5-6 Zombie (2d6)
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