Okay, here''s a "what if" brainstorm on random encounters. With a very large world, you don''t want to track everything in the world itself. Yet you want to make it seem like entities are moving about realistically. What''s a good system? How about this: Random encounters aren''t totally random. The chance for encountering anything is based on the map itself. The longer you''re in an area, the higher the chance for encountering something. So if you hang out on a road, there''s a higher and higher chance that you''ll meet someone. What you encounter is based on where you are. In the forest you encounter wolves, on the roads you encounter merchants, etc. (Nothing special yet). Now, somehow, it seems that the encounters themselves should change the more you have them in an area. Say you''re a highwayman. You keep ambushing traders. Eventually guards should come. Maybe a good way to track this is to increase or decrease what type of random encounter should happen in any area mostly based on what the player is doing. That way, if you''re sneaking around, you have a smaller chance of encountering the guards than if you keep attacking and keep attacking. I think the strength of some encounters should increase the more you encounter them. So if you slaughter the guards, many more guards should come. Now, if you vary the pool from which guards (or whatever) can come based on what part of the world the player is in, this might seem realistic. Less guards for poorer kingdoms, and thus much more robbery! One problem tho'': Leftovers. If you encounter a caravan that''s heading north, then you should be able to see them again if you head north. So you won''t be able to completely get away from tracking things in the game world. Maybe the game system should track them awhile, then, once they''re out of a certain range, delete them. -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

I''ve wondered about this, too. If you pick up any tabletop DnD module, (well, a good one, anyway) you''ll see a better random encounter table than in any CRPG I''ve seen. They''re modified by time of day, terrain, a slim chance of a "special encounter", (well, at least fallout had _those_) current status in the campaign; and then, when you go to the lookups, you see at least some sort of quickie description of what the creature/person was busy doing when you happened along. You would never see a creature "just hanging out". Also, not all encounters had to end in combat. Wouldn''t it be nice if in a CRPG, you once in awhile encountered something other than a group of hostile monsters, like a knight returning from a Holy War, a "monster" who was cast out of his/her tribe, some unemployed serfs from the castle you just sacked & looted, anything? What''s even worse is that DnD has some of the WORST handling of random encounters I''ve ever seen! I understand why they''re used in CRPG''s, but most human DM''s I know don''t even use them. The point is, all that CRPG designers would have to do in order to improve their systems would be to copy some look-up tables out of a book! How lazy *are* these game developer people?