Roll Your Own

I like when the players make the rolls. Knave, the rules-light system by Ben Milton, gives PCs an "armor bonus" so that they can roll armor against a monster's static value. It's quick to grok but doesn't sacrifice anything from a "normal" attack roll.

What if players rolled their own checks for random encounters, particularly during wilderness travel? It would help them to conceptualize the passage of time during wilderness turns and it would also directly reveal the consequences of spending more time: risking more checks.

The referee does give up the power to discretely adjust the encounter chance on the fly, but in my games it would not be a problem to tell the players that their normal 1-in-6 chance is a 2-in-6 because of the amount of noise they've been making. In fact, it's not even a negative. Again, it provides the players with more information on which to base their decisions.

Adventurers encounter a wandering furry (art by David Trampier)

My current travel rules include an encounter check on every wilderness turn made by the players, who take turns around the table. They roll a d20, and lower results equate to worse outcomes.

1-3 wandering monster

4-12 travel challenge

13-16 descriptive encounter

17-18 evidence of monster

19-20 discovery

I'm toying with the idea of having them add their WIS bonus as long as they're not traveling in darkness or at a fast pace. It might mean that certain characters would very rarely roll wandering monsters, but since they must alternate, in the long run it should balance out with characters who have lower WIS scores.

Unless they're all clerics, I guess. Guided by the holy light?

Determining Surprise

When possible, I prefer to have players make the most important rolls, and I prefer to have their character abilities provide meaningful inputs to those rolls.

Yeah, I know: players aren't their character sheets, spot checks suck, etc. But, I also don't want to ignore when it would make sense for an ability to come into play.

Surprise feels like one of those times when it would make sense. Traditional fantasy RPG rules state that, all other things being equal, each side has a 2-in-6 chance to end up surprised by the other party during a random encounter.

A small humanoid after getting surprised (art by Jeff Easley)

Yet, the stakes here match the criteria of calling for a check or saving throw instead of a purely random chance: the outcomes matter, they are obvious, and they are very much in doubt.

Checking for Surprise

When a random encounter occurs, each player should make a WIS saving throw. On a failure, that player's character is surprised and does not take a turn during the first combat round.

Note that this rule specifically determines whether or not the monsters surprise the PCs. Determine the reverse scenario with the standard 2-in-6 roll. This house rule isn't about verisimilitude or accuracy, it's about giving players the illusion of agency.