TEXT: RANDOMNESS: THE CLEVER DM’S HELPER 
   
  Randomness is a DM’s best friend when filling out the 
  details of your adventures, but good randomness 
  requires smart prep. 
   
  The material for this article was originally part of a presentation I 
  made back in 2006, at a convention panel on Dungeon Master advice. 
  Given the number of random tables that found their way into the fifth 
  edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, it felt like a great topic to go back to 
  for this installment of Behind the Screens.  
   
  Randomness is one of the best tools at a DM’s disposal. Employing 
  randomness is a great way to maximize the return on your effort, 
  create new game situations on the fly, and ensure that the players can 
  never truly surprise you. The heart of effective randomness for a DM 
  is to create tables you can roll on to answer questions during a game 
  session, fill in details as you need them, or provide a quick blast of 
  content when the players dart off into a random direction. 
   
  A few years ago, I ran a short campaign set in Waterdeep. Since I 
  expected the characters to spend a lot of time in various bars, taverns, 
  and other dens of vice, I needed an easy way to fill out the roster of 
  barflies and lowlifes they might run into. And what I realized is that 
  it’s a lot easier to come up with six adjectives to describe characters you might find in a sleazy bar than to stat up six 
  specific nonplayer characters, especially if the adventurers won’t interact with those NPCs for long. 
   
  Here’s a table I used to randomly create the patrons of a gaming parlor the adventurers visited. If the characters wanted to 
  interact with someone other than the key NPCs I had created, I could build an NPC with four quick die rolls—one for 
  each column on the table. 
  By setting up a 
  similar second 
  table, I could just 
  as easily create 
  the gambling 
  hall’s employees. 
   
  The strength of these tables comes from the fact that 
  until the characters talk to a random patron or 
  employee, I don’t need to spend any precious 
  brainpower thinking about the NPC. This allows me to 
  spend my prep time creating the hall’s owner, the 
  bouncer, and the pit boss (the guy in charge of 
  watching the dealers)—the key NPCs that I know the 
  adventurers will interact with. 
  d6 Race 
  Gender Current State/Winnings 
  Personality/Actions 
  1 
  Dwarf 
  Female 
  Drunk 
  Happy, unflaggingly optimistic 
  2 
  Human 
  Female 
  Big winner 
  Angry, looking for trouble 
  3 
  Human 
  Female 
  Big loser 
  Suspicious, answers questions with questions 
  4 
  Half-Orc Male 
  Desperate to win 
  Friendly, looking for a good time 
  5 
  Gnome 
  Male 
  Just started playing 
  Intent, curt and rude 
  6 
  Half-elf 
  Male 
  Criminal, not here to game Bored, not really interested in the game 
  d6 Race 
  Gender Personality/Actions 
  1 
  Dwarf 
  Female 
  New hire, nervous 
  2 
  Human 
  Female 
  Fawning, eager for tip 
  3 
  Human 
  Female 
  Nervous, skims money 
  4 
  Half-Orc Male 
  Quiet, wants to keep the game going 
  5 
  Gnome 
  Male 
  Arrogant, hates customers 
  6 
  Half-elf 
  Male 
  Criminal, in on the scheme 
  
  GENERAL ADVICE 
  Creating tables can save a lot of time, but it helps to have an idea of what you want to do with your tables and the effects 
  you can achieve with them. The specific contents of a table determine its utility. If you fill a table with dull and 
  uninspiring items, the table will produce dull results. 
   
  Recycle: Note my clever laziness in creating the tables above, where I reused the columns for race and gender. Once 
  you have a few tables, it’s easy to go back and mine them for useful adjectives and ideas. Also, since the employees 
  weren’t that important to the scenario, they got fewer columns. In the game, I expected the adventurers to deal with the pit 
  boss, the bouncer, and the owner, which is why I detailed those NPCs beforehand. Fully fleshed-out dealers and other 
  employees would have competed with my established NPCs in the story, so why put more energy into them? 
   
  Go For Extremes: Use traits that will stand out for the players. You might notice that in the first table, there’s no 
  option for an NPC who is breaking even. The extremes stand out, so don’t have an entry for a quiet NPC. Instead, create 
  entries that yield up characters who are mute, characters who shout a lot, or characters who speak only rare languages that 
  the adventurers might not know. This method makes tables easier to build because it allows you to think in terms of 
  creating opposite pairs—for example, the big winner versus the big loser in the first table above. 
   
  Avoid the Bland: Here’s a good example of a mistake—in the second table, I have “Quiet, wants to keep the game 
  going.” That’s not a great entry, since it has the potential to stop the interaction and make the adventurers move on. 
  There’s no point to an NPC who says nothing beyond, “Go talk to someone else. I’m boring!” When you spot features like 
  this in your tables, revamp them to make them more interesting. 
   
  Action: Try to seed your tables with traits and ideas that prompt action in your game. In both tables above, notice how 
  the final column gives a simple personality trait and a description of how the NPC acts. In the heat of the moment, you 
  know how to portray the NPC to get things moving. Once everyone starts roleplaying the interaction, that initial sense of 
  how the NPC acts can drive things from there. 
   
  Bend, Fold, and Mutilate: Don’t allow random tables to dictate the adventure. Always remember that a table 
  serves you and not the other way around. If an idea for a cool NPC pops into your head, just use it. Random tables should 
  inspire your creativity, not replace it. 
   
  Columns, Not Rows: If you find yourself creating larger tables, try to keep them wider than they are deep. Each 
  column of a table represents a broad type of attribute, while each row represents specific attributes within those types. It’s 
  often harder to come up with lots of different specific attributes. For example, the number of potential races for your 
  NPCs is usually low, and it’s much easier to come up with six distinct motivations for a soldier in the town guard rather 
  than twenty. In my experience, the first few specific attributes are easy to generate, but once you need more than ten or 
  twelve, you start to struggle for ideas. 
   
  More importantly, a table with more columns than rows actually gives you more options. For example, a table with six 
  columns and six rows has the same number of entries as a table with three columns and twelve rows. But the first table 
  gives you 46,656 possible combinations compared to the second table’s 1,728 possible results. At the same time, creating 
  a smaller number of rows for each table means that there’s a better chance you’ll actually use a specific entry you created. 
  That’s intelligent laziness in a nutshell: maximize the return on the work you do! 
   
  Take Notes: If you use a table to create a creature, location, or some other aspect of the game that is persistent, keep 
  track of it. For example, when you create a random NPC, note the results, the character’s location, and so forth. Soon 
  
  enough, you might have an entire city’s worth of NPCs at your disposal, each represented by a quick assortment of 
  characteristics. 
   
  Keep it Fresh: Avoid using the same tables over and over again, and don’t be afraid to create new tables by carving 
  up your old ones. Swap individual table columns around, create new columns as needed, and rotate out specific elements 
  that you’ve used a few times. Don’t let your tables sit around long enough to start generating results that look too familiar 
  to the players. 
   
  QUICK AND EASY COMBAT COLOR 
  Combat is a central component of the fun of D&D, and it’s even more interesting if you can present vivid descriptions of 
  each spell and sword blow. During the course of a fight, the monsters and characters might make dozens of attacks. That’s 
  a lot of description for a DM to create, especially on the fly, but using tables can help guide you in creating interesting 
  battles. 
   
  The following tables are fairly simple, but they can help 
  add color to otherwise mundane attacks. 
    
  To make things more interesting, and to vary your 
  descriptions, try creating tables customized for specific 
  monsters. The following tables work for attacks against 
  zombies and similar undead. To build the tables, I 
  just thought about what an attack against a zombie 
  might look like and wrote down descriptions as table 
  entries. The beauty of this is that you can think about 
  these interesting concepts and descriptions during 
  your prep time. During a game, it can be harder to 
  come up with such ideas without bogging down play. 
   
  These sorts of tables can also be 
  developed for combat in specific 
  locations, not just against certain 
  types of foes. During a bar brawl, 
  characters might miss on attacks 
  because of drunk patrons stumbling 
  into them. A pool of spilled beer 
  could cause a warrior to slip, or an 
  attack might succeed because a foe is hit and dazed by 
  a thrown tankard at just the right moment. 
   
  About the Author  
  Mike Mearls has always been lazy, and he’s been a 
  Dungeon Master for almost as long. 
  Hit   
    
  d6 
  Location Effect 
  1 
  Arm 
  Spray of blood 
  2 
  Leg 
  Growl of pain 
  3 
  Belly 
  Cut/crack in armor/hide 
  4 
  Shoulder 
  Weapon bites in, pulled out with a sharp tug 
  5 
  Torso 
  Crunch/crack of bones 
  6 
  Head 
  Target reels in pain 
  Miss   
    
  d6 
  Foe’s Action 
  Result 
  1 
  Saw attack coming 
  Foe ducks 
  2 
  Defensive stance 
  Shield block/armor absorbs 
  3 
  Lucky move avoided attack Foe parries 
  4 
  Skilled defensive move 
  Foe dodges 
  5 
  Moves fast to recover 
  Foe takes only a scratch 
  6 
  Last second adjustment 
  Foe twists away 
  Zombie Miss  
  d6 Result 
  1 
  Attack smashes into body but fails to damage critical parts 
  2 
  Attack bounces off bone 
  3 
  Zombie grabs at weapon 
  4 
  Bones crack/blood flows, zombie ignores wound 
  5 
  Attack hits existing wounds 
  6 
  Zombie stumbles but shrugs off attack 
  Zombie Hit  
  d6 Location Effect 
  1 
  Arm 
  Weapon buries into flesh/collapses flesh and bone 
  2 
  Leg 
  Dull moan of pain 
  3 
  Belly 
  Dead flesh or organs spill from wound 
  4 
  Shoulder 
  Wound that would be fatal to living (spear in eye, skull crushed) 
  5 
  Torso 
  Chunk of flesh falls from body 
  6 
  Head 
  Internal organ bursts 
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Old School Revival (OSR(ic))/[Adventure Design & Dungeoncraft]/GM Advice & Writing/Randomness; The Clever DM's Helper.pdf