I Have Single Handedly Revoloutionised Random Encounters. Maybe
Arguably, this post IS an advert, but it’s for something cool that I made myself and that I’m giving away to you for free.
Alternate title options for this post included:
“I am the greatest and biggliesty minded GM app developer that the world has ever seen!”
“Your random encounters suck! I am Batman.”
“Yes, I know, I feel it too.”
Ha, I’m feeling pretty self satisfied today, I’ve finished developing an app to help GMs remember to run random encounters at the table, and I want to tell you all about it.
Ain’t Nobody Got Time For ‘Dungeon Turns’
Man alive I am so bad at remembering to run random encounters. I think they’re a great idea because as long as the possible range of encounters has been curated in a sensible way, they make the given environment seem alive, and stop environments from becoming this static place that only reacts to the presence of PCs when they trigger location based events. Buuuuut the old school method of tracking “dungeon turns” on a piece of paper, and then rolling a d6 after every turn to see if you get a 1 to trigger an encounter has two major problems for me:
Enforcing “turns” during exploration feels like it detracts too much from my free flow style of play. Arbitrarily saying “OK you’ve all done a thing, and I’ve decided that was 10 dungeon minutes - time to run some dungeon checks”, always felt quite forced at my table.
Crucially, I always forget to track dungeon turns and roll for encounters. I’m too busy reacting to the players and following the gameplay to remember to stop everything and trigger a dungeon turn. Maybe I’m just old and my memory is failing me!
Blatantly inspired by Shadowdark’s use of real timers for tracking torch light - my app enables the GM to ‘set it and forget it’ so an appropriate but “random” timer starts ticking down towards an encounter trigger.
The best way to understand its purpose is just as with manually rolling d6s to check for encounters, you know an encounter WILL happen eventually, it’s just a matter of HOW LONG will it take, which is information that’s hidden from the players. My app just means that the GM doesn’t have to think about it or track it manually mid game.
How Does the Encounter Timer App Work?
When the app boots up you’ll be presented with the main screen which gives you a number of options to engage with.
Encounter Frequency Range:
Enter in the lowest and highest value in seconds that you want the next encounter to activate between. By default these values are set to 300 and 900 (5 and 15 minutes).
Encounter Countdown Timer:
When the timer is running, this will countdown to zero then trigger an audible alert to remind GMs to activate their encounter.
During the countdown, if the player characters actions are drawing lots of attention to themselves you can tap the timer to reduce the countdown by 25% with each tap. You cannot take the timer below 10 seconds this way.
Mid:
Tap to have the app pick a random number in seconds between your Encounter Frequency Range, and commence the countdown.
Good for exploring areas of normal danger levels.
High:
As with Mid, but halves the random number generated.
For exploring areas with a higher likelihood of encounter.
||:
Pause and play the current timer.
X:
Cancel the timer and return it to zero (without triggering the alarm).
Encounter Timer in action
What Else Do You Need To Know?
It’s Android 5.0 and over only - sorry Apple people, but I have a Google Pixel 7a and I don’t have the knowledge to create this for non android architecture. If any Fruit based developers out there want to remake it, that’s cool with me.
It’s exclusively available to subscribers of the Mailer of Many Things as a free reward. It is not available on app stores.
At time of writing, the app is free, and is completely unmonitised. No ads, trackers, or any other shady money grabbing behaviour. I have no intention of this ever changing.
It’s an APK file, which is an executable installation file that you should run from your Android phone. By default, many phones don’t let you install things manually like this because the app has not been verified by Google, and instead prompt you to enable this functionality in your settings.
I am a backend cloud database developer by trade with limited front end programming skills, so I created and compiled this app using Kodular. I accept no responsibility for anything unexpected that happens when installing or using this software. To the very best of my knowledge, the app is safe and functions only as described.
The app works best in conjunction with preprepared encounter tables that have been tailored by the GM to the player characters current environment. The apps only purpose is to remind you that it’s time for an encounter - what the encounter is remains entirely up to you.
I may actually be Batman.
conclusion
I can’t wait to run a game using this, and I’ve already got some ideas about additional functionality. If you end up trying it out, please, please, please let me know how you got on and if you have any suggestions.
Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.
