Narrative through Gameplay: Random Encounters

I'm always tooting my horn about narrative joining with gameplay to make RPG experiences: Here's an actual example of it.

Most of Project Sunburn is spent wandering around in the desert, trying to find water. It's a slow-paced intermission between brief periods of intense conflict (bunkers), and a good area for players to absorb atmosphere.

Speaking of atmosphere: Random encounters should have a purpose. A fight (for fighting's sake) is kind of pointless, and just pads for time. Even if the purpose is to reinforce the idea that the world is a dangerous place, random encounters should have a purpose.

In Sunburn, the random encounters have the purpose of showing what a typical day on OHS-817 is like, and letting the players get the complete wandering nomad experience. This might be modified a little bit, but here's the rough draft:

On a D12:
1: EMPIRE patrol (light)
2: EMPIRE patrol (heavy)
3: Drahn eating the remains of an EMPIRE patrol
4: Water-bearing plants (light)
5: Twister!- run through it, or walk around
6: Chasm- spend another day traveling
7-12: Quiet, uneventful day

On a D6:
1-4: Encounter happens during day
5-6: Encounter happens during night

Let's walk through the math and story of this. There's a 1/2 chance nothing happens. Sand, sun, and not a drop of water in sight. This is the "neutral" encounter. The twister and the chasm (1/6 chance) are both "negative" encounters- the players will lose resources, with no gain. This represents the serious hardships in the desert. The first four encounters are positive- the players gain water (the most important resource), sometimes by putting a few bodies below the sand. 1/3 chance of this happening.

So, statistically, there is a 2/3 water gained/lost ratio. Traveling in the desert yields no water, neither do twisters or chasms. But, the encounters yielding water will give a little more than one per player. This will drop player's water supplies gradually, and with enough fluctuation to make it scary.

From a narrative perspective, this is exactly what I wanted- a struggle for survival. Serious enough to warrant a lot of player brain-storming, but not deadly enough to kill the entire party if they get a few bad rolls (there's a reason I only have one chasm and one twister, but two patrols and two non-lethal water sources).

The day and night rolls were purely for aesthetics. I'm not going to apply sleep deprivation to players (yet), and it's mainly so I, as a GM, get to describe it differently. I'll ask who's on watch if it's a night-time encounter, but no major changes to gameplay.

It's a succinct little package designed to characterize the character's lifestyle outside of major encounters, shed some light on the nature of the planet's surface, and put a focus on survivalism. Next post will detail more about the random nature of weapons and water deprivation.

And, for those of you wondering- heavily inspired by Fallout. Wandering around in the wastes, not sure what zany thing you'll find, was one of my favorite parts of the whole experience.