Random Encounters

This made me laugh<br /><br /><img src="/files/u4436/Random_Encounter.jpg" height="546" width="482" /><br /><br />Random Encounters are the bane of the Hickman Revolution crowd: If the encounter does not advance the story it does not belong.<br /><br />However, they are the bread and butter of the OSR crowd. <br /><br />I fall somewhere in the middle: being in my 40's and gaming with other 40ish gamers I weigh out time constraints and do I want combat that will slow the game down or should I push things along? If we're playing D&amp;D 3.5 or even 4.0 one combat can eat up most of the session so I would tend to nix a random encounter while in a past pace game like Star Frontiers one combat could take 30 minutes. Thus I'd be more likely to toss in a random encounter.<br /><br />Finally there is the 2 Mooks rule from the G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. RPG: &quot;if the player's look bored or the game is stalled have two mooks enter with guns&quot; <br />However my application of this rule is to have prepared random encounters and I simply pick one that suites the current situation or my whim of the moment- dice are rolled only for the dramatic effect of suggesting that this is a random encounter when its really DM fiat. Then again I might just actually let the dice pick.