Every two or three weeks, I do something that dares the very fabric of reality to unravel: I manage to play a session of Pathfinder with my good friend Jon, my 13 year old daughter, Molly, and Jon’s 11 year old son, who’s name I am going to change to Fang. Not because he has a snaggled tooth or because he bites people, but because he is 11, and if someone had written an article that included me and had changed my name to FANG when I was that age, I would be a different man today.

Playing any Role Playing Game with kids can be its very own adventure. Will they focus? Will they get into the game? Will your daughter ever stop babbling about potatoes and roll her damned dice? You need to keep the game fresh and inventive for them, without sacrificing what makes the game fun for you (namely cleaving stuff, but that’s another story).

Tonight’s session had been going well. We had negotiated a truce between a young black dragon and the people of Sandpoint. My Barbarian, Crash, had managed to keep his mouth shut during said negotiations, and our Bard managed to work out all the details admirably. Our characters were about to head west of town when Crash’s influence on ME crept in, and I opened my big, stupid mouth.

“Are we doing random encounters?” I said, not thinking… That’s a very Barbarian thing to do, right?

Jon got a very frightening little twinkle in his eye. It might have been a trick of the light, but I think he may have been channeling Lucifer himself. It was very much a “poor, stupid Vagabond Prime” look. He pulled out the core rules, and found the Random Encounters by HOUR chart. Sheesh. Me and my big fat mouth.

5 hours into our journey, we were being followed by a stout dwarf on a pony. We decided to get around the bend in the road and fake a broken axle, while our Barbarian, Ranger, and Rogue went off into the woods to keep an eye on our new friend. Our Bard acted his butt off, and ALMOST convinced the Dwarf that the axle was broken, but then the Dwarf pulled a “hey, look! ELVIS!” and stabbed him in the back. Oops. We fell for the old “Ambushed by a Dwarf” ruse.

Oh, and I should mention, he was pretty nimble. Being a stickler for staying in character, I made sure to roll really lousy attack dice during this combat, since Crash being was so entertained by a nearly acrobatic Dwarf. Luckily, Fang had been reading up on playing a Rogue and managed to get our opponent set up for an awesome beat-down with a three person flanking action. Myazra hit the little jerk with a critical from her bow, and we finally took him out.We patched up our wounds, cast some restorative spells (Bards are HANDY!), and set off down the road to get to our “Dungeon”.

We never got there. Our party decided to camp for the night, and we were careful to set up a watch. Our camp was a pretty Weathertop-like vantage point, which should have been my first clue that things were about to go south. Our Ranger, Myazra, had the first watch. Thomas the Bard entertained everyone with some songs about the kingdom that used to be in the area, and everyone drifted off to sleep. Everything was great. We even pulled off some awesome role-playing, and my daughter managed to only ramble on about potatoes once or twice.

Then, the werewolf attacked.

Myazra was able to get off a shot while she raised the alarm. Crash bravely wedged his head in the werewolf’s mouth so that no-one else would get hurt. Right at that moment, I got pretty excited. What if Crash got infected with Lycanthropy? Crash is Ulfen, and wants nothing more than to slay a dragon and become a great Linnorm King. Having some bad-ass werewolf powers would be the kind of thing a guy like Crash would love to have! Still, you don’t REALLY want to lose control of your character for three days out of every month, do you? I know my GM pretty well. If he gets to control my character, no strings attached for three days a month, poor Crash will end up blacking out and joining some Sailor Moon Cosplay Cult.

I needed to make that Fortitude save.

All I needed was a 15.

I rolled a 1.

Riddled with werewolf spit and a bad craving for Motorhead, Crash spent the rest of the battle getting alternately chewed on and knocked down. My dice decided to do some role-playing of their own, and rolled nothing but critical misses for the rest of the encounter. To make matters worse, it was our freaking BARD that put Fluffy down! That, my friends, may be more than a guy like Crash can take.

Our game time had expired at that point, and the serious work of getting drunk and making fun of our kids was upon us. Jon and I settled back and reflected on what an awesome game session we had had, without even getting to the “Dungeon” part of the game. Our little group had gelled, our Rogue had finally learned how to sneak attack, and Crash had picked up the Hickey that keeps on giving. None of this would have happened if we had just “gone to the Dungeon.”

It may take us a lot longer to get to the so-called “meat” of any role-playing session, but it’s the random bits that make a game an ADVENTURE. Imagine Fellowship of the Ring if the scene with the Ringwraith sniffing for Frodo at the side of the road had never happened, or if Bjorn had never taken in the Thorin’s party for the night in the Hobbit. These scenes seem so inconsequential, so random at the surface of the story, but build on to seriously momentous sections later in their stories. Bjorn barreling down a mountain into a horde of Goblins during the Battle of Five Armies would have had no-where near the impact it had in the story without the background we had with him. The Ringwraith, hunched over the road and sniffing for the One Ring was our first hint at how truly creepy the Riders were.

Your job as a GM is never going to be an easy one, but you do have a lot of tools. The Random Encounter can be one of the best tools in your kit, if you take the time to work them into your story. What was the deal with that Dwarf? Sure, he was a random roll on a chart. But Jon played up the ambiguity of the encounter; he might have been sent by some secret enemy we haven’t met yet, or an assassin hell-bent on keeping us from our destination. The werewolf was even more random, but that encounter has been worked into a story hook that our party will have to deal with for as long as they are adventuring together.

And for me? My character, Crash Stonehead, simple-minded basher of Goblins and would-be Linnorm King, had become bigger than life in my head. Crash isn’t just a series of Attributes anymore. He’s a warrior with a dark secret, a Berzerker who will turn into a blood-thirsty monster. I already know what Crash’s motivations will be: Crash will seek to find a way to control the Beast Within. To wrest its power from its very jaws, to focus its rage and feral ferocity and claim his kingdom.

Oh, man. I can’t wait!