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It’s interesting seeing “random encounter” coming back in grace, I have the impression that they were universally considered as a “bad practice” for at least 2 decades, and now i see people defending them again. Is it an effect of both the OSR and Rule-light zero-prep ? Or is it that I spend more time on english speaking communities dominated by more “classical D&D perspective”

My issue, and why I (quickly in my GM career) stopped putting “random combat” is that, as a “low combat GM” random combats end-up interrupting the game for no reasons, and end-up being either “clay shooting practice” (So a few easy ennemies to roll some dices without bringing anything to the story) or a “catastrophic event” throwing all the PC plan away as they walked injured out of that fight and will need a lot of in game time to recover which basically breaks the game. If there is a combat, the PC called for it, either by their action or their non action, but not just by “simply existing in the game world”

However, I can totally see how for games with more focus on combat, it can still be interesting, just “not my cup of tea”

Literally every single time I have presented my players with an unaccompanied child who's asking for help, they've believed it to be some treacherous magical creature or illusion designed to lure them into some horrible trap.

It's never been those things. It's always just been a lost child. But every time, without fail, they spring to their guard, they start detecting magic, all kinds of things. I honestly have no idea where they got the idea that that's what lost children mean.

@mozz @Ziggurat @Whidou Caution is understandable in a dangerous world of intelligent monsters, but one would expect that caution to, y'know, actually subside after a moment of double-checking.