Hacking games is therefore a dialectical process: each ruleset reveals its own incompleteness, and by iterative negation and revision we may approach the absolute Form.

This guy gets it

I was always partial to the idea that PCs adventure not (solely) because they want to, but because they must—for one reason or another. It's like how people who become really elite in a punishing field do so because they couldn't manage working a more steady, secure job.

High praise! Glad you enjoyed it.

Using exotic words in spells is as old as civilization.

Also Ablanathanalba is better than Abracadabra because it's a palindrome (there should be a theta instead of a th diglyph)

What’s your favorite you’ve learned so far?

Murmurations of the Ember Princess

...also Beigehack.

I've absolutely gotten a lot of use out of your encounter activity tables! Unquestionably a valuable resource. Having a large pool of potential activities is great for adding more resonance to creatures, and I think answering why a monster may be interested in the PCs can do the same.

"Looking for food," "guarding territory," "hunting for treasure" are all suitable activities. Not only do they give immediate explanation for what monsters are doing and why, they tell you what kinds of decisions they would make when encountering the party.

Thanks for reading! (14/14)

When designing encounters, think about activities that can answer these two questions:

1. Why are these monsters wandering?
2. What would these monsters want with the PCs?

These don't need to be elaborate answers. You don't have to be particularly clever or creative about it. (13/14)

Determining wandering monsters' motive doesn't just tell you why they're wandering, it—crucially—tells you what they want from the PCs, and how they'll go about getting it. That's a lot of bang for your buck! (12/14)

Wandering monsters already have an activity baked in (wandering, of course), but we can add more dimension by determining their MOTIVE. The expanded reaction table that's been floating around for a while is a good example of what I mean—the needs inform the encounter. (11/14)

Are these kinds of encounter activities always bad? Absolutely not. They're useful in some instances, such as for keying room encounters.

But there's something else we can use to add color to random encounters... (10/14)

"Just ignore nonsensical results!" doesn't work here. If a table assumes we will be regularly ignoring what the dice tell us, we could be using a better table. (9/14)

...when that happens, encounters run the risk of becoming just the DM describing monsters engaged in an activity and then the players going "ok cool, let's move on." (8/14)

Most important, these encounter activities don't tell you WHY monsters are interested in the PCs. If encountered monsters are preoccupied with something else, careful players have little reason to engage with them, and it's harder to contrive a reason for why the monsters should care. (7/14)

While surprise is a possibility, it's not guaranteed for every encounter. Some games even deny the possibility that monsters can be surprised by a party carrying blazing torches through the inky darkness of the underworld. (6/14)

Additionally, such encounter activities imply the PCs are always stumbling in on the monsters, who would otherwise likely have dropped what they are doing by the time they become aware of the PCs. (5/14)