TADS Encounters

In my last post, I discussed my character class templates for TADS (Two Against Dark Space, my Four Against Darkness variant).

Now that I had my character classes, I began to tweak the encounter tables. My intention was to keep the tables and results the same but just change the names of the enemies. For example, the minions table now includes enemies like Imperial legionnaires, rampaging robots, mutants, etc. However, I find that I am slowly veering away from a straight one-to-one translation.

For one thing, my characters are not exploring a dungeon but instead are searching the galaxy. This change was inspired by Knight of Destiny. Each encounter takes place, not in a room, but in a different planetary system. I started rolling to determine if the system was inhabited or not. Uninhabited systems would use the corridor encounter table, which has a lesser chance of an actual encounter. I am now planning to roll for 3 levels of planetary systems - uninhabited worlds (Class 3), frontier worlds (Class 2), and civilized worlds (Class 1). Ultimately, I intend to create different encounter tables depending on the system class. Class 1 worlds will have more encounters with humans and humanoids (such as Imperial guardsmen or corrupt planetary officials, etc.) while Class 3 systems will feature stranger aliens and natural hazards.

For now, however, I am creating a more straightforward translation. For example, orcs (D6 roll = 4 on the minions table) are now Imperial guardsmen. They still are Level 4 with the number appearing = D6 + 1 (although I dropped their "no magic" bias. By the way, I find it pretty easy to change magic into technology. A fireball staff just becomes a heavy blaster!).

Anyway, you can see my initial attempts at my Tales of the Templars blog.