I rely on random generators to add variety to my games now, but I didn't used to. This question has a clarification on the BrigadeCon site: "Tense outcomes are resolved using dice or other randomizers in the majority of our hobby's games, and devices such as charts, or lists are popular in some types of games. What random series of events or outcomes in your game ended up feeling not at all random?"
One of the bizarrely regular "random" events I remember is actually the result of -not- using random generation. Whenever the PC's met an otherwise unimportant NPC and wanted to know their name, I would just make something up. And it turns out that the most random name I can think of is "Frank". Once my players had met about five or six Franks, across several different games, they started to just assume any NPC would be named Frank. Often I'd just roll with it, and the cheeky bastards would make a big deal of how many jobs this one Frank must have, given that he's a cab driver, security guard, shopkeeper AND arms dealer.
Another recurring element in pretty much all of my modern games was established as the result of a random roll in the first adventure I ever ran (barring an aborted one-shot which ended in about 20 minutes after a single skeleton TPK'd my roommates). To introduce the setting and tone of my d20 Modern dark urban campaign The City, I ran a prequel one-shot where the PCs were agents of Department 7 investigating power outages at an underground research facility. As they took the elevator down into the sub-basements, I rolled percentile dice to see if anything went wrong. And it did, spectacularly. The power outage and an electrical storm combined to short out the brake system, sending it plummeting all the way down and dealing significant damage to the PCs who didn't make their reflex saves. Purely by accident, it was a pretty awesome way to get them down into the basement with no turning back.
That would have been the end of it, but once The City campaign actually started, the PCs would often end up in elevators. I rolled every time, and -every time- something went wrong, from simply getting stuck to getting attacked by monsters during a blackout as the elevator screeches downwards. My players eventually just stopped taking elevators. I should have some horrible things happen on the stairs...
My random event check was mostly based on intuition: I'd roll d% and vaguely intuit that something really bad would happen 15% of the time, and negative up to 30%-50% depending on the situation. But given that I enjoy making an "elevator check", let's have a table! (and because I've been messing around with normal distributions for random generation lately, let's do that too)
| 2d6 | Elevator Mishap |
|---|---|
| 2 | roll twice and combine |
| 3 | CABLES SNAP—the elevator plummets! |
| 4 | a ghostly elevator attendant manifests and will only take you to the non-existent 13th floor |
| 5 | odourless red mist begins seeping in through the vents |
| 6 | a Cheeky Urchin has pressed all the buttons before the PCs got in |
| 7 | the elevator arrives at the expected floor |
| 8 | men in black suits have suddenly always been in the elevator |
| 9 | bad wiring—the buttons electrify and deal 1d6 shock damage |
| 10 | emergency brake activates, the elevator screeches to a halt between floors |
| 11 | the elevator becomes sentient and is attempting to eat the PCs |
| 12 | roll twice and combine |
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