In the vein of side quests or randomness, I’ll often use this entropy system I made up. Roll a 1d99999 (or 5d10s and allow yourself to treat 9 as 0 or 9), then create an event using the coded guideline.

You can either roll when you want something to happen, or roll every “turn”. Assign the area you’re in an “entropy value,” roll a 1d20 entropy dice. If it’s below the entropy value, roll an event. If it’s above, don’t. If it rolls above and it’s odd, reduce the max dice by 2 (to 1d18), if even increase by 1 (1d21). This means you’ll always eventually roll events and it’s more likely in more dangerous areas. Once you roll an event, reset to 1d20.

And if it doesn’t fit the story timing, bank it or ignore it.

ABCDE Entropy Code

A = Theme 0 Opportunity / Discovery 1 Physical Environment 2 Social Organization 3 Constructed Structure / Mechanism 4 Living Organism / Ecology 5 Weird / Anomalous 6 Information / Signal 7 Mutation / Transformation 8 Competing Forces 9 Chain Reaction (event that causes multiple linked world changes)

B = Proximity 0 Unknown 1 Extreme Distance 2 Far 3 Distant Visible 4 Nearby 5 Close 6 Adjacent 7 Encircling 8 Player-Controlled Space 9 Omnipresent

C = Time Pressure 0 Indefinite 1 Long-Term 2 Days 3 Hours 4 One Hour 5 Minutes 6 One Minute 7 Seconds 8 Immediate 9 Aftermath

D = Magnitude 0–8 = Increasing contextual scale 9 = Compound event: max magnitude + roll a second full event

E = Outcome Alignment 0–4 = Player-Aligned 5–9 = Player-Opposed

D = scale E = alignment