Ohh the Nentir Vale - Moon Hills example that Mearls had showed a screenshot of before. Nice.
We're very different DMs. A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post on how random encounters changed the trajectory of my campaign. Just like the players, as a DM I enjoy the suspense of finding out what happens and the challenge of reacting to an unexpected obstacle.
The advantage is exactly what I stated in the quote. Randomized encounters often result in situations that I normally wouldn't think of. They get me out of my comfort zone and keep me from falling back on my own personal tendencies and my own personal motivations.
Well, if they don't make the Navigation DC. Yeah, sure you can do "rince&repeat".
But that is boring. And it means despite failing they just can try like before without any decision needed.
A failure should always have some consequences (asides from being 2d6 miles off-track),
lead to a hard move from the gm or lead to a situation where the gm presents a new situation which requires a hard choice (being 5 miles away from where you were before is not actually a new situation - it is the old situation repeated, slightly off-track).
Either describe an "open" situation where the players can define some elements of the story as fitting for their characters (I use this only as session-starter) or by letting a player do a suggestion...
Things I really liked and thought were helpful:
The terrain chances for an encounter map - featureless encounters are boring, give us stuff to interact with.
Journeys are an important part of adventure stories, but there is very little support on making them interesting. Material like this is very helpful. Too often travel is on a blank gray slate no matter the world location.
Things I Thought Were Missing
Challenge Rating of the Terrain: There should be guidance on setting land areas to challenge different levels of parties. Yes, eventually the party will Air Walk or Teleport everywhere. But there's still a wide range of levels before that happens. Whether you are designing for a specific party or making a sandbox world with differing levels of difficulty (like a dungeon with multiple levels the party can use to calculate their risk), guidance for making terrain to challenge specific levels would be helpful.
Interaction between the flora, fauna and geography. Not just the random encounter tables advice in the books, but how to tailor encounters for specific features. What likes to live in the quick sand, and how do they take advantage of it. (The example does do some of this but there isn't any motivation to do so in the rules content.)
Example + and -
Terrain: the example could have used more interactivity. Can the boulders be pushed over onto enemies? Rolled down those steep hills? Will the bandits try to use them, so they PCs would need to make different choices in combat?
Other possibilities: it isn't directly said (that I saw) is that the Moon Hills are pretty dry, since vegetation is sparse and you've got old connections to the Plane of Earth. So the gullies may be typically dry, but is there a 1% chance of a flash flood in a gulley during a long rest? THAT would add excitement to an evening encounter (if not just be a hazard onto itself.)
I really enjoyed the Planar Confluence.
Other than the Planar Confluence, there was little in the example to provide guidance on hazards.
In general, the connection between the narrative descriptions and the mechanics (natural and supernatural) was strong. Nice.
The suspense for the players you can create by an unexpected move of the antagonist as well - without consulting a single random table. Yes, I admit random table are a pretty awful thing for me ;-) Don't like them.
Is it too early to start speculating that 2019's splat book will be Drizzt's Guide to Dangerous Destinations?
The advantage is exactly what I stated in the quote. Randomized encounters often result in situations that I normally wouldn't think of. They get me out of my comfort zone and keep me from falling back on my own personal tendencies and my own personal motivations.
5 miles away could be in an ancient grove with a Dryad, a dark ruin with a Wight, or simply far enough away that that the party will have to put extra work etting to their destination before the town is attacked, possibly incurring a level of Exhaustion.
As a DM, I'm not a fan of handing over narrative control as a form of encounter generation mechanics. If the player's want to exercise control, they can do that through their actions or downtime activities.
As a DM, I’m all for combat, encounters, events being relevant and moving the narrative.
...The suspense for the players you can create by an unexpected move of the antagonist as well - without consulting a single random table....
...Getting the players out of the comfort zone is a good idea. The way to go, I would say. You can do this without a single dice roll....