In most Pokemon games, for example, players will sporadically encounter randomized wild Pokemon, but only when traveling in tall grass or treacherous caverns.

This design choice resonated in part because it successfully leveraged player’s anticipation of new surprises lurking around every corner and strengthened the parallel between gameplay and narrative. These encounters - which occur at arbitrary points when exploring the game world - have their roots in early editions of tabletop role-playing games, or RPGs, such as Dungeons & Dragons, which have come to inform much about modern role-playing video games.įor some notable video games in the 1980s and ’90s, such as the initial Pokemon and Final Fantasy titles, random encounters would constitute the majority of the gameplay. Random encounters are some of the most frequently employed features in recent video games.