My stomach turns at the thought of random encounters. Hate them on tabletop, and any video games, even in pokemon (I think the newer games are a huge improvement on that front. Give me the old games, but visible pokemon in the grass that I can walk around to skip, and I'd be a very happy nerd!).[...] But random encounters is not a solution in any shape or form IMO. It's just annoying filler that doesn't drive the story. And if it's chance-based, I'd hit F5 before travel, travel, and reload if random encounter, and try travel again to avoid random combat :P
You do realise there's a certain irony in your statement that you hate random encounters because of how they're chance and not story driven in a discussion on a game that forces you to roll dice on literally everything in combat en often in dialogues too ?
Because skill checks in dialogue or combat, are elements of gameplay where the player is actively involved. They choose to go into dialogue, and choose the reply they want to say. Combat is something they also either choose, or encounter in correlation to something they choose to do, such as delving further into the goblin camp, or as a consequence to a dialogue option they chose (and failed or was a poor choice).
Random encounters during fast travel is just a random chance, of a random event, that the player is forced to do, without giving them a choice. So there's no irony, but a clear distinct difference. Not to mention random encounters is one of the common factors among DMs and discussions that are often pointed out as a contributor to overland travel being boring. Roll a dice for each hexagon you move, players roll their eyes as another pack of wolves randomly come out from the treeline? Even the dungeon master's guide advice on this is terrible, there's advice somewhere in there to make random encounters more exciting, and the example is that the bandits could ambush the players from behind, rather than from in front of them. Woo-hoo.
And it's also just terrible filler content that adds very little to the game compared to inconvenience and annoyance. You go for a long rest, and travel back to where you were, woops you got ambushed, either gotta use some spellslots to get them out of the way fast, or take damage and spend a short rest to heal up before you've even gone back to the adventure after resting.
Not to mention it adds bloat in terms of player rewards, if the random encounter doesn't provide loot and/or experience, then it'll feel even more annoying and boring. If it does, you can just fast travel back and forth to farm exp. Then exp becomes an infinite grindable resource, loses its meaning and might as well be removed from the game entirely.
There are many discussions and videos for, and among DMs out there that has a bucket-full of ideas on how to
make random encounters better rescue random encounters from not making the game suck for players, and just that fact should underline that random encounters are fundamentally disliked by a lot of players. Not all, it has its fans too as is obviously present, but it's a topic I often see on repeat in social platforms where DMs discuss among themselves, or share their wisdoms to aspiring DMs.
I feel an urge to go on a longer rant, but to make it very short: Random encounters is in my opinion one of the worst gameplay elements that any game could ever have, unless the game is specifically designed around it as a core component and gameplay loop, ala Pokemon.
That being said, I do agree and believe that both fast travel and longrests should have some form of iteration, addition or limitations to them compared to what currently stands. But random encounters is not a solution to either.
Why not let some world events be dice driven too? Like you first come on a crosspoint. Dice roll, d6 , anything between 0-3 bad luck, 3-6 good luck , the higher lower, the more beneficial or dangerous. How would that randomness differ from the randomness in attacks hitting or missing, or your charisma checks to succeed. If the issue is losing rolls (or losing to randomness), just add an option of few negative encounters, no random encounters, or story mode where you succeed any roll everywhere... ?
That goalpost can just be moved further and further, until the game just becomes a dice-rolling centipede of blockades to player agency. So no, all of those are bad for gameplay. You want to improve player agency and experience, not limit it or poke a stick in its wheels and over-systematically design every nook of gameplay. And just for random encounters alone, if it's rolled every time the players pass a crossroads, and there are many points in a world where a dice is rolled, it makes travel incredibly frustrating, and incentivizes fast travel. If fast travel too has random encounters, it's just a long fest of not fun gameplay that dictates what should happen, rather than letting the player steer their own adventure.
So... Just a flat no. To everything.
Edit: I suppose I should specify that I specifically refer to repeatable and generic random encounters. Unique events that has a random element of when and how it occurs, once, can be fine.
Also, random encounters were good in D&D once upon a time, when it was more dungeon-crawling focused and not so much the grand roleplay adventure concept it's moved towards in later years. Now they're just a nuisance that slows down the campaign without adding anything, at least for modern roleplaying game trends and preferences. More old-school players may come from a time when it was popular, and insist that it still should be. It can (arguably should) but it needs major rethinking to how it's implemented and designed.
If you want more combat as either a DM or players around the table, add more encounters. The encounters usually are more fun and involved then, if intentional and designed around the players to compliment their campaign, instead of put artificial roadbumps with no meaning along their journey through it.
Edit #2: I do however don't think random encounters don't have a place in D&D. Just not the way I see people often use it for, and therefore most often it's a bad idea. Any events on a random encounter table needs to add something to the game (not just more stuff to fight). It mustn't feel like it slows down the game but that it adds something, and it should have avoidance options. Not every random encounter should be, or end in combat. In fact, most of them shouldn't be combat unless players choose to instigate a fight, or to not try to avoid it. But regardless of outcome, it should add to the game. By adding to the game, I mean perhaps the players come across arcane-imbued zombies that turn out to be failed experiments from a nearby necromancer lair, and can be traced back there. It's given the players come clues to the area they're in, and new info for them. It adds something to the whole.
Other random encounters that *can* work are contextual and location-bound ones, such as you're infiltrating a bandit-occupied dungeon, perhaps there's a random bandit patrol that spawns a few corridors down on a patrol, so it ADDS a component for players where they need to be on a constant lookout, consider sneaking, or other decisions to navigate the dungeon. Those can be repeatable, because it's a confined and designed context.
Random for the sake of randomness, particularly triggered by fast-travel without context, is bad.
If the players sigh when a random encounter occurs, something is wrong about how random encounters are implemented. And a lot of DMs are really bad at it, or blindly follow the PHB/DMG/Module without putting any thought into it, because it's "just supposed to be that way".
And in a video game, I don't see any circumstance where that can be done, in a way that's any better than just doing it as a more well designed and defined event for players to encounter in a fixed point/location during their adventure. So for tabletop, random encounters can be good. In videogames, never, unless it's specifically designed for a context that adds to the game, such as bandit patrols in that previous example.
