I noticed something today that I had seen many times before but had never noticed.  It happens to me rarely, but I know why that is.  It seems to happen to most people quite frequently, or at least that is my impression.  People tend to run into people they know.

  I don’t run into people I know because I don’t know the people where I live.  I’m almost two hundred miles from my high school, maybe five hundred from my college, and a good forty or fifty from my law school.  About two years ago I moved thirty-five miles from the place I’d lived for two decades, and when I was there I didn’t really know many people.  I rarely worked for any big companies, so I didn’t meet a lot of people at work.  Although I spent five years in radio, that generally confers a sort of anonymous fame–people knew my name and my voice, but wouldn’t recognize me, and I wouldn’t usually know who they were even if they had called.  It is thus rather unusual for me to run into someone I know.  But it does happen.  For quite a few years, there was a running joke between me and the husband of one of my wife’s best friends, that the only time we ever saw each other was in Rite Aid or Cumberland Farms (a local dairy/convenience chain).  Once in a while I would run into someone with whom I had played games in a diner or grocery store.

  But the more people you know in the area, the more this happens to you.  If you’ve always lived in the same town, you’ll meet your school friends, the people you played with in your neighborhood, the kids from the next town, the members of your church, co-workers from present and past jobs, all the time.  It’s difficult to go to a public place without meeting someone you know, when you know a lot of people.

  My wife has this happen to her quite a bit.  She’s a nurse, working in the intensive care unit of the local hospital.  She recognizes about half of the people in the county, because they’ve been either her patients or patient family members.  She usually ignores everyone; if someone asks why she looks familiar she brushes it off as if she has no idea.  It’s not entirely because she’d rather not be bothered talking to all these people; it’s also because she’s met them during a particularly stressful moment in their lives of which they would probably rather not be reminded.  She gets away with it because she looks very different in street clothes with her long hair down than she does dressed for work.

  This has never really been an issue in my games.  I’ve always used the concept of the frontier for most of my games, the idea that you don’t know where anything is around here because you just came here from civilization.  You could be equally a stranger if you’ve just come to the city seeking work, and all your family and friends are out in the country.  But, unless you’re playing Multiverser and constantly finding yourself in new universes, you can’t stay a stranger for too very long.  Eventually you meet people, and eventually you run into these people elsewhere.  Even I, a man who works at home, shuns parties, doesn’t mix, and knew perhaps ten people in this entire county seventeen years ago, just shared a moment of recognition in the mall with a grocery store cashier who has rung my order more than once, and another in a hardware store with a local butcher.

  Our earliest games included the random encounter.  Originally it was dubbed wandering monster, and usually meant some kind of combat.  Efforts to improve on this idea in urban settings suggested long lists of types of people you might meet on the street, from policeman to pickpocket.  But what are the odds you might run into someone you know?

  In Willow, Madmartigan (the crazy fighter played by Val Kilmer) is in the cage when, lo and behold, an army marches past.  And surprise, surprise, he knows one of the commanders of the army.  What a coincidence, we might say.  Yet it seems quite natural to us.  After all, why shouldn’t one superb fighter have met another somewhere along the way?

  In a similar vein, in Rush Hour 2 Jackie Chan gets in a fight with one of his partner’s informers.  After a few blows are exchanged, they recognize that they are using the same fighting style; it seems that their teachers are brothers.  What a coincidence, we might say.  Yet it doesn’t seem unbelievable; after all, why shouldn’t brothers teach the same martial arts style, and why shouldn’t their students run into each other somewhere?

  These kinds of coincidental meetings often add something to the story.  It might be that an old friend or a casual acquaintance could lend a hand in some small way, or provide a scrap of useful information.  It might be that conversation delays the characters, yet builds relationships for the future.  They could provide opportunity for something else–an act of kindness, a moment of encouragement, even the recognition of a need.

  A lot of gamers don’t use random encounters of the traditional sort, and I can understand why.  The unexplained presence of some completely unexpected creature who depletes party resources at a critical moment can be a terrible drain on a game.  But urban encounters don’t take into account the nature of the urban world.  I encounter hundreds of people when I go to the grocery store; I wouldn’t know a pickpocket from a prostitute in that context.  But if I recognize someone, that’s an entirely different matter.

  Give consideration to the possibility that your players’ characters might run into someone they know, even in the most outlandish locations.  After all, if you’ve trained to be an adventurer, the odds are pretty good that you knew at least a few other people who had the same goal in life.  They might already have been where you’re going, and meet you on their way back.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.