Random Everything Tables and Narration

The Age of Heroes is still on the back burner for now due to school, so I'll be talking about something else today.

For a very long time I never understood the use of random encounters. Or more specifically all the little tables for everything that existed in D&D books.

Why should I roll on the "Random Dungeon Room Contents" chart when I can instead simply decide for myself?
If I roll a chest, why then roll on the "Random Dungeon Chest Contents" chart when I can instead use it for inspiration?
If I roll a magic item in the chest, why then roll on the "Random Magic Item" chart instead of purposefully picking something that could be helpful, but not game breaking?
And so on and so forth.

However, what I'm coming to realize is that my group and our play style is not the standard in the world of tabletop RPGs. We prefer games with a very strong narrative. For the story to be engaging we had to care about the characters. This meant that the characters had to have at least a little back story and that they had to survive long enough for the players to get into the skins of the characters.

On the other side of the game, the GM had to have an idea about where the players were going. This required knowing who, what, where, when, why, and how the PCs were going to be involved with encounters whether they be combat, social, or whatever. There would be a planned narrative arc with the assumption that while there would be deviations (because that's what PCs do best) the GM would be able to guide the players back to the story.

A quick aside, while some might consider this railroading, the choice of the word guide was purposeful. No one in my group ever resented being brought back "on track" so long as it wasn't ham-handedly done.

With my most recent game, I decided to try something out of the norm for myself. I was going to run a game that wasn't episodic. Prior to this my sessions have been largely self contained with a defined beginning middle and end, or the quest (as we called them) would be a couple sessions long. Between quests wasn't really enacted, players were asked what their characters had been up to in the days/weeks/months between quests and then stuff might have been rolled for, but usually it was largely characterful stuff that had little impact on the game directly.

I decided to break that tradition and run a campaign where every session started where the last one ended. So far there have been 4 sessions run in this style. The first two were planned to about my usual extent (about a page of notes, not including stats), but the form the game began to take in that second session was unlike anything I had seen myself.

One of my best players, Anthony, began to create his own goals beyond those that I presented as GM. While this isn't out of character for him, the other players following his lead and becoming proactive was a surprise. Quickly their situation became an incredibly complex one with various forms of intraparty conflict. The third and fourth sessions I didn't really write notes. I created some stats for things that they would likely encounter in the session, and I had 4-5 events that could happen with a sentence of description each. The players drove those sessions themselves. All I had to do was improvise everything that they might encounter.

And that's when I realized the use of all those tables. The players are currently on a 200m long starship crewed by the remains of the ship's reptilian crew following a fierce boarding action by human mercenaries. However, there are still a handful of humans on board (who are only semi-prisoners [long story]), and insectoid refugee/prisoners from a pirate ship that attacked are also on board.

While the players have not used a fine toothed comb on the ship (yet) they have gone into some rooms and talked with some NPCs that I had no details for. Anthony is trying to gain the trust of the humans and has been asking them about their histories to try and get to know them. I don't have a name for every NPC on board, and I certainly don't have a personality or history for all of them. If I have these random tables then I can figure out something on the spot if I can't improvise anything reasonable. I know I'll need these tables even more once they are no longer confined to the ship and can chase after whatever wild idea they come up with.