I love random encounters in role-playing video games. If you feel worse than the content of the following story, I find it helpful to find that you can run in circles in this forest until you come across a "potential" encounter that will give you some power and some loot. . But fighting in a video game is getting faster and easier every day. I usually get one or two 4-6 hour sessions per month in D&D. I don't want to waste that precious time fighting some random monsters.
This doesn't mean that every battle in D&D has to be epic, or that every confrontation has to be a dramatic part of the story as a whole. As I travel, I see the appeal and even the necessity of dangerous confrontations. I just wish they were more interesting. So I thought I'd create/compile a list of little adventures to fill out my random schedule. For example, instead of facing 5 monsters in the forest, the group encounters a wounded merchant who was robbed by bandits. The group can hunt down the bandits in their camp and fight against them. As a DM, I can create a battle map with the bandit camp, so it's more exciting than an empty map with 5 monsters in it. Also, as Sid Meier said, a good game is a series of interesting decisions; If the group is attacked by 5 monsters, there is no choice but to use the combat ability. When confronted with a wounded merchant, the group can decide whether to hunt down the bandits, return the goods, or keep them.
I'll be researching adventure materials I already own, as well as what can be found in places like DriveThruRPG/RPGNow/DMsGuild for small adventure groups. I know the "5-room dungeon" is a thing and could work for things like a small dungeon or a wizard's tower. But this is going to be the biggest little adventure I ever put on the dating table; Something like pirate camp, the smallest little adventure possible on the same table. I don't want to "accidentally bump into X monsters", but I also don't want to "crash into a huge dungeon that will take several sessions to explore".
Fortunately, the theme for my upcoming campaign, Pirates and Adventures of the Sea, fits right in with the concept. If players are in control of a pirate ship, take on another ship, whether it's a merchant stealing them or a ghost ship chasing them, for a cute little adventure. The same goes for a small island where there is likely to be buried treasure. The Saltmarch Ghosts book actually has some little adventures at the end of the underwater locations section, battle maps like the shipwreck, and ideas on how to populate the area.
