Low provisions drop, high hostile being(s). I personally use a die to determine this part because I like to make one of the players roll and let their own dice decide their fate, but you could just as easily draw a second card. However, for travel through certain terrain types I want certain results to be more likely than others. Diamonds = Climate-appropriate inclement weather.

Clubs = Provisions drop one level (explained more below).

That determines the sort of hazard “encountered”: The first thing I look at when I draw one of these cards is the suit. That leaves the three face cards and the Ace. The first thing I decided was to treat a Joker as an indicator of some sort of very special event - an unpredicted comet appears in the sky, the players discover a teleporting Scottish village, something like that. But then I realized that by using a playing card deck, I could determine much more with that single draw then just Y/N to an encounter. Initially I didn’t necessarily see the point in determining encounters in this way, because on the surface it really isn’t all that different from saying that there is X% chance of an encounter every day. (They also sell a game-specific action deck, but that’s not pertinent to this post.)

A face card or higher represents an encounter.” In case you aren’t familiar with SW, the action deck is just a standard deck of playing cards with the Jokers left in. In the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion, there is an optional rule for overland movement that states “Unless the area traveled is patrolled, draw a card from the Action Deck once per day.

Although this found its inspiration in a particular Savage Worlds rule, it isn’t really system-specific and could work for any game. For my home game, I’ve been using a slightly different method to generate random wilderness encounters than the traditional charts.

Online savage worlds card deck