tl;dr: complex randomisers like depth-crawls, chaos-clocks, etc. need high frequency use to be appreciated by players; otherwise stick to simpler, flatter tables.
This is for the Random Blogwagon from Prismatic Wasteland. I diced up my inputs - 6 on the d20 gets me June 6th, 8 on 2d6 gets me a post length of "As short or long as you desire" and my card came up as the 2 of Spades so I am geased to include a reference to "Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque".
This is all to my cosmic good because I had this post tentatively scheduled for June 6th already; huzzah. Not sure how I am going to work in the mighty repository of gothic inspiration that is Jack Shear's opus but I will have figured it out by the end.
My thought is that there is a different interaction with chance and randomness happening on the two sides of the DM's screen. Even setting aside any intentional choices that the DM is making - those are not random at all - there are two different systems in the hands of the folk around the table. The players are using their d20s, complete with its swinginess, the DM is often rolling on the encounter tables, reaction rolls and other bits that are either a weighted d20 table or actually rolled on with 2d6 or the like for a true bell curve.
DMs are dealing with 'gradation' results where many different outcomes can potentially drop out of a roll while players are typically rolling hit/miss at a greater or lesser likelyhood. As a player, fine, it means that I decide my course, throw the dice and take my chances.
Players get to experience their 'toolkit' round by round in combat and so are well acclimated to it. DMs get to build their tools and think about them even if they do not use them at table. Players only get to experience the DM toolkit at table - at a much lower cycle.
Own table experiences
My recently completed Hexcrawl25 campaign just used the overloaded encounter die thoughout and the players got nicely familiar with that straight-forward randomiser. Low bad, high good on a d6 was memorable even it was infrequent.
Way back for my Southern Reaches campaign I tried to similarly deploy the hidden depths tables for wilderness travel - and it never got a chance to shine because the frequency of rolls was just too low. Too many things happened between various travel rolls to stick in peoples mind.
I did manage to deploy those hidden depths tables for masquerades and parties - as a social depth crawl - which worked better because the tempo of rolling was much higher. The shifting-gears of the rolled dice going from 6d4 to 4d6 to 3d8 to 2d12 to d20+d4 provided a 'cadence' for the night, with things getting more interesting.
Another randomness tool I deployed was the 'big d30' which players got intuitively - once a session they get to roll a d30 in place of a d20 - and even though it was actually rolled infrequently, it felt more present because it was in the players toolbox.
Lessons learned
Things like chaos clocks, depth-crawls and other changing 'randomisers' that players encounter need to turn up with a frequency high enough that players grasp some sense of each state before it shifts to the next. Otherwise any cunning or contours within the design of the table that you are hoping players might seize and use to their advantage is wasted. They will not have enough jigsaw pieces to fill in the picture before the state shifts to a new picture needing new pieces.
For something in continuous use over the long-haul of a campaign, you might anticipate the complexity will eventually be grasped. For single sessions, or infrequently deployed randomisers, the tempo of use needs to be high enough to get multiple 'views' of each state or the randomiser needs to be simple enough to be grasped even through infrequent use.
This could be read as an argument for sticking with a mechanically simple randomiser with whatever cunning and complexity going in at the back end when populating it. Feels a bit 'keep it simple, stupid' and stick to encounter tables or resign yourself to only you the DM appreciating the elegance of whatever variable randomiser you have deployed.
Paying my Joesky tax
Sending the invoice for a "NEW COOL RULE, OR A MONSTER(S), OR SOME SPELLS, OR MAGIC ITEMS OR REGULAR ITEMS THAT ARE DIFFERENT, OR EVEN BETTER A MAP" to Jack of "Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque" and pointing to their cool idea from back in 2017 of Momentous Events: A Replacement for Inspiration in 5e D&D - basically benefiting from inspiration where you can tie an attempted roll back to one of your self-chosen legends, the Momentous Events.
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