Using a deck of cards or dice roll with results lists?

What about rolling a couple of d6's, where the combination of each face creates the event? This way you could have a multitude of events without having to roll a d30 (yuck).

I'd say be careful on this, at least depending on your target audience.

Lookup tables are a completely reasonable solution from a functional standpoint and it is pretty common in wargames. It work's fine and there's nothing wrong with the option.

That said, I know MANY players will not play a game that use tables (Aside from a simple scoring table)

Drawing cards have a physical feeling. Reaching towards that deck... drawing the card... other players watching to see your response. There's no work, no delay between action and reaction, etc.

The majority of players are casual. If they don't get the immediate emotional feedback or they feel the action is tedious, they'll abandon the game quickly.

This isn't to persuade you to use cards, but just to say make sure you know your audience.

Lookup tables work fine for the right players... but cards or immediate results on the dice are probably a better fit for the average gamer.

In order to increase group play, and not let other players drift off while waiting for someone to lookup the results in a table maybe you could have two booklets of tables. One for the number roll, and one for the symbol/color. Then the players to the left/right of whoever is rolling will each lookup the results and read it aloud in a standard format.

_____________________
//Example//
_____________________
The Roll: [Player "C" is in the grasslands and rolls a 'BLUE' '8'.]

Player A (read aloud): "Player "C" is wandering through the vast grasslands in search of three goblin brothers when all of a sudden he..."

Player B (read aloud): "... begins feeling itchy and discovers he has been treading through poison ivy and..."

Player D (read aloud): "...he suffers -1HP/hour!"
_____________________

In this method other players are involved in each encounter and get excited to dish out their portion of the round that they get to see before everyone else. It also reduces the time taken to lookup the results and how much each person must lookup.

- In one booklet there would only be numbers showing a written result.
- In the other booklet there would be a number that has different types of quantitative results.

For Example: The "8" to player "B" would prompt him to read about the physical event, the poison ivy. For player "D" the "8" showed a chart of HEALTH DAMAGE results which may have included symptoms. The "BLUE" resulted in minor damages. Maybe green resulted in no damage and red resulted in a major infection.

If the roll was "BLUE" "19", then now for player "B" the results for "19" may have been that player "C" 'discovered a healing tree'; and for player "D" the "19" shows a chart of HEALTH RECOVERY results and "BLUE" again was minor so he gains '1HP/hour near the tree'. GREEN would have resulted in fruit falling that he could take with him, and RED would have been a gain of 8HP/hour.

For other types of events the number would refer to a different type of quantitative and sometimes qualitative RESULT LIST, and the color/symbol would show which specific result. (# of goblins for a goblin ambush / level of magic required to destroy an object).

This allows both "Result Readers" to not know what the other person is going to say, but still keeps them involved.

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It seems like a 'gimme' to use a die roll and a list or table, it would lower costs and reduce space taken like you stated, but I would try to keep it as simple as possible depending on the target audience like "McTeddy" referred to. Just my thoughts on player involvement when introducing result tables.

As guideline, I keep only 1 page for a look up.

If someone is an attacker, 1 page to look up a certain attack situation.
If someone is a defender, 1 page to look up a certain defend situation.
If someone is a tertiary player, 1 page to look up a certain interaction situation fitting tertiary players.

As soon as you have to go look at the right page. I say this is a no go for the game.

A book often closes when passed to the next person.

So I take my words back of an event book. It should be an event page at tops.

But then again, having a pile of event cards individually. Means that you can pick one and thats it! No looking up to do. Simply sharing the information on that card.

A lot of excitement is lost when you have a die and chart due to the delay between after rolling the die and then checking a table. The die face should be the excitement. If you can't make that happen, use cards.

Also, don't fall into the trap of thinking you need to design 100+ event cards before your first playtest. It's really tempting to chase that carrot, making more and more, then trying to balance them all. Heck, then you want to make a nice card template for them. Then you want to find artwork. Then after all this work you finally playtest and realize...your game doesn't even need event cards.

Try to make your designs as lean and accessible as possible while minimizing time spent. Rapid iteration is key.

Ehm, no. In most cases you want a random event (dice roll or pick a card), being linked to a situation (grasslands, theme park).

If I am wrong, sorry. But that is for the main author to decide.
If I confusing am, sorry.

Sounds like your game is Talisman with lookup tables. That game is a classic, fits the same audience, and can be done in an evening. I say go for it! Best of success to you. :)

On a cost basis the booklet would probably be cheaper - but how about a colored band on the edges of the pages for quick region reference with 2 card pics and text with dice values per side of a page sequenced by dice values for each region (real quick lookup) and use 2 d10 as percentage dice to roll?

So the "cards" reference would be the final section of the rulebook and colors at the edges of the pages. 50 cards is 25 sides of a page or 12-1/2 pages total for the reference section.

20 options per card is overkill. 1d6 would suffice. Keep the severity of outcomes uniform - low rolls bad, high rolls good.