Roaming Enemy/Playing With

Basic Trope: An enemy which travels around the world map, typically more powerful than average.

Straight: Bob the Giant wanders around the world map and attacks Alice if he sees her. Depending on how the game goes he may never turn up.
Exaggerated: Every single enemy in the game travels around at random. It's possible to complete it without getting into a single fight if you're incredible lucky.
Downplayed: Every level has a few Preexisting Encounters.
Justified: Alice's Adventure is a Wide Open Sandbox game, with realistic NPCs, including enemies.
Inverted: The enemies wait at fixed positions, as if their only purpose was to impede Alice's progress to certain places...
Subverted: Bob turns out to be a friendly NPC.
Double Subverted: Bob warns Alice that there's a dragon hunting to the North; if it sees her she's in for a fight.
Parodied: The giants wonder around because they're afraid Alice will turn up at their hideout looking for loot.
Deconstructed: All the NPCs in the game are heavily armed, since they could be attacked by a monster at any time.
Reconstructed: This just explains why most of the roaming enemies are far out into the wilds; those that wonder too close to settlements die.
Zig Zagged: Some enemies roam, but the game still has Random Encounters.
Averted: None of the enemies have any sort of AI or capacity to travel outside of battles.
Enforced: The game is an MMORPG, having the monsters roam around gives the impression that the persistent world is more than a load of data on a server somewhere.
Lampshaded: Oh, this is one of those massively overpowered bosses that wonder around and'll kill me in one hit if I don't avoid it?
Defied: The king of the land puts huge bounties on monsters that wonder around. They were made extinct long ago.
Discussed: "How do we find a Wondering Giant?" "Look around, they'll find us."
Conversed: "Oh no! If those giants spot me I'm screwed!"
Exploited: Bob realises that Mooks that meet a Player Character tend to die and wonders around to increase his chances of survival.
Played for Laughs: The roaming giants are very self aware and speculate as to whether or not Alice is The Hero or another random villager when she's spotted.
Played for Drama: Alice is attacked by a giant in the prolog and forced to flee, breaking her sword and other equipment in the process.

Click here to go back to Roaming Enemy.