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[Angrydad]

Originally Posted by Irda Ranger

A different kind of tedium, I guess. But once you've made (or "borrowed") a thieve's guild generator you'll never need another one, so it's a once-off kind of tedium.


Sounds fine. I would tell the PCs what your "overarching ongoings in the area" are, and have them decide what sounds interesting, before they make PCs though. Nothing sucks quite like bringing a low-Chr Ranger to a campaign where all the other PCs say "Oh hey, let's do that urban & political intrigue hook."


Lists of culturally appropriate names and personality quirks are better. There's really no way to know ahead of time if the PCs are going to say "Let's find an alchemist." Or, just keep your notecards with blanks for "profession" and "location" to be filled in as needed during play.



Hold up. You're assuming encounters should be "based on their general level", but there are two schools of thought on whether you should do that. I'll call them the "Adventurer Beware" ("AB" for short) and "Oblivion" ("Ob" for short) schools.

Under the AB school you make your setting and encounters are whatever is appropriate for the world your PCs live in. If Fire Giants live there, then Fire Giants live there; even if the PCs are first level. It's understood that PCs (even if 1st level) will do recon, use their heads and know to stay out of the deep end of the pool until they can swim there. This should be fine as long as everyone at your table is well informed of this design element and above the age of 12.

In the Ob school of sandbox design, everything is scaled to the level of the PCs. I find this boring and predictable, but YMMV.

What I generally do is have lists of random individual monsters appropriate for the areas (e.g., Ogre foragers). I then fill in the gaps in the monster lineup to make a good encounter. My process might be "Okay, I rolled some (Brute) Ogre foragers. Let's throw in a (Skirmisher) Worg hunting-hound and one (Artillery) Orog Huntsman/Leader to round this out." I find that's the best way to get a good mix of "random" and "sensical", since a purely random encounter might combine Ogre foragers, a Dire Flumph and a mindflayer. Too many encounters like that and things just get silly.

I personally prefer to design my worlds in the Adventurer Beware school of thought. While I love Oblivion, the fact that everywhere you go is theoretically scaled to your level kind of takes away from the suspense of the whole adventure. It may be a tough encounter for my level, but it's still something I can handle with a little thought. If my players are dumb enought to charge into an area infested with giants when they're only 4th level or so, they deserve to get smooshed into paste and made into bread. Random encounters follow this school in my games as well. Some random monsters are too tough for the party to handle and should be "the better part of valor"-ed.