NaturalZero
Hero
First: fiancee's point is valid - which is one of many reasons I'd never ever use any sort of milestone or story-based levelling: it does discourage going off-mission.
It's the side quests and off-cycle encounters that give a campaign depth, and show that there's more to the setting than just the one-story AP they happen to be playing through.
I only do milestone leveling AND I encourage side missions. There really isn't any reason you wouldn't ("would" was a typo) get a milestone by going off to the home town of one the PCs and saving the day instead heading to the front line and going with the "main" story.
One thing I've almost completely phased out is the random encounter though. Sometimes, having dangerous bandits show up on the road serves the purpose of communicating to the group something about the nature of the region, but a lot of times random encounters are just filler that takes time away from advancing the narrative or compelling exploration. I get that DnD invented random encounters but a this point they feel far too "video gamey" in an outdated way, to me.
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