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<blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 8694571" data-attributes="member: 6701124">I really appreciate this post of yours and the next one in regards to helping me navigate things in the thread.&nbsp; I think for me it comes down to &quot;how emergent on the fly&quot; does the &quot;problem&quot; need to be and what counts as an &quot;NPCs hanging around for color but who otherwise have no connection to the events in play&quot;.Say, there are two roads and a bunch of woods.&nbsp; The party knows the woods are rumored to be full of old monsters and&nbsp; ruins and whatnot, and the DM has a bunch of index cards with things to draw from or a table to roll on if they get off the beaten path.&nbsp; The players know the left road leads to Castle X and the players know the right road leads to Dungeon Y, and they are very different things and allow the party to accomplish different big exciting things and achieve some of their goals.&nbsp; The roads are also safer known to be safer than the woods (and they are!), but there's a group of bandits that has recently moved into the area unknown to the players and denizens of the starting point.Where does the limited number of things to randomly populate the woods come in.&nbsp; Say one of the things in the stack of cards or table that can only happen once is a witches hovel.&nbsp; Given that the table/deck of cards isn't too big, if they explore the woods long enough they're likely to run into most of the things on the cards.&nbsp; Is it bad that they'll almost surely stumble on the &quot;Witch's Hovel&quot; by random chance if they go pretty much any direction in the woods long enough?&nbsp; Does it change if when the party converses with or interrogates one of the things that pops up they get usually reliable information about the adjacent areas and if that's rolled/drawn to be the hovel, then it's locked in? How bad is it to have the bandits pretty much show up on whatever road the party goes down (like a random encounter table with 1 entry) if they are just designed to be a reasonable challenge, give some flavor, and maybe drop off a hook that can be picked up whenever?I'm not really concerned what label those are given, but would the set-up be viewed as giving false choices or stealing player agency?&nbsp; Or would it be viewed as not far from on the fly or color?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Cadence, post: 8694571, member: 6701124"] I really appreciate this post of yours and the next one in regards to helping me navigate things in the thread. I think for me it comes down to "how emergent on the fly" does the "problem" need to be and what counts as an "NPCs hanging around for color but who otherwise have no connection to the events in play". Say, there are two roads and a bunch of woods. The party knows the woods are rumored to be full of old monsters and ruins and whatnot, and the DM has a bunch of index cards with things to draw from or a table to roll on if they get off the beaten path. The players know the left road leads to Castle X and the players know the right road leads to Dungeon Y, and they are very different things and allow the party to accomplish different big exciting things and achieve some of their goals. The roads are also safer known to be safer than the woods (and they are!), but there's a group of bandits that has recently moved into the area unknown to the players and denizens of the starting point. Where does the limited number of things to randomly populate the woods come in. Say one of the things in the stack of cards or table that can only happen once is a witches hovel. Given that the table/deck of cards isn't too big, if they explore the woods long enough they're likely to run into most of the things on the cards. Is it bad that they'll almost surely stumble on the "Witch's Hovel" by random chance if they go pretty much any direction in the woods long enough? Does it change if when the party converses with or interrogates one of the things that pops up they get usually reliable information about the adjacent areas and if that's rolled/drawn to be the hovel, then it's locked in? How bad is it to have the bandits pretty much show up on whatever road the party goes down (like a random encounter table with 1 entry) if they are just designed to be a reasonable challenge, give some flavor, and maybe drop off a hook that can be picked up whenever? I'm not really concerned what label those are given, but would the set-up be viewed as giving false choices or stealing player agency? Or would it be viewed as not far from on the fly or color? [/QUOTE]

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