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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6690712" data-attributes="member: 996">Nope.  I'm contrasting the idea of using appropriate encounter guidelines to challenge the party ('tailored') with using only the setting concept/situations/etc to determine what's where ('status quo').  In the status-quo style, the 'encounters' sitting out there waiting to challenge the PCs aren't there to challenge the PCs, but are there because that's where they fit in the world.  The PCs explore that world.  If they explore the wrong part before they're ready, they suffer the consequences.   The outcome of an encounter isn't the point of a status-quo design.  The party might roll over the encounter, they might face a TPK, they might be challenged, they might overcome a seemingly impossible encounter through some trick the DM judges sufficiently 'clever.'  The nominal level of he creatures in the encounter might not even matter much.  You could have low-level creatures on high alert with an efficient defense plan wipe out a party to whom they be an 'easy' encounter, or high-level ones who are disorganized, vulnerable, or working against eachother who present opportunities for victory to a much lower level party.  In each case, the point isn't to present a certain level of challenge, even a surprising 'Tucker's Kobolds' style challenge, to the party, but to populate the world as the DM envisions it.They may help your game come off more like an heroic story in a fantasy world, though.   I'm sure anyone who played 3.x/Pathfinder is very familiar with that scenario, yes.  To a returning player who's been away from the hobby since the 20th century, though, it might seem either like a bizarre concept (that there's such a thing as an 'appropriate' challenge; or that players have enough choices /to/ 'min/max'), or just an example of coping with 'player skill,' via 'DM skill,' of course.   To the first question, lots of old-school players would love to feel they've out-smarted a villain by having the final confrontation - to some degree, on their terms, due to their 'skilled play' up to that point - turn out to be a pushover.   Similarly, if the party did have 'common tactics,' countering them would be only natural - if the enemy in question had learned of those tactics.  It also doesn't matter, in that school of thought, if the party is above or behind the 'curve' for their level, the same world awaits them, regardless.  If a party can take on tougher challenges than another of the same level, they should, indeed, seek out those tougher (and thus, generally, more rewarding) challenges. It goes both ways.  In a tailored style, you try to create challenging encounters.  That means discarding/hand-waving or stepping up encounters that don't pose enough of a challenge, as well as dialing-down, re-imagining, discarding, or postponing (through "DM force" if need be) encounters that would be too far beyond the party.  Unless, of course, you're tailoring an encounter to be far beyond the party... It's a difference in philosophy.  From the player PoV, it could even be transparent.  That is, you could be in a tailored game, but feel like you were sandboxing or vice-versa. That's not really the idea.  The idea is that whether it's challenging or not doesn't matter.  If the party picks on small fry, and evades encounters with tougher enemies, they have it easy, if they seek out dangers too great for them to handle, they die. Seems like you guys are each reading soft-balling into the other's style while defending your own's manliness.  Status-quo or Tailored, you can be as Monty or Killer as you like in how you run encounters.</blockquote>

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