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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6907980" data-attributes="member: 1210">Totally agreed. (And I also agree about adding some kind of prey that allows for more monsters/predators per square mile- underground, fungus and rothe work for me, while above ground, I try to paint the world as full of life and normal creatures to make, for instance, all those damned owlbears within 10 miles of town seem reasonable.)I also like to occasionally tweak the ecological balance of an area. For instance, last year in my campaign was a good year for griffons. The pcs spotted griffons in the sky often and had a number of encounters with them. Griffons even ate one pc who insisted on running off into the wilderness by himself despite warnings and several sightings. I often give an area (dungeon level, valley, outdoor adventure site, whatever) a 'roster' of creatures that live there, at least of those that tend to move around instead of being found in the same place all the time. (I'd place a roper in my key, but put the 4 carrion crawlers wandering around looking for food on the roster.) My players love it when I roll a random encounter and then tell them, "Oh, you already killed that! No encounter!" They love the verisimilitude that comes from having a set number of goblins in the goblin warrens, and knowing that their behavior will change depending on how many of them are slain. (For instance, the outer caves may be abandoned once the goblins are reduced from 400 to 200 members, and once they are down to 50, they may leave the area entirely, packing up what they can and leaving the rest). I'm also a huge fan of areas being repopulated. Leave those 200 goblins alone for a year or two? Now there are 300! Kill 'em all? Now an evil priest and his undead minions have taken over their warrens! I love re-using old areas (dungeons or the like), both with the same group later (e.g. they keep going back to explore more of the megadungeon, or five years after driving away the goblins, they discover the evil high priest and his undead army are living there again) or with another group (e.g. the various incarnations of Ravenloft; or, for my campaign, the Bile Mountain adventures- Bile Mountain; Return to Bile Mountain; Revenge on Bile Mountain; Beyond Bile Mountain; and finally the Bile Mountain Casino and Resort). I like adventure sites to have depth and history, and my favorite way to create that is in-game.</blockquote>

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