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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imret" data-source="post: 2733839" data-attributes="member: 991">Well, now that you've all received your free lesson in No No You're Playing The Game Wrong And I Can Tell Because You're Not Doing What I Do, go forth and litter ruins full of monsters and cash slightly in excess of the GDP of a large kingdom all over your map because men with swords need holes in the ground to enter so they can hack up the residents and take all their stuff!- Disbelieve! Disbelieve!Ahem. Anyway, leaving that aside, I think a well-built world that functions on its own can provide even greater player satisfaction than a world entirely designed for four people to stomp around and break stuff in. I'd like to take a moment to refer to Turjan's post up there about religious conflicts and pirates and all that jazz; this is, in a nutshell, my adventure hook generation philosophy. Build a world with player input and ask them, more or less, "So what do you want to do tonight?".Some players are going to want to trek across the countryside, find a deep hole in the ground, and go in there to earn a living. Fine, there are ruins from the last war, ancient temples to forgotten gods, and all manner of openings in the earth. Go find one!Some players want to rob the houses of the wealthy, flee guards across rooftops, and seize control of the criminal underworld. Fine, there are a dozen large cities with well-established criminal organizations.Some players want to spread the word of their god in the borderlands - sometimes whether the settlers want to hear it or not. Fine, go out and preach your doctrine!Yes, this does require a lot of seat of your pants DMing and a willingness to say "Sure, a few days out you come across a half-buried door in a cliff face..." when that section of your map just looks like foothills. So suddenly, they're delving into a dungeon that as yet has no name, no original inhabitants, no map....what do you do? Check the notes, recall that a few miles from here was an important battlefield in the elf/orc wars four hundred years ago - presto, it's an orcish "field command", hewn roughly out of the rock and fitted with crude traps. The orcs lost this battle, so the command was abandoned (with anything too heavy to carry while running left behind), and the population density is low enough in this area it's unlikely anyone's been inside - you have the theme of the treasure within. Monsters? If it's small, maybe it's become a hidden cache for a raiding pack of gnolls, or a bear's winter den, or the new shrine to a minor fiend lord building his power up....if it's bigger, check the local encounter tables and pick something dangerous that needs a lair. Not all encounters should be ones the PC's can win. Or, just for a change of pace, some orcs found it too and are busy carrying out what's left...And all of this because you have a well-built world to set adventures in. I've always preferred a world that appears to go on without the party's intervention, and they just get wrapped up into its events as they see fit.But, then again, that's how I play the game and build my worlds. YMMV.</blockquote>

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