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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Don Durito" data-source="post: 8264703" data-attributes="member: 6687260">I think there is a lot of overlap, but I don't think they're the same thing as what I was talking about.I could have a very directed goal in an adventure, "collect the bounty on the head of the bandit king", and I could approach that either as encounter as challenge, or environment as challenge.  It might be that getting to the bandit king involves a series of set piece combats, or it may be that the environment of the bandit stronghold contains more bandits than the party can realistically defeat in combat, so they are going to have to come up with some way to stack the odds heavily in their favour (poison the water suppy, trick half of the bandits into leaving to raid a non-existent caravan etc).But where the overlap resides is that the "environment as challenge" approach to the bandit stronghold tends to work better in a more open sandbox style game structure.  If the stronghold is optional players can go and do something else until a suitable plan comes to them, but if the stronghold is the adventure than the game grinds to a halt until the players thnik of something.  The incentives are different too, if the stronghold is optional it feels a lot fairer if a bad plan or merely blundering in result in a total party kill or similarly bad outcome, whereas if it is the adventure the GM is much more strongly incentivised to allow whatever the the players come up with to work in some fashion.</blockquote>

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