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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5142672" data-attributes="member: 15470">If you're running an urban campaign, and you make the abundance of humanoids and lack of true monstrous monsters "normal" for a few levels, they're going to feel all too unnatural when you do introduce them .. and all the more monstrous if they're preying on humanoids in an urban setting.You've got all sorts of opportunities for that: necromancers working on undead, summoners bringing demons into the city, dragons menacing the countryside, portal travel forcing them extraplanar where everything is massively different ..... but if they're good players, they'll be okay with urban intrigue, I'd suspect...Running a good sandbox is very challenging: be prepared for your players to run right off of anything you have mapped, prepp'ed, etc, and force you to come up with things on the fly. I'd actually recommend having a number of "un-typed" level-appropriate encounters to throw at them for the unexpected fights they'll get to. For example, you might have a group of Level 6-8 bugbears prepared ... they might encounter these as bugbears if they go into the wilds ... but if they wind up in a graveyard, you can always convert those bugbears to "undead", and describe them as strong ghouls ... and if they go after a human thug ring, well, maybe these are the biggest, strongest thugs they've ever seen, and the Strangler is a 250-pounder who is using a garrotte to try to strangle them, etc.I'd say five to seven "skinnable" humanoid encounters will be a good mix for you, per session; cross them off and create new ones when they've gone through them if they have memorable mechanics, or re-skin them if needed.</blockquote>

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