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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6662189" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya! I had to choose "Other". I don't "build" encounters...I write out what is in an area. I could care less one way or the other what the players do if/when they get there. For example, the players are in town and hear of: (A) A windmill outside of town that was abandoned years ago after a vicious, winged, dragon-like creature took over, (B) In the hills a few hours outside of town is a tomb of an ancient cleric of Wee Jas, and (C) A somewhat crazed captain is looking for adventurers to join him in the hunt for the legendary Isle of the Ape.  I design what I think is "cool" for each of those things. In (A), maybe it's a wyvern of unusual size or cunning. In (B), the tomb will be packed with deadly magical traps and foul undead. And with (C) maybe I'll just use the old "Isle of the Ape" 1e adventure module or maybe the "Isle of Dread" and just replace the temple/pearl area of the island with a big-azz ape thing. The fact that the PC's are only level 3 is more or less irrelevant to me. It's not my job to keep the PC's safe, nor is it my job to "only make/put adventures in their path that they can deal with". All that is up to the players. If they are 3rd level and inquire more about the tomb, for example, they may learn that there are a mummy and vampire that were married in life over two hundred years ago and that they are the keepers of the tomb, tasked with guarding it against intruders. If the players think "Yeay, sure, lets do that one!" and head off...well, at least making 5e characters is a relatively quick matter. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> If they look into the windmill one, maybe they can find out that it is, indeed, a wyvern. Tough, but they at least can prepare for it by buying nets and poison antidotes and come up with a plan. *shrug* Fine by me. I'm not their boss... I just run the world. They are the ones making all the decisions; good and bad. After a few months of play, a natural, organic story has developed. One in which things from level 1 can be, and frequently are, quite relevant now that they are level 6. A year or two after that, the story continues, grows, and yes, those things from level 1 can STILL be relevant.  IMHO, when a DM specifically "builds encounters" specifically for a party, he is really selling his players short and doing a disservice to his own campaign belivability. Now, don't get me wrong, when they are in a kobod warren I don't just put in a "cave with three adult green dragons in it" when they are all level 1 and 2. I place only a few specific things that are appropriate to the area (re: not to the player characters capabilities), and I more or less "randomly determine" a lot of the other areas. Sometimes I'll determine what specifically is in an area 'one the fly' (e.g., a room may have a list of "Monster, Treasure" and that's it).Case in point: In my current campaign, I have a large multi-leveled dwarven citadel complex with dungeon and underground river. The PC's are trying to recover a specific ring from the place. They entered on "level 0". They wandered around a bit, found some stairs and found a well. They decided to use the well. Turns out, the well is almost two hundred feet down, with water at the bottom. They didn't have *quite* enough rope. The dwarven monk decided to jump in. He at least landed in the water...and was secretly swept away down the  underground river. Like lemmings, they all eventually decided that was a good plan, so in they all went. Only two managed to get out in the actual well room without being swept down stream a bit. Unfortunately, those two wandered around alone on the lowest level of the dungeon (a thief and a cleric of nature). Long story short, the cleric *almost* died and the gnome was eaten by an umber hulk. Oh, they cleric was level 4 and the thief level 2. Now, they finally found each other and are holed up in a storage room on the lowest level of the dungeon, missing a LOT of their gear and weapons (swept down the underground river...big, btw...like 40' deep at center and 80' across, average). Am I going to "build encounters" for them? Hell no! They decided to just up and jump to the bottom of the dungeon...and do it in a dangerous and foolhardy way that they lost a lot of their 'stuff'. Not my problem. They made their bed, now they have to lie in it. As E.G.G. would say,"Let the chips fall where they may...". But the core "points" of an area/adventure is noted. I can't say it enough though... I don't "build" with the PC's in mind much at all. ^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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