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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7194106" data-attributes="member: 16814">Hang on, let me look... nope didn't say any such thing.  Look, you pick encounters to match your worldbuilding, and that's exactly what should be happening.  But you then deny that there are any worldbuilding impacts from that because you limit the possible encounter types so that they delicatedly avoid having any worldbuilding implications.  So, you explicitly take worldbuilding into account to deny there are any worldbuilding implications?  Returning to the idea that encounters can be limited to meet the worldbuilding, I don't think this actually works long term.  For instance, in the toy example of town and dungeon, you provided a day's worth of deadly encounters for the PCs between town and dungeon, and the reasons no one in town really cares about those encounters (because everyone knows horse sized wolves don't bother anyone, I guess).  But that was 1 day.  If the PCs need to make 2 trips out to the dungeons to hit level 4, that's 4 days of encounters like that, likely within a single week's time.  4 dire wolves may not be much trouble in your concept, but what about 4x4 dire wolves?  Then the party hits 4th level, and still has more dungeon to go, and those are even meaner encounter groups, all within a day of the town.  Expanding this into the 7th level group in a city, how many days of those encounters exist before you've run out of high level folks in the city to provide them?  How many evil wizards summoning invisible stalkers, how many habitats of dangerous creatures nearby are being encroached, how many mercenary groups of that power?  It adds up, so unless you're running a game where the PCs constantly travel, you're running out of overhead to stuff these deadly encounters into.  And, while you could declare areas pacified and move forward, it turns out most cities don't have dangerous areas nearby, so you're back to smaller settlements providing the succor for the party on the was to Adventure!(tm).This isn't to say you can't make it work, but you have to build a world that runs on the premise of very dangerous things being fairly common.  The pacing has worldbuilding implications, and 3 deadlies a day is hard to work into a campaign concept that isn't built for it.And, again, the best way to deal with the pacing issue is to use a variety of techniques and rotate them.  Some places 3 deadlies works well, others may yield well to time pressure, still others to DM fiat on availability of suitable resting places.  However, using 3 deadly encounters an adventuring day as your exclusive or primary pacing mechanic has implications for worldbuilding.  You may not care, because it's beer and pretzels (and excellent way to play), but its still there even if you ignore it, just like the Elephant.Still...animals.  Predators the size of a horse do not act like smaller predators.  Does everyone in your world keep burning campfires and punji pits handy?  You said that the dires would maybe be a threat to lone travelers, and I'm not claiming that they'd ransack the town in a frontal assault, but in the middle there's a hell of a lot of mayhem caused by four horse sized wolves to farms, livestock, and travelers.  Yeah, I guess if you had a tiger pit surrounded campfire you'd be largely safe, but a small caravan of merchants with a half dozen or so guards would be pretty easy pickings for 4 dire wolves.  Dire wolves hanging around outside of town would be a big deal -- something to either organize a hunt for or hire adventurers to root out.  And that means that the encounter that you provide your players is either from out of the area (which eventually leads to the 'why do all of these dangerous things keep showing up for those heroes to kill' questions) or have been a threat to the town.  Even using your method, that means you would have had to have already put into the world the reason that this town isn't at all concerned about 4 dire wolves roaming the nearby countryside.</blockquote>

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