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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7196458" data-attributes="member: 16814">Can you just by picking select encounters that are acceptable to the world (ie, do not make the road to Waterdeep dangerous for others) while still being dangerous to the players?  3 times an adventuring day, even?  Don't you at least have to add to the area fiction a reason for this incredibly dangerous encounter to be there, and is that not worldbuilding?So, you can't do a dragon (because, well, reasons?) but you can do something else that's mechanically as dangerous, like a group of bandits made up of bandit captains lead by a gladiator or knight, suitably reskinned.  But that's a pretty dangerous crew to travel and commerce, even if less fantastic and likely less dangerous to the surrounding countryside, so do you just have it occur on the road to Waterdeep without any explanation for why such a group is there, or do you come up with some narrative that explains this new crew of highwaymen and their impact on commerce in the area?  Do you foreshadow it at all by having the party meet a recent victim, fleeced for all of their goods while going to market in Waterdeep?  I'm repeatedly being told that you can pick encounters that match the world and still meet the 3 deadly a day encounter pacing.  And, I agree you can, sparingly.  But the more you do it the more it strains things until they break.  This seems entirely obvious to me -- you can't just keep dropping deadly encounters and not have some explanation for why it's become so dangerous in the area.  Even in tier I, but especially afterwards.  Arguments that you just move the encounter areas fail, because that's affecting worldbuilding -- you can no longer have encounters in areas you previously did without adjusting the story of that area to accomodate.  The orcs from Tony's example illustrate this nicely -- at early levels you fight orc patrols, at later levels you're clearing the tribe out.  But at those early levels you can never encounter the tribe (too hard) and at later levels you never encounter patrols (too easy).  What changes in the world to accommodate this?  Claims that you don't ever do that and just rotate to a new threat vector still don't explain the sudden lack of orc patrols the moment you outlevel them.And, also, Forgotten Realms is pretty much as close to a failed setting as I get -- it's history and current state are replete with incongruous and impossible situations, like the example road to Waterdeep, which just about no one could actually travel without a miracle.  Or the road along the Evermoors, which are so dangerous that lightly guarded caravans can pass it's almost uninhabited outskirts between two major trading cities but can spit trolls and giants and worse at any adventurers passing by.  The Realms have pretty much given up being remotely close to sensical.   If you're holding the Realms up as something that does encounter balances with the worldbuilding right, I'm not sure we have any common ground on the topic.</blockquote>

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