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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4118761" data-attributes="member: 57267">Very true. This is exactly how I see it. Kobolds like tight quarters. It lets them swarm their bigger foes and minimized the mobility and combat ability of the larger foes, too.Lone Illithids won't choose battle in a giant feast hall, but they might get ambushed there, or taken by surprise when they were passing through, or serching for something.I don't always expect my monsters to be in their ideal environment. Some encounters I devise give the monsters advantageous terrain/environment, but some give the advantage to the players. And some are fairly neutral in that regard.But when I do put an encounter in an advantageous setting, one that that particular monster or bad guy selected for "home turf" advantage to maximize its/his chance of survival, then yes, that encounter goes into a space well suited to it.Which means the huge dragon chooses to fight in the feast hall with the collapsed roof (for easy escape if it goes bad), the illithid finds a long corridor tht funnels the invading heroes into a narrow line for maximum effect of its psionics (and preferably one with a pit in the middle to catch the foolish charging paladin and slow down the rest of the heroes), and the kobolds lurk in a small, dark room with lots of furnigure and impediments to the heroes movement - all assuming they can pick their battlefield.I guess I take a different approach.I determine what the structure is, what purpose it serves, and then what rooms are in it and what purpose they serve. I imagine the dungeon, castle, tower, etc., as if it were currently being used for the purpose for which it was designed.Then I fast forward to today. Maybe I work out why the original inhabitants left, maybe I don't. But today the structure is inhabited by monsters (or, sometimes, it's a new structure inhabited by whoever built it).Then I put the monsters/bad guys in it. I put most of them into rooms that they would prefer to be in (not necessarily a combat preference - their preference might be a private place to sleep, or an interesting place they are searching for treasure, or whatever suits their immediate purpose).If that monster's immediate purpose is inhabiting a good defensive position according to its preferred environment for combat, then I select a room in the dungeon that best suits that purpose, is accessible to the monster, and is not contested by the uncooperative mean monster in the next room. You won't find the human assassin setting up an ambush in the bedroom closet if the bedroom is inhabited by giant venemous spiders - unless they chased him into the closet.Sometimes I get a neat idea for a monster, or even a prior notion of some of the inhabitants I want to put in the dungeon. Then I look around my map and decide that this particular monster wouldn't be suitable for any available map location, so I pick a different monster and save my neat idea for the next dungeon.</blockquote>

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