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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5835138" data-attributes="member: 54710">I think time limits can be used to great effect.  Red Hand of Doom (except for the sad dungeon crawl between the battle and the post-battle "second climax") is a great example of a time limit adventure.  The key is to allow some strategic flexibility and a way to affect the timeline.  (E.g. there should be things you can do to gain more time.)There is also the important time limit variant, where the PCs can take as much time as they want, provided they can avoid being discovered.  To me, this kind of Against-the-Giants style game should be the typical way in which PCs enter large armed encampments of hostile intelligent foes.  (Group infiltration is an under-utilized adventure style in D&D, and stealth rules that guarantee failure by requiring an arbitrary number of dice rolls prevent if from seeing more use.)As to wandering monsters, I think random additional monsters are the poorest examples of this.  I tend to think the right way to build an active location is to design the major NPC antagonists and then describe how they move about a location and react to PC activity.  Preferably, there should be a way for the PCs to gain intelligence about these NPCs before they face them.  That way, the PCs and NPCs can go at each other dynamically.And I have no problem with adventure locals that only take a day.  Just because the locale takes a day, that doesn't mean the adventure takes a day.  There are plenty of long adventures that feature small "one-day" locations.  (At least some of the Kingmaker adventures are examples.)  And isn't a well run megadungeon kind of like this?  Don't you clear out a defensible location to rest and then try to either take out mini-factions in one swoop (so they can't respond) or risk fighting the bigger factions that will come after you like intelligent foes?  A megadungeon where the PCs face no danger if they fail to apply a sensible strategy sounds like a dreadful bore.  Lastly, you missed the adventure style where the PCs spend most of the adventuring figuring out what's going on (maybe with the occasional combat encounter) and then the PCs have a single big fight at the end.  I think that's the most common adventure structure in most of the D&D campaigns I've played in over the past decade or so.  I wouldn't write a 40-page adventure with this structure, but I don't see why it shouldn't be a regular presence in Dungeon as the high-concept alternative to Chaos Scar.Speaking just for myself, I have little use for static dungeons filled with monsters and treasure.  Less sadistic versions of Tomb-of-Horrors style trap-fests can be a lot of fun, but I see that type of adventure is best used as a change up from dynamic situations and the ability for the PCs to rest when they want is part of the charm.  That type of adventure is more about the PCs going as far as they can with minimal attrition until they fail to avoid a disaster.Edit: This is presumably a non-exhaustive list -- only my thoughts on the techniques mentioned so far.  -KS</blockquote>

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