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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9641383" data-attributes="member: 86653">Depends entirely on what you're going for as a referee. Do you want to maintain the strict integrity of your prep, shoot for verisimilitude, or let the PCs have an easy win? Keep the dungeon the same. Do you want to challenge the PCs regardless of what you originally prepped for that location? Change it. You can change it in a lot of different ways. As you mentioned, simply keeping the same map but swapping the monsters is certainly one way to go. Dropping in a completely different dungeon is another. But yeah, having the original inhabitants taken out and something else moving in is quite common in sandboxes. If the PCs had cleared the dungeon early on, something else would have moved in. So someone else clearing the place is a readily available option. One of my favorite tricks in that regard is necromancers or powerful undead that can make more undead. The PCs will generally be rewarded for and brag about clearing a dungeon so word gets out that there's a lot of fresh-ish corpses available, so in come the people looking for fresh-ish corpses and an empty dungeon they can take over. If nothing else it's a great opportunity for callbacks to the PCs earlier endeavors and adding some variety to monsters. Goblin zombies, troll wights, etc. Depending on what was there that they took out.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 9641383, member: 86653"] Depends entirely on what you're going for as a referee. Do you want to maintain the strict integrity of your prep, shoot for verisimilitude, or let the PCs have an easy win? Keep the dungeon the same. Do you want to challenge the PCs regardless of what you originally prepped for that location? Change it. You can change it in a lot of different ways. As you mentioned, simply keeping the same map but swapping the monsters is certainly one way to go. Dropping in a completely different dungeon is another. But yeah, having the original inhabitants taken out and something else moving in is quite common in sandboxes. If the PCs had cleared the dungeon early on, something else would have moved in. So someone else clearing the place is a readily available option. One of my favorite tricks in that regard is necromancers or powerful undead that can make more undead. The PCs will generally be rewarded for and brag about clearing a dungeon so word gets out that there's a lot of fresh-ish corpses available, so in come the people looking for fresh-ish corpses and an empty dungeon they can take over. If nothing else it's a great opportunity for callbacks to the PCs earlier endeavors and adding some variety to monsters. Goblin zombies, troll wights, etc. Depending on what was there that they took out. [/QUOTE]

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