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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 4041978" data-attributes="member: 13966">Eh, I use a mix.  Some areas are more dangerous than others, though, so as long as the PCs stay in areas that are generally known to be relatively safe (or which is known to have monsters of sorts that the PCs recognize as ones they can handle), they won't have any significant risk of running into big nasties they can't handle.But it can still happen.  I still roll random encounters sometimes rather than just picking out an encounter appropriate to the area.  And there are definitely some powerful critters and NPCs around, but most of those are well-known within their home region or city, or at least rumored.Chances are, if some random spot near civilization or near a well-used road is the lair of some powerful monster, people will have heard of folks disappearing near that area before, or will know of hunters hearing thunderous roars or earth-shaking footsteps in that area sometimes when they're out that way.But deep wilderness?  There lie monsters.  Often very big and very nasty monsters.  Where no one is around to bother them with pointy magic sticks.But, y'know?  The scariest thing the PCs in my Rhunaria campaign have probably faced is Martus, the friendly but strange, eccentric wizard living in one of the towns they passed through.  Not the ancient red dragon they saw out in the desert by the cliffs, who destroyed one PC's hometown and family in their background; not the Green Lord, mighty kobold druid and frequent problem for them in their home region, who commands several mid to high-level kobold sorcerers and druids along with orcish and monstrous minions.No, it is Martus, the friendly mage who identified their magic items and traded some with them, trained two of them in a bit of magic item creation, and let two of them study for a while in his lab.  Martus, the possibly-probably-crazy, maybe-Alienist, maybe-demon-summoner, maybe-unspeakably-evil-to-the-point-where-he-can-be-perfectly-nice-and-still-come-off-as-creepy-and-dangerous, who didn't so much as blink or lose his friendly smile after a random burglar was reduced to ashes by the warding upon Martus' open door.  Martus, who seemed to emanate wrongness and sinister purpose, even though by all accounts he's a kindly old man who occasionally makes magic items for the rich people in town.</blockquote>

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