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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8655755" data-attributes="member: 82106">Oh, there's a bazillion undead monsters in D&amp;D. I could make up one, a level 10 Mummy Baron, whatever. These sorts of details are not really material to the point, are they? It could be a Stone Golem left to guard an ancient ruined temple. People tell you to stay away, so you, the adventurer who has to go break all the rules will of course investigate! And obviously, some sort of highly constrained high level creature COULD exist, but it won't be one that will present an unsurvivable encounter for the starting PCs. Just look at B2, its the perfect model of a 'seed' for a hexcrawl. Heck if 5,000 DMs haven't done exactly that with it I'm a potato. All the nearby stuff is low level because that's how it has to be if there is going to be any sort of fun game!Again, there's plenty of possibilities of monsters that are both dangerous if encountered but might live nearby a town. Do we really have to dredge through the 20 or more MMs I have over on my shelf? I don't think so.Yes, it should never happen, because the GM won't set up that sort of scenario, and that was exactly my point! And I don't agree that there's some 'natural constraint' that makes this sort of thing happen. We will just have to disagree on that. D&amp;D adventuring worlds are UTTERLY artificial constructs invented purely for game utility. IMHO there is no more significance to 'internal cause' than there is in Apocalypse World (to reference the discussion [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] is currently having on that point with some of the other posters). There's definitely reasons to make one thing fictionally follow from another in terms of telling everyone what to expect, but internal causality is a feature of the resulting fiction, not a something that constrains it on the INPUT side.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8655755, member: 82106"] Oh, there's a bazillion undead monsters in D&D. I could make up one, a level 10 Mummy Baron, whatever. These sorts of details are not really material to the point, are they? It could be a Stone Golem left to guard an ancient ruined temple. People tell you to stay away, so you, the adventurer who has to go break all the rules will of course investigate! And obviously, some sort of highly constrained high level creature COULD exist, but it won't be one that will present an unsurvivable encounter for the starting PCs. Just look at B2, its the perfect model of a 'seed' for a hexcrawl. Heck if 5,000 DMs haven't done exactly that with it I'm a potato. All the nearby stuff is low level because that's how it has to be if there is going to be any sort of fun game! Again, there's plenty of possibilities of monsters that are both dangerous if encountered but might live nearby a town. Do we really have to dredge through the 20 or more MMs I have over on my shelf? I don't think so. Yes, it should never happen, because the GM won't set up that sort of scenario, and that was exactly my point! And I don't agree that there's some 'natural constraint' that makes this sort of thing happen. We will just have to disagree on that. D&D adventuring worlds are UTTERLY artificial constructs invented purely for game utility. IMHO there is no more significance to 'internal cause' than there is in Apocalypse World (to reference the discussion [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] is currently having on that point with some of the other posters). There's definitely reasons to make one thing fictionally follow from another in terms of telling everyone what to expect, but internal causality is a feature of the resulting fiction, not a something that constrains it on the INPUT side. [/QUOTE]

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