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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3364439" data-attributes="member: 16574">A "living" dungeon (which is to say a dungeon with living/intelligent inhabitants, as opposed to something completely passive/static like the Tomb of Horrors) should always react to the PCs' activity. Every time they leave the dungeon (or even hole up inside it overnight) when they come back they should find it a changed place. if the PCs inflicted a little damage they might find that the remaining monsters have increased patrols (more wandering monster checks, harder to surprise) and may have set traps and ambushes for them (especially if they always follow the same routes in and out); if the party inflicted a lot of damage they might find that the monsters have brought in extra help in the form of tougher monsters, or hidden themselves away, or even packed up and left the dungeon altogether (taking their treasure with them, of course). Depending on how long the party is away additional monsters who were out raiding or on patrol might have returned home, or new monsters might have moved into formerly cleared areas (especially scavenger monsters like rats, beetles, carrion crawlers, etc.). Ideally, the DM should completely re-key the entire dungeon (both those parts the party's already passed through, and those parts they haven't reached yet) every session in reaction to the party's actions in the previous session. This is easy enough to do between sessions, but what happens when the party insists on resting/retreating and continuing several times in a single session? The answer is, you have to discourage them from doing so. If they're camping out inside the dungeon you can discourage them through wandering monster checks (it's hard to get a good rest when every hour or two you've got a monster knocking at the door -- and even if they can't get in doesn't mean they won't come back later, in force -- that kobold patrol that came sniffing around during the night by morning may well be 100 kobolds set up in ambush formation), by emphasis on supplies (torches and oil will run out, leaving them in the dark, so will water, leaving them thirsty; standard rations spoil in dungeons so if they want to eat they'll need iron rations (at least in OD&D and 1E -- I don't know if this distinction still exists in the current version or not), horses left outside the dungeon overnight without guards might get eaten, guards left outside overnight without supervision might run off with the horses (or get eaten), etc.), and by making them rest longer than they'd planned -- in AD&D it takes 4 hours 15 minutes to memorize a 1st level spell, but that's on top of the fact that spells can only be used once a day, so if you start adventuring at noon, use up all your spells by 2 pm, and decide to rest and re-memorize them, you won't be ready to go again by 6:15, you'll have to rest that long and wait until at least midnight (the "next day") -- that's a lot more torches used up and a lot more wandering monster checks!). Resting overnight inside the dungeon is usually a pretty unwise tactical decision, and it shouldn't take more than a couple practical demonstrations to impress that point on the players.If the party's actually leaving the dungeon, and returning either to town or to some safe hide-away (a la the Dead Gnoll's Eye-socket) to rest/recouperate, then it's much easier -- all you have to do is employ the "1 session/1 expedition" rule (the rule that says that the party must leave the dungeon by the end of each session) in reverse -- once you've left the dungeon, you can't go back in during the same session. You can spend the rest of the session playing in town or wandering in the wilderness if you like, or perhaps even going to a different dungeon (if the DM has one ready) but you can't go into the same dungeon twice in the same session. If the players complain, tell them the metagame reason -- that as DM you need time to adjust the dungeon to take into account the consequences of their actions during the last expedition. Most players should understand this, and if not, screw 'em -- ask them if they want to be DM instead and see how they like it when it's your turn to complain and mess up their adventures <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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