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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8675609" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Completely agreed, though I'd like to add a little nuance.To begin with, I have in fact actually let my players have a stupidly easy win because they simply outsmarted me. I've told this story a few times- around here. Long story short, I made what was intended to be an epic pitched battle against a molten obsidian golem formed from mystical blood-obsidian sand fused with the life-force of captured victims and the parts from the soul-bound assassin spiderbots attacking the wicked druids' shrine; the players quite cleverly attracted its attention and then...withdrew past the waterlogged spike trap they'd avoided in the hallway approaching this thing. The molten obsidian solidified due to contact with the water, and the players were able to just break it because obsidian is a crappy building material. And my players, despite the overt anticlimax, were happy. Because they knew that they'd won a victory, not just against the opposition, but in terms of actually being too clever for me. In the moment it was kind of disappointing for me, but in the long run, I'm now actually pretty proud of how I handled that--one of my first really big "oh crap" moments as a DM.Now, for the nuance: I certainly agree that things shouldn't adapt on the fly to match the party, as that will bleed away all the tension if it's discovered. But there is a way to (kind of, sort of) have your cake and eat it too. Specifically, if the party has several different concerns all active at the same time, it becomes possible to allow Villain B to fester and get worse because you spent time focusing on Villain A, or vice-versa. In this situation, choice does still matter, but it's still possible to have threats which grow at the same time as the PCs growing.I try to do this very judiciously, however. I first and foremost have taken great pains to let my players know that this is NOT meant to screw them over for choosing A instead of B; I won't ever punish them simply for making the choice of what they want to deal with right away and what they think can wait a bit. Doing so would teach them that taking risks is a fool's errand, and I'd rather not do that. I do, however, take into account things like "this hasn't been looked into in a really long time!" or "you've kinda been sitting on that juicy intel for over a year IRL now..." In other words, the world evolves in response to what the players do, and neglecting one area to hyper-focus on some other area results in that first area, well, getting more difficult to deal with, but not necessarily "stronger" in the strict sense. The things become more deeply entrenched. They put out more feelers, build up better networks, figure out how to fix past weaknesses. Let me give some concrete examples.So, in Jewel of the Desert, there are four major Fronts (DW term for opposition forces against the PCs--from the idea of "fighting on multiple fronts"): the Shadow Druids (evil druids who revere death and decay), the Zil al-Ghurab (the "Raven-Shadow" assassin-cult), the Cult of the Burning Eye (Lovecraftian-type cultists with a penchant for blood rages), and a black dragon that's trying to quietly take over the city via gang activity (and probably other stuff--the party hasn't figured out who the black dragon is yet.) During some early adventures, the party slapped down the Shadow Druids HARD, I mean HARD, so that faction has taken a LONG time to recover its strength (as in, literal years of play.) They also had several skirmishes with the Raven-Shadows and dealt with some Burning Eye activity--but by and large, other than hearing about the black dragon problem, the party didn't really do much to investigate.That state of affairs remained the case, adventure after adventure, and that has allowed the black dragon's gang to become bolder, to do more, to pressure more people into accepting underhanded jobs or consuming strange alchemical concoctions. This is finally starting to bubble up such that the party is finding it hard to ignore. I've kept the direct, clear consequences relatively light, but dropped insidious hints, had NPC allies (and potential-allies-if-saved types) be affected by some of the stuff going on, etc. The black dragon isn't ready to make the final move, not yet, but the plan is much further advanced than it would have been if the party had done more things to interfere. Again, I do not do this to screw with them, but rather to give an additional reasonable justification for why threats ratchet up a bit over time.</blockquote>

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