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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Satyrn" data-source="post: 7585457" data-attributes="member: 6801204">Of course it's not inherently bad, and as you suggest, you really don't need to defend yourself.  It's just another style. It's even the way I played most of 3e and 4e, and the only reason I'm not applying it in my current game is because I was hankering for an old school dungeon crawl where the players' primary goal is to beat it. It seemed to me that to make that work best, the dungeon had to be a preprepped entity. And I must be right (I certainly wasn't wrong) because I've found the prep work highly satisfying and it's been sheer joy to DM at the table.Some of the issues/problems people talk about on this forum have simply vanished for me. For example, I'm sure you've seen all the talk about the adventuring day and it's complications about presenting enough encounters, how players "going nova" can affect that, etc. With the megadungeon, I just don't care what the players do. Sure, if they stop after every fight to rest, they just face more wandering monsters and their progress through the dungeon stalls. But if that's the way they choose to pay, that's the way they choose to play. The "adventuring day" is up to them. As is the challenge level. When they're finding the adveuring day is too easy (or too hard), that's on them to fix. It's an easy fix, too: they just have to delve deeper (or retreat).I also don't care about the balance of skills, or how much use the players get out of them. Like (pulling a random example out of a hat) I don't make any effort to make sure there's an encounter where animal handing can shine. I don't think about solutions to an encounter at all. When I place a Grimtooth Trap, my notes describe how it functions, and don't address how to beat it at all. This way, I keep from locking myself into thinking there's a right way to beat the trap. So when a player decides to "remotely trigger" it by luring a skag into its clutches, I'm completely open to letting that work, and suddenly Animal Handling shines as the star because the player found a way to make it shine.. . . and ever since I adopted this style I now regularly see - and notice! - disparaging comments here.  Y'all probably have seen them too, phrases like "exploring the DM's notes" and the notorious "Mother May I." But wait. It gets worse for me. Because I also play and enjoy other, conflicting, styles I get to notice all the disparaging comments directed at those. Phrases like "saying the magic word." It's tiring.</blockquote>

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