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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rogueattorney" data-source="post: 5083237" data-attributes="member: 17551">This is a presentation technique that's independent of the sandbox/not-a-sandbox issue.  Wandering monsters are a staple of the sand-box and a device to make it seem like a living world.  After all, those orcs get up and walk around every once in a while.  I've more often seen "story tellers" complain of random wandering monsters derailing their plot.I'll get to the concept of the BBEG in a second, but otherwise, isn't this just about good dungeon design?Does anyone not do this?O.K.  Here's where we get somewhere.  This entire paragraph assumes that I'm the one that plans the fights.  As a DM, I'm the one that places the pieces on the board.  Whether the pcs fight those pieces or not is not entirely in my control.  It takes two to tango, as they say.I don't place everything in the dungeon or in the wilderness assuming the pcs are going to fight them.I don't have a "BBEG" in my campaigns and I certainly don't mechanize towards a preordained confrontation with anyone.  I have movers and shakers.  They go about doing what they do.  Sometimes the pcs run afoul of them.  Sometimes they run afoul of the pcs.  If the pcs decide to confront one of them, great.  If not, great.  In my B/X game set in Rob Conley's Borderland PoL setting, there's two sides to a civil war, a little village that's just trying to scrape by, a Duchy that's proclaimed neutrality and is isolating itself, there's a former Imperial governor who's trying to retake his birthright, there's a big group of bandits picking off the remnants, there's a sinister old sage who's predicting the end of the world and may be actively working to make his prediction come true, and there's a whole mess of orcs who see the chaos and are licking their chops.  There's also a big ole dungeon that's a prison for fallen gods.  I haven't the slightest idea if the pcs will pick a side, and if they do who it will be, but generally I assume that the pcs will be fighting on the pcs' side and no one else's.</blockquote>

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