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elonin
2010-07-05, 05:00 PM
To the DM's: Just how much effort do you put into elaborating the behind the scenes action in your games? For example making sure that monster placement makes some sort of sense given the history and environment. I'm specifically talking about details available in non "block text" format so that it isn't spoon fed to the players

As a player I've seen some where the game felt like a video game and others where the game seemed very realistic.

Saya
2010-07-05, 05:04 PM
For me, it depends on the players, and how much time I've had to prepare stuff for the players.

It the players don't care, and see the enemies more as pinatas of exp and loot, then generally I don't put as much effort into them, unless they exist as a part of a much larger role in a side/main story, then I put some more thought into them, giving them names and a bit of story, but usually unless I believe the players are actually going to interact with them, I don't put too much.

valadil
2010-07-05, 05:04 PM
Depends on the game I'm running. Most of my games make a certain amount of sense. My current one is taking a break from that. Too much sense limits what I can do in a game. So this time around I'm okay with bizarre platform jumping dungeons where the only explanation is "a wizard did it."

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-07-05, 05:25 PM
It's no good just throwing out encounter that make little sense.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/oots0210.gif
I tend to place encounters in a game based on some sort of theme - whether that's a geographic theme ("Hobbes Ridge is goblin country, mind your step.") or political ("The Duke is pressganging men into his army to put down the Rebellion.")
The geographic encounters will be decided by the sort of terrain and climate, and the remoteness or otherwise of the location. The politics are more event based.

So yes, backstory sets the themes to my encounters generally.
But those themes are part of my larger world setting, so they stay in place after I've used them for one or two adventures - you still find Bugbears and Goblins around Hobbes' Ridge even after the PCs have killed the Hobgoblin Leader, and you still get pressgangers - or maybe you even get more - despite the PCs rescuing the farmhands from the Duke's men.

Of course, you have to update those encounters if the PCs do something really decisive. Maybe if they go away from the region for a long time, then the goblins have all moved on, the Rebellion has been crushed (or been successful).

The simplest thing to do it make a few encounter tables for different geographic areas, and a few event tables for political encounters. When I say tables, I don't mean that you should just roll randomly - use them as a guide for what might be found in Hobbes Ridge and the Duke's lands.