Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
It is an interesting idea to deplete the dungeon based on it, something I will take into consideration. But again, wandering monsters has the same issue, and in fifty years of gaming articles I don't think I have ever heard someone propose that, let alone suggest it is a necessary step in avoiding it feeling like a video game.
Well no because even videogames don't do random encouters any more :P

Overall though the point of "not feeling like a videogame" is making it feel like a living environment that reacts in ways a videogame couldn't have accounted for. Spitting up an infinite number of reinforcements or wandering monsters are things videogames can do very easily and often do.

So yeah, your dungeon should absolutely have a finite number of things in it because that's what a real environment would have, and the individual floors of the dungeon aren't so incomprehensibly vast that the players could never have accounted for everything in them (because "account for everything in the floor" is explicitly the progression they are expected to pursue).

Reinforcements showing up should have a consequence for the place they came from, and there should always be a place for them to have come from.

This doesn't seem to be a very out there leap of logic. Barricading the door to stop the flood of zombies is something the players could have picked up from 60 years of horror movies, and basic knowledge of how undead work in the game world would tell them they won't be pursued once they are out of sensory range. Indeed, they did barricade the door on the second attempt.
It never actually works in the zombie movies though. They always break through. It's a delay whilst you do something else, not a solution.