[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I know it is absolutely no help to anybody, but in GURPS I just do what makes sense. If enemy troops patrol in platoons then the PCs will encounter platoons. If the rumor is that a family of five trolls live in the cave, there will be five trolls in the cave. If a fight is especially easy or hard for the PCs, I'm not overly concerned as it's the PC's choices that led them there.

This is generally the best policy. If you're designing a DF dungeon, it should be "how it is" and make sense. If it's a party of thief-types going into a trap haven, well, that makes sense. But if the same party hears about a dungeon with tough monsters and magical opposition, they had better recruit some appropriate help. If they don't, tough. Or if they don't do their research and get hosed? Tough. So long as they KNOW going in that this is a possibility, and so long as they're not railroaded into death, and/or there is a way to succeed.

It's way more fun to occasionally decide "heck, this is beyond us -- let's sell the info and do something better with our time". I've had parties in and out of DF style games do this. Fine by me. It's more interesting and leads to good roleplaying possibilities.

Also, when you're running a campaign in a point buy system, or even a level system with lots of choices at higher levels, the characters diverge enough that gauging encounter difficulty becomes more and more of an art than a science. So N becomes "fuzzier" in general the more choices PCs have to choose from. In practice, even with templates, this happens immediately in GURPS, but will happen eventually in any system that grants lots of choices to characters as they advance.