Currently I'm DMing a game where the PCs are going to be settled for a while (3-4 Months in-game), which means that they'll be stuck with the local flora and fauna for that length of time.
My main concern is that using the same list of potential encounters will get stale after a while. I have my own ideas about how to alleviate this, but I'm also looking for input I may not have otherwise considered.
Let me know if you have any questions that might help and thank you very much for your time!
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Skull and Shackles does this as part of it's beginning, though on 1/3 of the scale.
Not to put any spoilers, but in 7 days or so, only 2-3 encounters occur, though there is a sense of hazard each day.
Some people hate the 'dragging days', while others love it. I'm in the latter camp, but some other Pcs are in the former.
My advice would be to make sure that you don't rely on an encounter chart; if the players only have a single random encounter to look forward to for 3.5 months, it's like being in prison, and getting your daily meal.
Instead, captivate them with the environment such as surviving dire weather, gathering food with more then just a survival check, or make it necessary, so that they have to track day by day how much food they have.
Also of most importance is to have a supporting cast of NPCs. Skull and Shackles has a ship's crew; I advise that you generate 4-12 fleshed out npcs with personalities, and goals. They can bicker, fight, and even grow friendly with eachother.
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Make a list of encounters and simply make them not repeat themselves.
Make the encounters mean something.
For example, you could toss the advanced template of a dire tiger and name him the One eyed Beast of the Jungle and it would be an encounter that only happen once.
Maybe one of the encounter is someone lost in the jungle who is suffering from amnesia due to an unusual plant pheromone
in the surrounding.
Woops, went to the Grocery store and had more replies than I thought I'd get!
@voideternal: Yes- though it's mostly temperate forest/marshlands. The party, currently, is Level 5.
@Issac Daneil: All of that advice is super helpful- I'm gonna write that down in my notes for sure. Your suggestion with weather and the elements as an obstacle is especially interesting because it's not something that can be fought, just endured.
@Eltacolibre: So basically having each encounter give context for the environment the players find themselves in? That makes a lot of sense, actually- thanks
If the PCs kill most stuff in the area, other things may show up from elsewhere.
@Corsario: dunno how I missed your message before, my apologies. That's a neat idea. In the games I'm usually in, we never really had issues with killing stuff that wanted to kill us- but with respect to very local ecology, killing off an apex predator could have disastrous environmental consequences. That's pretty neat!
@voideternal: While interactions with Fey could be neat, my group has a weird bias against them. They're just immediately distrustful of anything Fey related right off the bat- I dunno, I think something happened to them in a game I wasn't a part of. Currently they're doing some settlement building. Initially, I wanted to keep their goal vague to get a wider range of suggestions from the thread.
You should probably shut down their anti-fey paranoia unless the party has an in-game reason to distrust them, that seems like player bias sneaking into the game world. You could always run them through a long dungeon populated with Frogmen, Hags, a Clan of Trolls, etc. Make them use some skills they don't normally need to (Swim, notably) Are they in a settlement? If not the occasional bit of random NPC interaction is always fun, chatting it up with a band of friendly nomads can eat up a good chunk of game time as well as let you leak tiny adventure hooks to them (For example: "Well, we just done come up over yonder hills, and I tell ya there be an awful lot of them freakalopes wandering about, I'd keep an eye out")
@voideternal: Building a settlement for the local Emperor. Their motivations are basically cultural- their homeland expects them to either A) build their own society or B) come back and kill their chieftan and assume his position. The players opted for the former.
@GypsyMischief: I've no doubt it's player bias but I think you're right in that it's worth it to try to wear that down.