“ What if you send the players in a dungeon that was already raided? Maybe you could have traps that are already set off, or the corpses of monsters etc.”
“ The creatures in this dungeon will not become hostile so long as you do not cause any trouble inside. If you provoke them though, you aggro the whole dungeon. If the players are smart, they can complete the dungeon crawl without having to fight anything.”
“ What if the sources of precious metal in the realm all failed, so that the only sources for gold and other precious metal were hostile foreign lands? Gold coinage might become increasingly rare, resulting in hoarding. Player characters that appear with masses of treasure might be suspected of being in the pay of foreign powers.”