| I like my sandbox to be amply stocked with bright, shiny toys, which I suppose in this case means "pre-made NPC's with interesting personalities, motivations, conflicts, and other juicy plot/narrative bits the players can run with".
I prefer an emergent campaign to emerge from more that a hex map and a series of random encounter tables (though I'll admit that the DM'ing challenge presented by such a bare-bones setting intrigues me).
Also, as an aside, I believe that all games scale, one way or another. It's a vital part of maintaining long-running campaigns. The only difference is in how you disguise the scaling, if you even bother doing so. | 
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