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Originally Posted by Sandwich  Thanks to everyone who responded to my questions earlier. But there are a couple more things the idea of a sandbox campaign has me wonder about.
Hypothetically speaking, if the party goes someplace and has the crap kicked out of them, forcing them to run, does that create the risk of meta game thinking along the lines of 'oh, well, we better level up some before we head back there again?'
Also, thinking in terms of 4th edition, should I draw up maps for every possible dungeon, but still keep the actually encounters contained therein random? Or should I just have a few very basic maps that I can reuse (say by turning it upside down for one dungeon as opposed to another or something like that) and just improvise or randomly generate details? And is the 'encounter deck' a good idea?
Sorry if these are really newbie type questions. |
To the first question: They may "metathink" (it's always a possibility no matter what), or they might think along the lines of: "We got wipped. We need to rethink our strategy". By going back to the drawing board, they may determine they have things they need to learn before they re-attempt. This is the basis of "experience". Their "experience" has forced them to learn and adapt to new strategies.
To the second question: I would only write up dungeons for whatever seeds you have planted with your group. They will decide where they want to go. But (hopefully) they won't go anywhere you haven't already given them clues or leads to. In other words, instead of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that you expect them to follow, you leave multiple trails of breadcrumbs, any one of which they can choose to follow. If they go off the grid (and they may do just that), you can still use any of your prepared dungeons (they don't need to know it was intended for somewhere else), or you just make it up on the fly.
And I love encounter decks. There awesome for varied and believable, yet random, encounters. (I still use my AD&D Deck of Encounters I & II boxes)
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