Quote:
Originally Posted by Badwe  Raven: It's my belief that, while the PCs are smart enough to choose the challenge level that works best for them, going too far above or below item progression can create strange effects. Absolutely you can deviate a good deal, you're deviating every time you don't give out a parcel in one encounter and give out 3 the next. It's just possible that you risk trivializing encounters, and trivial encounters can destroy the illusion of meaningful challenge/danger, which is the key to the fun "tension" that makes a delve exciting. That being said, I'm willing to bet you can get away with a LOT of deviation. Heck, I usually end up giving away an extra parcel in gold every level by all the small things my PCs do (haggling, pick-pocketing, etc.) |
Tension in an Old School Megadungeon, IME, comes from the players trying to push as far as they can (to get greater rewards). The minute you allow sandbox play, you risk that players will engage only in trivial encounters. However, since trivial encounters tend to grant trivial rewards, it is my experience that players almost universally find their way out of this trap with little or no input from the DM being required. YMMV, of course.
4e, like
3e before it, isn't realy designed for sandbox play, and it shows. The concern with grinding away at encounters which should have been easily resolved is a real problem in both systems. The biggest problem in both systems,
IMHO. This is very much (again,
IMHO) an artifact of grid-reliant combat systems, which in turn (again,
IMHO) is the direct result of
WotC market research when
3e was being developed, that showed that gamers who buy minis spend many more times the amount that gamers who do not buy minis spend.
If you could speed up combat resolution, it wouldn't matter if the PCs engaged in some trivial encounters. They would be over quickly. How you fix this in
4e, without rewriting the whole system, is beyond me. I could fix it in
3e. I have recently begun to create RCFG, intended to bridge some of the complexity of 2e/
3e with the fast play and sandbox style of OD&D/1e, so needless to say this is the aspect of
WotC-D&D that I am least enchanted with.
That said, running a sandbox means that, if the players wish to do nothing, then they do nothing while the world moves around them. A good world -- or a good megadungeon -- should offer sufficient "hooks" to make the players ever hungry to try their hands at challenges beyond their current means.
RC
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