Plots in a Sandbox

ExploderWizard said:

I gotta spread some xp around.

I do find it interesting that "meaningful choice" is linked with "appropriate challenge" which in turn is translated into "beat the snot out of it in a standard fight" these days.

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People are more sophisticated in their understanding of the relationship between risk and reward these days, particularly as it pertains to finance.

Individualisation has led to risk management becoming ingrained into far more people, and from a much younger age.

And this is still a game about killing things and taking their stuff.

Snoweel said:

And this is still a game about killing things and taking their stuff.

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Which the original game did very well. Risk vs reward was the meat of the game and the soul of sandbox play. That troll on level 5 will probably eat half the party but he probably has nice shinies the likes of which cannot be found on level one.

the Jester said:

Certainly it is.

It doesn't sound like you're too familiar with classical megadungeons. Let me pull out a specific example: the Temple of Elemental Evil. Great big ol' multi-leveled megadungeon that is harder the deeper you go. One of the cool things about it is that you can find ways down into the deep levels early on, if you get lucky or look in the right places. I've run ToEE many times, and on several of those occasions, the pcs have chosen to take the deep levels on when they weren't high enough level for them to be anything less than deadly. Did some of those groups flee when they realized they were in trouble? Certainly. Did all of them? Nope, and one or two even managed to make a couple of forays in and come out alive.

How is this a non-meaningful choice? I think perhaps the type of players you are used to are simply predictable and not up to a serious challenge; however, there are players out there who would take that same challenge up.

It sounds like you have very limited experience with sandboxes, so forgive me if I take your posts with a grain of salt.

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let's break this down a bit differently. Yup, I don't play mega-dungeons. Truth is, I find dungeon crawling to be boring. Boring doesn't mean not challenging, it simply isn't my kind of adventure.

yes, my players are predictable. That doesn't mean "not up to a challenge". It just means I can predict what they will do in most situations (including in a dungeon run as a sandbox).

Having experience and not having valid points are not exclusive. I'm a smart dude, if I think about a topic, I can reason out a probable methodology without specific experience. Basically, even a fool can make a good point.

Janx said:

Having experience and not having valid points are not exclusive. I'm a smart dude, if I think about a topic, I can reason out a probable methodology without specific experience. Basically, even a fool can make a good point.

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Oh, absolutely. However, this is a thread about sandbox games, and you keep talking like they don't exist with all this "no meaningful choices" junk. Take it from me, as a sandbox dm, that they do offer meaningful choices. That is the whole point of a sandbox- the pcs make choices that determine the difficulty of the challenges that they will face, and as a result, the level of reward that they might attain.

ExploderWizard said:

I gotta spread some xp around.

I do find it interesting that "meaningful choice" is linked with "appropriate challenge" which in turn is translated into "beat the snot out of it in a standard fight" these days.

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I don't quite agree with that. Nor do I agree with the chess comparison.

not picking the best move in chess is a failure in the player. It's not just a choice (ex. I could do this really smart thing, or this really dumb thing) it is failing to see the best move.

Now jester makes a good counter that some players DO choose to go to the really harder levels. That to me is a good enough argument that there is still a Choice in whether to go deeper. Though this might also be an example of "Retreat Forward!" tactics.


Back to EW's point, I think there's gotta be a middle ground solution to the difficulty of encounter problem. Even if we accept my original position that "going deeper is dumb, therefore not a Choice" it is equally unrealistic that every critter in the area just happens to be level appropriate.

In actuality, I don't have a problem with "going deeper is dumb" being a Choice. The player has intel to make a decision (maybe to shake off a patrol that seems too tough for them). What I tend to dislike is the player having no intel and ending up in the lair of the 20th level bad guy when he's first level. With no foreshadowing/clue that this was not a safe place to be. The player didn't really get a choice, if all he knows is "there's a door, do you open it?"

I tend to look at the game progression as the starting region is small with small threats, and as the party rises in level, their region of awareness grows thus they face bigger threats, or the bigger threats move in due to the loss of bottom feeders and the draw of the PCs being 'bigger fish".

I like some variety in strength levels of opponents, so not everything is 'PC level", but in the same vein, I don't tend to put the mega-powers who hate the PCs right next door to them.

Anyway, this has less to do with plots in sandboxes. What was Lost Soul's question?

the Jester said:

Oh, absolutely. However, this is a thread about sandbox games, and you keep talking like they don't exist with all this "no meaningful choices" junk. Take it from me, as a sandbox dm, that they do offer meaningful choices. That is the whole point of a sandbox- the pcs make choices that determine the difficulty of the challenges that they will face, and as a result, the level of reward that they might attain.

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I don't disagree. Except for the "keep going on part". I only discussed no meaningful choices as a tangent to the expectation that having a dungeon means meaningful choices. To which you provided an excellent observation that going deeper has been done as a tactic.

My other posts on the main topic cover "Opportunities" to which is some key advice to making choices available to the players.

It's not that "going deeper is dumb."

It's that "going deeper is riskier, with potentially greater rewards."

Snoweel said:

Acts of heroism are completely illusory when the life you're risking is just an abstract collection of ideas and numbers. So don't start preaching to me.

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It doesn't feel that way, not when you make the choice in-game to hold off the BBEG so your companions can escape, rather than run yourself. It doesn't feel that much different from making the choice IRL to go downstairs and confront the home invader, rather than cower in the bathroom. In my experience.

Snoweel said:

People are more sophisticated in their understanding of the relationship between risk and reward these days, particularly as it pertains to finance.

Individualisation has led to risk management becoming ingrained into far more people, and from a much younger age.

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Maybe in your world...

How many of you actually use multi-level dungeons in your sandbox game? I prefer to have small dungeons so the players are not locked up in them for a while. And contrary to my statement I do want to run a very political dungeon at some point that would be very sandbox, something akin to the D1-3 series.

I use random encounters when warranted and I make them level appropriate. I also have many things going on that are challenges and those are not level appropriate, how do others match up with the way I do this?