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D&d is not a good sandbox?
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6860521" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>A certain amount of this comes for free with a sandboxed world. If you give players a menu:</p><p></p><p>(1) Run from the dragon</p><p>(2) Talk to the dragon</p><p>(3) Steal from the dragon</p><p>(4) Kill the dragon and take its stuff</p><p>(5) Enslave the dragon and make it dance for you</p><p></p><p>and you give them some idea of the relative difficulty of each of these options (Augury FTW!), they will naturally gravitate to an option which provides appropriate risk/reward given their current capabilities.</p><p></p><p>And that is why recon is to vital in sandbox games. One of my favorite things to do with important enemies like vampires and death slaads is to (1) make everybody aware that I can and do customize monster stats per-campaign; and then (2) make everybody roll blind knowledge checks (based on Arcana or History or Nature) and then give them all individualized stat readouts on vampire/dragon/demon lore, with varying amounts of false information based on how well they rolled. They get to compare notes, and of course they're usually inclined to believe the guy with the highest bonus on his roll... but what do you do when that guy's the outlier who says vampires are afraid of <em>cheese</em> and everyone else thinks they're afraid of garlic?! Probably you decide to get both cheese and garlic just in case, and as a DM that is terrifically entertaining to watch. Ditto for info on typical monster HP, immunities, spellcasting, etc. "Yeah, vampires are overrated. They only have 70 HP." Right.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6860521, member: 6787650"] A certain amount of this comes for free with a sandboxed world. If you give players a menu: (1) Run from the dragon (2) Talk to the dragon (3) Steal from the dragon (4) Kill the dragon and take its stuff (5) Enslave the dragon and make it dance for you and you give them some idea of the relative difficulty of each of these options (Augury FTW!), they will naturally gravitate to an option which provides appropriate risk/reward given their current capabilities. And that is why recon is to vital in sandbox games. One of my favorite things to do with important enemies like vampires and death slaads is to (1) make everybody aware that I can and do customize monster stats per-campaign; and then (2) make everybody roll blind knowledge checks (based on Arcana or History or Nature) and then give them all individualized stat readouts on vampire/dragon/demon lore, with varying amounts of false information based on how well they rolled. They get to compare notes, and of course they're usually inclined to believe the guy with the highest bonus on his roll... but what do you do when that guy's the outlier who says vampires are afraid of [I]cheese[/I] and everyone else thinks they're afraid of garlic?! Probably you decide to get both cheese and garlic just in case, and as a DM that is terrifically entertaining to watch. Ditto for info on typical monster HP, immunities, spellcasting, etc. "Yeah, vampires are overrated. They only have 70 HP." Right. [/QUOTE]
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